greenstorm (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
greenstorm) wrote2023-02-01 08:13 am
greenstorm) wrote2023-02-01 08:13 am
Validation
Yesterday was a... group? for PMDD folks, put on remotely by a women's reproductive center. There was a psychiatrist and a gynecologist.
This is the first time I've heard someone say that a condition that removes 7-8 functional days per month and can cause extreme nonfunction and suicidality can count as serious, and therefore I'd be allowed to have more treatment than "maybe this birth control pill or SRI will help". It's the first time I've heard that my basically zero energy days, where I'm scared I'll die because breathing feels like it takes too much energy, is probably connected (58% of PMDD folks have lethargy as a symptom, and mine is just a little on the more intense side).
In part this means it's the first time I'm able to really admit how bad it is, because part of coping with something is minimizing it. My whole life I've planned around staying away from social contact, making decisions, and important events before my period. Things weren't "that bad" "most of" the time, and I had a lot of compensatory ability the rest of the time.
It's kind of like autism, though: the realization isn't entirely that it's bad for me, so much as that many other people have it so so easy in this regard.
Unlike autism this is something with a potential solution, and which I'm not in the least ambivalent about getting rid of. The gynecologist said that in extreme cases that don't respond to anything else, there's a drug that shuts down the ovaries for six months as a test, with a little bit of hormone supplementation to keep osteoporosis etc at bay. If that works, the ovaries can come out. This is after trying various birth control, psych meds, etc, but-- her examples of extreme cases are my everyday life.
It's also a reminder to me that I'm 21 days into my second type of birth control pill and things are pretty bad; they say after 3 months if it hasn't helped it probably won't, but I think this is not helping. It's put me at not exactly the bottom of my cycle, but pretty far into the bad stuff range. I'm taking it one day at a time but I miss my life. I miss not having to be so so careful with everything all the time, nd I realize that I've always had to be so careful with everything all the time because I always had to compensate for the bad times.
The clinic that ran the group doesn't take over my care, but they send information sheets to my doctor, and they're available to my doctor for consults on this stuff. I feel like someone has my back?
Fun fact: this isn't a hormonal disease, that is, there isn't a hormonal imbalance. It's an issue with the way the brain processes normal hormones and "normal" hormone fluctuations.
Impulsivity, labile affect, and suicidality together make sense of something I've always struggled with. I've never considered myself a suicidal person, and I don't really want to kill myself. PMDD comes with significant impulsivity and very quick-swinging moods. I've dealt with this in lots of ways, generally inserting a pause into my more intense stuff and a "make no decisions, just hang on and if it's still important later it can be done later" sort of caution. I've got really good at this over the years. It's... not great, it's basically just gaslighting myself super hard and denying that anything about my perception of reality could be valid, and I think that's caused some longer term damage. But it's tended to keep me from breaking up with relationships on the spur of the moment, and it's kept me alive. Now that I'm driving I'm much, much more worried about it though. My cycle got worse the last couple years (that's why I've started pursuing all this stuff) and at the same time I spend a lot of time in a situation where a tiny body twitch can enable a suicidal impulse if I'm in a truck going 100kmph. I plan to avoid driving on my worst days, and call in sick when I can't plan, but there are some situations where I really can't avoid driving, and I've been very concerned about that. So having this intense control and planning around emotions, decisions, and driving is... well, it's a thing. Another symptom listed is "feeling out of control" and that basically sums it up, this sense that if I give do much as a millimeter then I'll just disintegrate into this raving storm. That's where the name Greenstorm comes from. Those of you who are autistic can think of it as basically being in meltdown for several days.
I can speak or not in work meetings depending on my cycle and generally do well enough in the good times, or I can prepare notes about what I'm going to say and confine myself to commenting only the things I've prepared, so I don't run off with myself in an irreparable situation.
I can go largely no-contact in relationships during the bad time, or speak only by email or text message where I have time to catch anything I'm saying. I can tell people that sometimes I need to talk through something and that the talking isn't about finding solutions, it's just about venting and may have no anchor in reality. I have some people who can accept that.
I can prepare a ton of easy to eat, make in advance foods.
If the rest of stuff was better I'd clean my house before the bad time so I don't get intensely annoyed by something being in a bad place, or the floor being crunchy.
The animals are a hard one. I know their tolerances and keep within them, but some days I've walked right up to that edge: I've yelled at the pigs and pushed them (pigs communicate by push and I haven't pushed hard, so they haven't been damaged, but still it wasn't coming from a place of communication in me but of frustration) and that was one of my big warning flags that I needed to handle this.
My sound sensitivity seems to be extra heightened during the bad times. To be honest, it may only exist at that time.
Change in appetite: check. It's the only time I really have a sweet tooth I eat a ton, then after I'm not hungry at all.
Difficulty concentrating? That explains some things. Maybe I'll hold off on messing with more specific ADHD stuff until I get this sorted; I didn't used to have these difficulties, and if this is linked then who knows what my mind will be like after.
Bad sleep is a normal part of this so I'm on track there.
Anyhow, this is mostly a list of symptoms and workarounds I've been dealing with for the last... longtime, on paper, for my reference. And it's a skeptical reminder to myself that other people maybe don't have to do so many of these things, and don't have to do them all the time.
This is the first time I've heard someone say that a condition that removes 7-8 functional days per month and can cause extreme nonfunction and suicidality can count as serious, and therefore I'd be allowed to have more treatment than "maybe this birth control pill or SRI will help". It's the first time I've heard that my basically zero energy days, where I'm scared I'll die because breathing feels like it takes too much energy, is probably connected (58% of PMDD folks have lethargy as a symptom, and mine is just a little on the more intense side).
In part this means it's the first time I'm able to really admit how bad it is, because part of coping with something is minimizing it. My whole life I've planned around staying away from social contact, making decisions, and important events before my period. Things weren't "that bad" "most of" the time, and I had a lot of compensatory ability the rest of the time.
It's kind of like autism, though: the realization isn't entirely that it's bad for me, so much as that many other people have it so so easy in this regard.
Unlike autism this is something with a potential solution, and which I'm not in the least ambivalent about getting rid of. The gynecologist said that in extreme cases that don't respond to anything else, there's a drug that shuts down the ovaries for six months as a test, with a little bit of hormone supplementation to keep osteoporosis etc at bay. If that works, the ovaries can come out. This is after trying various birth control, psych meds, etc, but-- her examples of extreme cases are my everyday life.
It's also a reminder to me that I'm 21 days into my second type of birth control pill and things are pretty bad; they say after 3 months if it hasn't helped it probably won't, but I think this is not helping. It's put me at not exactly the bottom of my cycle, but pretty far into the bad stuff range. I'm taking it one day at a time but I miss my life. I miss not having to be so so careful with everything all the time, nd I realize that I've always had to be so careful with everything all the time because I always had to compensate for the bad times.
The clinic that ran the group doesn't take over my care, but they send information sheets to my doctor, and they're available to my doctor for consults on this stuff. I feel like someone has my back?
Fun fact: this isn't a hormonal disease, that is, there isn't a hormonal imbalance. It's an issue with the way the brain processes normal hormones and "normal" hormone fluctuations.
Impulsivity, labile affect, and suicidality together make sense of something I've always struggled with. I've never considered myself a suicidal person, and I don't really want to kill myself. PMDD comes with significant impulsivity and very quick-swinging moods. I've dealt with this in lots of ways, generally inserting a pause into my more intense stuff and a "make no decisions, just hang on and if it's still important later it can be done later" sort of caution. I've got really good at this over the years. It's... not great, it's basically just gaslighting myself super hard and denying that anything about my perception of reality could be valid, and I think that's caused some longer term damage. But it's tended to keep me from breaking up with relationships on the spur of the moment, and it's kept me alive. Now that I'm driving I'm much, much more worried about it though. My cycle got worse the last couple years (that's why I've started pursuing all this stuff) and at the same time I spend a lot of time in a situation where a tiny body twitch can enable a suicidal impulse if I'm in a truck going 100kmph. I plan to avoid driving on my worst days, and call in sick when I can't plan, but there are some situations where I really can't avoid driving, and I've been very concerned about that. So having this intense control and planning around emotions, decisions, and driving is... well, it's a thing. Another symptom listed is "feeling out of control" and that basically sums it up, this sense that if I give do much as a millimeter then I'll just disintegrate into this raving storm. That's where the name Greenstorm comes from. Those of you who are autistic can think of it as basically being in meltdown for several days.
I can speak or not in work meetings depending on my cycle and generally do well enough in the good times, or I can prepare notes about what I'm going to say and confine myself to commenting only the things I've prepared, so I don't run off with myself in an irreparable situation.
I can go largely no-contact in relationships during the bad time, or speak only by email or text message where I have time to catch anything I'm saying. I can tell people that sometimes I need to talk through something and that the talking isn't about finding solutions, it's just about venting and may have no anchor in reality. I have some people who can accept that.
I can prepare a ton of easy to eat, make in advance foods.
If the rest of stuff was better I'd clean my house before the bad time so I don't get intensely annoyed by something being in a bad place, or the floor being crunchy.
The animals are a hard one. I know their tolerances and keep within them, but some days I've walked right up to that edge: I've yelled at the pigs and pushed them (pigs communicate by push and I haven't pushed hard, so they haven't been damaged, but still it wasn't coming from a place of communication in me but of frustration) and that was one of my big warning flags that I needed to handle this.
My sound sensitivity seems to be extra heightened during the bad times. To be honest, it may only exist at that time.
Change in appetite: check. It's the only time I really have a sweet tooth I eat a ton, then after I'm not hungry at all.
Difficulty concentrating? That explains some things. Maybe I'll hold off on messing with more specific ADHD stuff until I get this sorted; I didn't used to have these difficulties, and if this is linked then who knows what my mind will be like after.
Bad sleep is a normal part of this so I'm on track there.
Anyhow, this is mostly a list of symptoms and workarounds I've been dealing with for the last... longtime, on paper, for my reference. And it's a skeptical reminder to myself that other people maybe don't have to do so many of these things, and don't have to do them all the time.