A couple of weeks ago, after my third cry in as many days in front of my new partner, I decided it was time to have The Conversation.
He wasn’t in trouble – far from it – but it seemed only fair to explain to him why for the past few days my personality, mood and temperament had all undertaken a dramatic shift so intense that even I couldn’t relate to my own thoughts and feelings after the fact.
It was almost as if I had been temporarily possessed.
And so I sat him down, and calmly and clearly explained to him that the reason for my erratic behaviour was premenstrual syndrome, better known as PMS.
It sort of goes like this: about a week before my period is due I’ll wake up feeling tired, and within the first hour or so, something will piss me off. Just a little bit to get things started.
This escalates pretty quickly and usually by about midday I’m bubbling over with a kind of molten hot anger that absolutely must be recognised and validated by those close to me. But here’s the weird thing: most of the time I have absolutely no idea what I’m angry about. Both everything and nothing at all.
If there’s nothing immediately obvious for this anger to latch onto (which hasn’t really been the case for me since about June 2016), then I’ll mine through past memories for inspiration. Sometimes even dreams.
And if that doesn’t sate my ire, I’ll start picking fights with my nearest and dearest over something trivial, or perhaps send a Strongly Worded Email to my building management company.
If by now you’re thinking I sound like a hideous person who must be awful to be around — I want to stop you there. You see, I pride myself on being a pretty rational and fair person. I prioritise kindness and compassion in my interactions with others, always try to force myself to see the other perspective and have a habit of seeing the good in people.
I am no saint, of course, I have many (many) flaws but volatility isn’t one of them. Neither are irritability or irrationality.
And so when the fog of PMS descends, it can often feel quite otherworldly. I’ll cry a lot, feel defeated quickly and even the gentlest criticism can feel like a mortal offence. For those few days when my period is due, it feels as if I’m walking around with a few layers of skin missing: every sensation feels sharper, hotter or more pronounced – and I feel completely exposed.
It’s as if someone has dialled up the intensity of every emotion, making it both impossible to see anything clearly, or to decipher how I actually feel in the moment.
My PMS hasn’t always been this severe. In fact, for me and many of my friends at least, the symptoms have worsened with age. The research around why some experience worse symptoms than others, like many other areas of women’s medicine, is worrisomely unclear.
This makes it hard for those of us who menstruate to understand our own experiences and explain them to one another, which in turn contributes to a culture of silence around reproductive experiences, imbuing them with stigma and shame.
That we as a species have not yet evolved to a level of sophistication where we can understand the emotional and physical experiences of around half of the global population is, well… pathetic.
Not just that – it’s dangerous. You don’t have to look too far back in the history books to find tales of people being diagnosed with ‘female hysteria’, a medical condition that essentially took the vast array of natural emotional responses common to those with two XX chromosomes, and pathologised them.
And, though you may accuse me of going off course, it’s not a stretch to say that our gross inadequacy today in many areas of women’s health – as well as the pervasive societal ignorance of the diversity of experience of those of us with wombs – can be traced directly back to that time.
We’ve quite simply never done this well.
When I look back to my early teens and the paucity of information I was given about my hormonal shifts and how they would or could affect me, it’s hard not to feel frustrated. I’m sad, really, that so much self-criticism and fear in my later life could have been avoided had this been addressed more openly.
I’m not laying the blame on anyone directly here – I have a wonderful mum who is a scientist and always communicated this stuff in plain terms. But of course, even with the best of her own knowledge, she couldn’t have prepared me for my own hormonal fluctuations because every person is different.
I think about the ballistic tantrums I threw in my teens, the tears of anger I spewed at my first ever boyfriend, or the fights I had with friends that felt totally out of character and made me question the very basis of my character – and I feel pissed off.
If only I had known that it wasn’t me, or that these fogs of irrationality were a temporary experience rather than a core part of who I am, I might have saved myself a lot of time and spared myself from a lot of emotional anguish.
None of this takes into account how our emotional health can also be affected by the use of hormonal contraception. At the ripe old age of 32, rare is the friend or even acquaintance of mine that has had no issues while taking the pill. Whether that’s because it made them anxious, sad, full of rage or completely disinterested in sex, the side effects can be intense, and at times quite scary.
It’s worth mentioning here that not all PMS is created equal. Some people experience no symptoms at all while others may have something physical, with no notable fluctuation in mood. Cramps, nausea, exhaustion, sore breasts, lack of libido or spots are all common but none are definite.
And some people suffer through premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) or endometriosis on top and can have their experiences ignored or minimised as ‘women’s problems’ by medical professionals. It’s maddening.
It’s really not that hard for us to do better. We owe it to the girls, womxn, non-binary people and trans men around us to help them to understand their own experiences, so they feel less alone.
It can be so scary when you don’t understand what’s happening inside your body. It shouldn’t be left up to us as individuals to make sense of everything on our own, when we have such a wealth of experience that we could all benefit from if we only just learned to talk more openly. And listen.
In my case, my partner responded perfectly: he took it all in compassionately as I explained how it felt and what to expect, and we had a clear and honest conversation about my PMS.
What helps me is having my feelings validated, however irrational they may be – my best friend put it best when she said ‘I want everyone to hear me roar, but to have forgotten all about it by the next day’.
I wish that I could say that my partner’s response was ‘normal’, but in a world where womxn routinely have to fight hard for their pain to be taken seriously – even by medical professionals – that feels a lot like wishful thinking.
As it stands, though, it seems that anger really may be the only rational response.
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source https://metro.co.uk/2020/08/25/pms-change-behaviour-13171615/
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