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So, after a major blow-up last week, I went to the doctors to discuss how my PMT was getting just a teeny little bit out of hand. I discovered three things:
1. I don't have PMT. What I have is severe enough to be classed as PMDD - aka industrial grade PMT that sends you genuinely clinically insane for a short time each month.
2. This has been getting steadily worse over the past year, and while I should have realised something was wrong far sooner, it's still lucky I caught it when I did.
3. It is treatable. They have a very good success rate treating PMDD with SSRI anti-depressants.
So I'm now on prozac.
Which was a shock, but also a relief. It's terrifying when you start to believe that you really are some kind of psychotic monster, unfit for human company. And a massive relief to find that no, you're actually quite a nice person with a pretty well balanced mind, it's just that your brain has spent too much time recently soaking in some really nasty chemicals.
Because the way PMT - and especially PMDD - affects your brain is terrifying. It's not just a case of going through emotional mood swings. It influences your brain chemistry. It does profoundly weird things to your rational mind.
Everybody has some kind of internal measure of whether something's a good idea or not. Some people's are rigid, some are changeable, some are hazy, some are so different to our own we'd call them just plain wrong, but everybody has some kind of baseline to judge ideas against.
But with severe PMT, you completely lose that baseline. You may as well be floating in space, with no reference points. There's no way of telling if what's dropped into your mind is a sensible intuition backed by good logic, or an insane scheme with a few ridiculous justifications tacked on.
And this is where the emotional triggers get really dangerous, as your brain picks on those and uses them instead. You feel furious, so somebody must have upset you. And here's your brain suggesting who, and justifying why you're right to feel so upset with them. And that must be right, because if not you wouldn't feel so angry, right? And you DO feel angry, so those justifications must be true!
So you phone up a friend full of righteous ire, and explain to them that a close examination of the precise wording of a throwaway Facebook comment proves there's obviously a grand conspiracy against you... and rather than backing you up and offering to ride out to lay waste to your enemies, they say "Anna, are you craving rare steak right now?" and you say "Well, now that you come to mention it... Oh. Ohhhhh. It's PMT again, isn't it?" and spend the next couple of days trying to keep yourself in check and ideally only make decisions based on known quantities, or thoroughly sense checked by someone else.
And then it's gone - magically, almost instantly, like someone flicked a switch - and your mind is operating normally again. Move along, nothing to see here.
I'd thought recently that I was coping better, as I was getting better and better at spotting the PMT myself without having to phone a friend. Turns out it's more a case that it's easier to spot that something's wrong when you have to stop yourself jumping under a train.
(Not in a suicidal kind of way. I'm not sure why that's so important, but it is. More impulse control. The idea 'I could just step forward just before the train gets in' pops into your head, and there's absolutely no warning bells attached. A couple of times I've ended up having to stand with my back pressed to the back wall of the platform until the train was safely pulled in and the doors were open, just in case my brain made any stupid split second decisions.)
So, yeah... seriously, at that point, HOW could I not see there was something majorly wrong???
I guess part of it that PMT affects your perception. While you're in the hurricane, there's no way to make sense of what's happening, you just ride it out. And afterwards, what you were feeling and thinking feels so removed from the everyday, normal, actual 'you' that it's all rather unreal, a bad dream that you can now put away for another month.
But mostly... well, it's PMT, isn't it? Everybody knows that PMT makes women go a little bit crazy. We know all the jokes. Loads of women get it every month, and they get through it just fine. If you put a post online saying 'I have terrible PMT today' you'll get a whole bunch of friends sympathising, saying 'Me too!' It's the same for everyone. What can you do? It's just PMT. Deal with it.
...and then the dust settles, and you have a proper conversation with other female friends, and it turns out that while you were talking about having to ~literally~ physically restrain yourself from pushing people downstairs for walking too slowly, they meant they'd had horrible cramps and snapped at someone who made them a cup of tea.
And it did sneak up on me slowly. After all the problems I had last summer with constant bleeding, blood tests, ultrasounds and general unpleasant prodding and poking, I thought everything had been fixed when I switched to the hormone coil. But while that did sort out all the physical symptoms, my doctor thinks the PMT has been building up ever since.
And honestly? Having been through all that crap last year I think part of me desperately wanted it to be all sorted so I didn't have to go through it again, so was turning a blind eye to the hormone storms.
Turns out that's a really bad idea.
So here I am. And as always, the silver lining of acknowledging you have something wrong with you is learning there actually is a cure.
Not to mention realising you have some wonderful, supportive, understanding, patient people in your life. (This post isn't intended to be either an apology or a thank you, as those things are very important and therefore best done in private... but you all know who you are.)
So the past week has been kind of interesting - I've been going through all kinds of entertaining mental states while the Prozac kicks in. And of course, the nature of the medication means I'm going to have to be completely alcohol-free for the foreseeable future. But that future is hopefully now going to be a much easier and happier time.
I'm writing this here, now, for two reasons. First, so that in six months time when I'm feeling completely fine and normal and wondering why I'm even on these silly pills anyway, I can look back here and remind myself.
Second (and for this reason I'm not friends locking it, even though I'd like to) it's here in case it sounds strangely familiar to anyone else out there.
Those kind of extreme PMT symptoms? They're not 'normal', they're not just what everybody else is dealing with, they are serious, and most importantly of all, they ARE treatable.
I don't have to worry about when or how it's next going to strike, or how I'm going to cope. I won't have to live as a hostage to my hormone any more. I feel like I've just got my life back. I've got me back.
That's definitely worth taking a few pills for.
1. I don't have PMT. What I have is severe enough to be classed as PMDD - aka industrial grade PMT that sends you genuinely clinically insane for a short time each month.
2. This has been getting steadily worse over the past year, and while I should have realised something was wrong far sooner, it's still lucky I caught it when I did.
3. It is treatable. They have a very good success rate treating PMDD with SSRI anti-depressants.
So I'm now on prozac.
Which was a shock, but also a relief. It's terrifying when you start to believe that you really are some kind of psychotic monster, unfit for human company. And a massive relief to find that no, you're actually quite a nice person with a pretty well balanced mind, it's just that your brain has spent too much time recently soaking in some really nasty chemicals.
Because the way PMT - and especially PMDD - affects your brain is terrifying. It's not just a case of going through emotional mood swings. It influences your brain chemistry. It does profoundly weird things to your rational mind.
Everybody has some kind of internal measure of whether something's a good idea or not. Some people's are rigid, some are changeable, some are hazy, some are so different to our own we'd call them just plain wrong, but everybody has some kind of baseline to judge ideas against.
But with severe PMT, you completely lose that baseline. You may as well be floating in space, with no reference points. There's no way of telling if what's dropped into your mind is a sensible intuition backed by good logic, or an insane scheme with a few ridiculous justifications tacked on.
And this is where the emotional triggers get really dangerous, as your brain picks on those and uses them instead. You feel furious, so somebody must have upset you. And here's your brain suggesting who, and justifying why you're right to feel so upset with them. And that must be right, because if not you wouldn't feel so angry, right? And you DO feel angry, so those justifications must be true!
So you phone up a friend full of righteous ire, and explain to them that a close examination of the precise wording of a throwaway Facebook comment proves there's obviously a grand conspiracy against you... and rather than backing you up and offering to ride out to lay waste to your enemies, they say "Anna, are you craving rare steak right now?" and you say "Well, now that you come to mention it... Oh. Ohhhhh. It's PMT again, isn't it?" and spend the next couple of days trying to keep yourself in check and ideally only make decisions based on known quantities, or thoroughly sense checked by someone else.
And then it's gone - magically, almost instantly, like someone flicked a switch - and your mind is operating normally again. Move along, nothing to see here.
I'd thought recently that I was coping better, as I was getting better and better at spotting the PMT myself without having to phone a friend. Turns out it's more a case that it's easier to spot that something's wrong when you have to stop yourself jumping under a train.
(Not in a suicidal kind of way. I'm not sure why that's so important, but it is. More impulse control. The idea 'I could just step forward just before the train gets in' pops into your head, and there's absolutely no warning bells attached. A couple of times I've ended up having to stand with my back pressed to the back wall of the platform until the train was safely pulled in and the doors were open, just in case my brain made any stupid split second decisions.)
So, yeah... seriously, at that point, HOW could I not see there was something majorly wrong???
I guess part of it that PMT affects your perception. While you're in the hurricane, there's no way to make sense of what's happening, you just ride it out. And afterwards, what you were feeling and thinking feels so removed from the everyday, normal, actual 'you' that it's all rather unreal, a bad dream that you can now put away for another month.
But mostly... well, it's PMT, isn't it? Everybody knows that PMT makes women go a little bit crazy. We know all the jokes. Loads of women get it every month, and they get through it just fine. If you put a post online saying 'I have terrible PMT today' you'll get a whole bunch of friends sympathising, saying 'Me too!' It's the same for everyone. What can you do? It's just PMT. Deal with it.
...and then the dust settles, and you have a proper conversation with other female friends, and it turns out that while you were talking about having to ~literally~ physically restrain yourself from pushing people downstairs for walking too slowly, they meant they'd had horrible cramps and snapped at someone who made them a cup of tea.
And it did sneak up on me slowly. After all the problems I had last summer with constant bleeding, blood tests, ultrasounds and general unpleasant prodding and poking, I thought everything had been fixed when I switched to the hormone coil. But while that did sort out all the physical symptoms, my doctor thinks the PMT has been building up ever since.
And honestly? Having been through all that crap last year I think part of me desperately wanted it to be all sorted so I didn't have to go through it again, so was turning a blind eye to the hormone storms.
Turns out that's a really bad idea.
So here I am. And as always, the silver lining of acknowledging you have something wrong with you is learning there actually is a cure.
Not to mention realising you have some wonderful, supportive, understanding, patient people in your life. (This post isn't intended to be either an apology or a thank you, as those things are very important and therefore best done in private... but you all know who you are.)
So the past week has been kind of interesting - I've been going through all kinds of entertaining mental states while the Prozac kicks in. And of course, the nature of the medication means I'm going to have to be completely alcohol-free for the foreseeable future. But that future is hopefully now going to be a much easier and happier time.
I'm writing this here, now, for two reasons. First, so that in six months time when I'm feeling completely fine and normal and wondering why I'm even on these silly pills anyway, I can look back here and remind myself.
Second (and for this reason I'm not friends locking it, even though I'd like to) it's here in case it sounds strangely familiar to anyone else out there.
Those kind of extreme PMT symptoms? They're not 'normal', they're not just what everybody else is dealing with, they are serious, and most importantly of all, they ARE treatable.
I don't have to worry about when or how it's next going to strike, or how I'm going to cope. I won't have to live as a hostage to my hormone any more. I feel like I've just got my life back. I've got me back.
That's definitely worth taking a few pills for.
