My Struggle with PMDD

I used to share a lot more of my daily life online.

Over the years, my tune about this habit/practice has changed– mostly because I want my kids to grow up knowing that we enjoy life for the sake of gratitude, adventure, and connection, NOT because we want other people to *see* that we’re enjoying life. Because truly, who cares?

The second my oldest started saying “Mommy, get a picture of this!” is the moment I knew in my heart I wanted to make a change.

Don’t get me wrong. I still take a lot of pictures of my kids, but they’re for our family yearbook– for me and the kids to treasure on a personal level.

(I’m also HIGHLY anxious about their privacy and safety with the whole AI thing happening.)

Anyway, it’s ironic that as I’ve begun to really shy away from sharing personal life on the internet, I have more eyes on me than ever with the explosive growth of @paring_down and The Paring Down Podcast.

I’m SO grateful for this platform, and honestly really thrilled that no one is consuming my content with the expectation that they’ll get an insider’s look into my daily life. They’re just there to get some help decluttering their homes. YAY!

And still, I do want to occasionally share some things about my life that will either benefit other people from hearing OR might serve as an outlet for my thoughts…after all, I’m a writer and creator at heart, so sharing things with words tends to be a form of processing. 

Today’s topic is a bit of both: I want women to feel less alone in their struggle with hormonal anger, anxiety, and lethargy, AND by talking about it, I’m able to release some shame of my own.

So here we go.

I have PMDD, or Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder…essentially PMS on steroids. 

Speaking of AI, this is what the AI bot on Google says about it: PMDD is a health condition that causes severe mood swings, irritability, and depression in the week or two before a menstrual period.

I think I’ve always had this to an extent, but the birth of my children has heightened it significantly in the last 7 years. For the longest time, I chalked it up to “mom rage”-- feeling undersupported with the mental load, stressed out by overstimulating children, and generally exhausted because someone always had a middle-of-the-night catastrophe. No wonder I was irritable!

And I think some of that is really valid.

However, I also noticed that I wasn’t off my rocker ALL the time. It came in waves. One week, my extremely loud and defiant toddler’s behavior would make my entire body burn with frustration, ending with me sobbing in my room because I felt like a terrible mother for raising my voice. The emotions were big: The rage, the guilt, the despair. 

But then a week later, my son could do something super similar, and I’d be like “Welp, that’s life” and move on.

My husband suggested I start tracking exactly how I feel in a notebook for a few months…and what do you know, the results were STAGGERING.

The way my blood would boil? The way I’d feel like it was impossible to get through the day? The way I’d feel like the world was spinning out because the vent fan above the stove was left on, blasting unwanted white noise into my ringing ears?

Yeah, that would start happening exactly 14 days before my period. Then, 7 days later, my boobs would start hurting so badly that I wanted someone to chop them off. Seven days after that, my period would come. And one day later, I was an EASY BREEZY BEAUTIFUL COVER GIRL.

After talking to my doctor and running some labs, it became clear that I’m 1 in 12 women who experiences PMDD. Knowing I have this “condition” has helped a lot, just because I can repeat to myself over and over during my “bad weeks” (as I’ve come to call them): Shannon, you won’t feel this way forever. Your hormones are making this feel worse than it is.

But still, I feel frustrated with the reality of it.

How I feel in those bad weeks isn’t any less real. No matter how much I tell myself that it’s my PMDD at work, I can’t pretend that those feelings of rage or sadness or complete checked-out-of-everythingness aren’t real.

Also, I get scared about how this could affect the people I love.

Or even how people perceive me: 

Would someone say I’m not a good leader because I experience hormonal changes? (This fear arises even though these symptoms have never affected me on a professional level– they are really only triggered within the realm of personal relationships or my at-home environment.)

Would someone think I’m a bad mom 50% of the time, even though I don’t let the hormones affect how I treat my kids…it’s just an internal battle? (*Mostly*...I won’t pretend I never mess up by snapping at them or raising my voice. But I also repair and apologize with my children when I do.)

Would someone think my husband deserves better than me? (I mean…he probably does. He’s an angel on this earth.)

I’m sharing this today because too many women have the same fears. They have the same experience. And the best way to assuage shame is to call it out. To bring it to light.

We’re humans. We all have our struggles. Our shortcomings, our vices, our conditions, our predispositions.

All we can do is manage the hand we’ve been dealt the best we can. 

I’ve gone to therapy for my PMDD, and it helped a little (not a ton).

I go to God with my PMDD, and that helps a lot.

I’ve gotten blood work done to see if hormone therapy would help, but I haven’t landed on a solution that I’m entirely comfortable with.

I’ve adjusted my eating habits, but didn’t find it to make a huge difference.

I no longer have a glass of wine at night, and that has helped a lot.

I’ve increased childcare support, and that has helped a ton.

I’ve poured my heart into work that I love to keep me busy and distracted during my bad weeks, and that has helped a ton, as well.

All we can do is to do all we can do.

By the way…the PMDD is a HUGE reason I keep my home decluttered. Mitigating overstimulation has been a massive help!

I’m not really sure how to end this one, so I’ll just say this: If you have PMDD, I hope you know you’re not alone. If you don’t, I hope this helps shed some light on it. And mostly, I hope anyone reading this releases any shame that comes from simply being imperfectly human. We all are.