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Is it PMS or is it PMDD? With Jes Fleming
187 Plays1 year ago
Do you have extreme emotional symptoms around the time of your period? You might have PMDD.
Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder is a deadly hormone-based mood disorder that has a high suicide or suicide attempt rate. Jes Fleming struggled with the condition for 17 years without a proper diagnosis. When conventional treatments made the problem worse, she set out to fix the problem herself and became a Hormone Health Coach. Her condition is now managed through lifestyle and she's helping other menstruators with the condition.
You can find Jes Fleming's programs and offerings here:
Her Website
Her LinkTree
Her Instagram
Get her Free PMDD Supplement Directory for her can't-life-without supplements for supporting your hormone health.
Also a free download: Premenstrual Symptom Mapper
The Life Detox is brought to you by Bubble & Bee Organic
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Transcript
Introduction to PMDD
00:00:00
Speaker
The following episode discusses suicidal ideation. Listener discretion is advised.
00:00:11
Speaker
Free menstrual dysphoric disorder. For short, PMDD is a life-threatening mood disorder associated with the menstrual cycle. As someone with the disorder myself, I can tell you that the physical and emotional symptoms of PMDD are harrowing.
Jess Fleming's PMDD Journey
00:00:27
Speaker
Today we're speaking with Jess Fleming, who suffers with PMDD herself and has dedicated her life to helping others with the disorder as an integrative menstrual health coach.
00:00:38
Speaker
She'll tell us how this disorder impacted her life in dramatic ways, how she was written off by the medical community, and how we can tell the difference between PMDD and PMS. I'm Stephanie Greenwood and this is The Life Detox.
00:01:07
Speaker
Jess had been struggling for many years. Living with these really severe symptoms for two decades almost, and of course my physicians and my gynecologists had said, oh, this is just bad PMS, but it was really debilitating. It was 14 or more days of the month that I was experiencing severe psychological and physical symptoms that really just didn't
00:01:30
Speaker
feel like just PMS. I couldn't keep a job. I couldn't maintain healthy relationships. I had some very disturbing coping mechanisms, including self-harm during those times. And it was just all consuming. I couldn't really move forward in my life. When I got this diagnosis, I was 27, but all before that, I'm watching my friends go onto their doctorate degrees and get married and have children. And I just kind of was sitting back like,
00:01:56
Speaker
What is wrong with me? Why can't I move forward in my life? Well, then it turns out because I was dealing with a severe reproductive mood disorder that had been misdiagnosed and undiagnosed for
Challenges with Standard Treatments
00:02:07
Speaker
many years. She turned to her doctor for help. I took the medication route and at times it made my symptoms so much worse. And then I was left feeling like, well, I guess I'm just going to die.
00:02:18
Speaker
because I can't live with these symptoms. It's so severe. The suicidal ideation can be so extreme that you can really get to a hopeless place. I did not think I would survive this. I had gone to physicians, gone to physicians, taken the SSRIs, taken the psychotics, taken various different birth controls, and at one point I was put on a birth control that exacerbated my symptoms to the point
00:02:50
Speaker
According to current research, it's thought that PMDD may be the body's adverse reaction to its own progesterone.
00:02:58
Speaker
Many women are put on birth control in an attempt to control their PMDD symptoms. However, most birth controls contain synthetic forms of progesterone and can make PMDD symptoms worse. Stay on it for three months and it will work itself out. Two months into that, I had lost everything. My job, my housing, my relationship, I burned my life down because of the adverse reaction to the medication that was supposed to
Role of Support and Self-awareness
00:03:24
Speaker
be helping me.
00:03:24
Speaker
And no one told me, hey, we want this to help you. Obviously it's why we're giving it to you, but it could cause effects that we're not hoping for. And so monitor for, during and after what your symptom presentation is, the severity, let's have communication with your family members, you know, the closest people to you to help you navigate this. Because when you're in it, you really don't have the self-awareness of what's happening.
00:03:47
Speaker
And it's easier for someone to remind you, like, hey, who started the medication? Could this have something to do with the symptom? Because you can be so low. It can take you to such a point of despair that you're not even cognitively functioning and able to deduce, like, how did I get here? What could possibly be impacting the severity of this symptom right in this moment when I quit my job and left my partner? And all these behaviors are playing out.
Alternative PMDD Management Strategies
00:04:14
Speaker
Through her own experience, research, and training as an integrative health coach, she was able to get control of her PMDD and manage it with a complementary approach. Does that mean I don't experience symptoms every month? No. Some months are still really hard, but it's nothing like...
00:04:34
Speaker
it used to be and I think that education is a major component to that. There are so many ways and that's what I really want people to think of when they come into contact with any of my work or when they're evaluating the situation at all because a lot of times we get pigeonholed into thinking that
00:04:52
Speaker
This is the only way or these are the only options. And a lot of times that happens, you know, as we're going through the allopathic route, if we're obviously feeling bad, seeking out support from physicians, we're told here are the two primary treatment options for these symptoms, whether it be PMS and PMTD, and those are antidepressants, specifically SSRIs or hormonal contraception of some form.
00:05:17
Speaker
And those can be very helpful in life-saving to many people, but they are not the only options and they also come with risks that we need to weigh and monitor as we move into whatever treatment protocol we decide to move forward with. We don't need to get really
00:05:33
Speaker
dogmatic and be like, oh we have to do it this way or we have to do it this way or this is good or this is bad. It's so bio-individual and I know people who have taken the opposite route, gone a natural route and then felt like, oh well I can't take medication because that's bad and so I'm out of options in this realm and it's like we don't need to be so rigid here. We can like do some tests, we can talk about it, we can see which approach you want to take and there are always more options beyond that.
Impact of Trauma on PMDD
00:05:59
Speaker
I wish I would have heard that.
00:06:01
Speaker
Childhood trauma also seems to play a role in the development of the disorder. There is some research and some statistics floating around out there saying that if you have a history of trauma, specifically childhood trauma, that you're 6.7 times more likely to experience severe premenstrual symptoms, whether that be PMTD or a combination of conditions or symptoms, but that's a huge, huge statistic there. And there is something that happens too with trauma where
00:06:31
Speaker
kind of get into a trauma cycle. It's like self-perpetuating because you have had this experience that really rocked your world and you don't really know how to move forward. We don't get support for that and even sometimes when we do, it just kind of leads to perpetuating more trauma. And if you're having these symptoms as well, that's something that I talk about a lot with my clients is like, there's trauma before you menstruate.
00:06:53
Speaker
And then there's trauma that comes through menstruating and having really severe psychological symptoms or even physical symptoms that then like perpetuate a cycle and mindset around the experience of having a cycle. So it's pretty multifaceted there and nuanced with how we want to take an approach to that, but just having the awareness of like, yes, we are more at risk if we have a family history of severe premenstrual symptoms, but that doesn't necessarily mean like it's going to happen.
00:07:22
Speaker
As someone with PMDD myself, I can say that some days you wake up and you know it's going to be a PMDD day. Your brain tells you a different story about who you are, your worth, and the people around you. Past events are interpreted in a very negative light and the future seems grim. PMDD making you feel like two different people and causing a lot of impulsive behaviors and confusion and trauma.
00:07:51
Speaker
building up, it really calls into question like who you are, what's true, what's not true. And I think this is a dynamic that anyone who is experiencing disorder type symptoms is going to encounter.
Mindset and Psychological Effects of PMDD
00:08:05
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And I don't feel like
00:08:06
Speaker
People are really talking about this on a broader scale. I get this question all the time. Like, what do I believe? How do I trust my intuition? There are these two versions of myself. And I think first just like having some education around how this disorder impacts you psychologically and that it's not who you are. These thoughts, these feelings, these emotions, it's not who you are.
00:08:28
Speaker
It's some things that you're experiencing and there's some deep work that we need to do there. It's not as easy as me just saying that. But then something else that PMDD does because of this dynamic is it strips away people's self-esteem and their concept of themselves.
00:08:43
Speaker
And so again, some education and support there around what does that really mean and what can we do to understand self-esteem, build self-esteem, and kind of create a more healthy dynamic around the experiences that we have had in the past and how we're going to move forward with that in the future. It really, it's like that's where the coaching aspect comes in and you can really start to change slowly. It's not a quick fix. These are really deep
00:09:09
Speaker
discussion. You can get leverage there and you can start to change that and I think that's where it's also really helpful to work with someone who has gone through it because I've been in going through this for like I said you know 17 years undiagnosed, misdiagnosed and that whole time I never had a practitioner who understood what I was saying and I think that's where like we can have this conversation deeply because I've also gone through it yes I'm a practitioner but like
00:09:43
Speaker
After the break, Jess will give us some practical advice for deciphering between the cognitive distortions of PMDD and intuition.
00:09:59
Speaker
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00:10:24
Speaker
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Practical Tips for Managing PMDD
00:10:28
Speaker
That's bubbleandb.com.
00:10:41
Speaker
What are some of the practical things that we can do to start trusting our intuition and figuring out who we are? One of the things is just looking at your values. Building integrity is a core concept of self-esteem. And what happens with PMDD is that we act out of our values, which is acting out of integrity. And that's not coming in a conscious way.
00:11:06
Speaker
but more in unconscious way. So getting really clear and sitting down and spending some time reflecting on what your core values are and then looking at your life moving forward and trying to match up your behavior where you can with those values. And that just starts building a practice where you're not reacting as much as you're responding because you've done some of that work, laid some groundwork of like, what are we even talking about here?
00:11:32
Speaker
Because these are kind of nebulous ideas, right? This is kind of like the philosophical side of dealing with PMDD. But something else that I think is really important to talk about is like basic foundations. Like you're not going to be able to manage your emotions if your blood sugar is dysregulated, if you haven't slept, if you are stressed and your adrenals are shot and you're just surviving.
00:11:52
Speaker
You can't expect like, okay, now I'm going to be a conscious individual who's making these decisions based on all of this evaluation. That's like a too advanced for where a lot of us currently are just in survival mode. And so it seems more adjacent than totally connected. It is totally connected. Like you have to support your physiology and biology to feel better so that you're in a better headspace to actually feel better on a higher level of consciousness.
Awareness and Education on PMDD
00:12:20
Speaker
How important is PMDD awareness? Not going to come off as a drama queen here too much, but like this is a life or death situation for a lot of us. The suicide rate, attempt rate is 30%, so that 30% of people experiencing this disorder are attempting suicide. That is extremely high. It's
00:12:42
Speaker
It is. The statistic is one in 20 people are who are menstruating, experiencing PMDD symptoms, whether it be PMDD or there's other factors that can lead into that, but that severe psychological symptom pattern. And it's not just about the individual. Like, yes, we don't want people losing their lives to this, but it impacts every person that comes in contact with that individual, their partners, their children, the people that they work with, their family, their friends. I mean, the reverberation of this is huge.
00:13:11
Speaker
And 90% of people as the statistic around that one in 20, 90% are misdiagnosed or
00:13:19
Speaker
or undiagnosed. So I think the one in 20 is grossly underestimating the reality here. The frustrating part to me with this is that there are so many things like we said, there are so many things that you can do to improve your experience. Now, is there a cure for mood disorders? No, not that we know of. But does that mean that you can't drastically reduce and learn how to better manage these symptoms and improve your quality of life?
00:13:45
Speaker
Absolutely. And so to be suffering to the degree that I did or, you know, you did for how long we did, it's just unacceptable in my opinion, like completely unacceptable. And so devastating that that is happening to people, you know, all over the world. Just every day, these symptoms are stealing their life away from them.
00:14:09
Speaker
When somebody hires you as a health coach, how does that work? They work with you online? Do you have weekly check-ins? Yeah, so I have a variety of services that I offer. I think the foundational part of changing PMDD is getting some education. So I have a course called PMDD Rehab, which is the educational component of my protocol that I work with coaching clients in. My model is called the seven core areas of hormone
00:14:34
Speaker
health. So we go through seven major lifestyle areas that need to be addressed. You need some background education through a PMDD and hormone lens.
00:14:43
Speaker
to approach those and I'm teaching skills and tools for management as well. There's an entire module on just, you know, this is everything we didn't learn about the biology of being a female, right? Like we need some understanding of what are the four phases of the menstrual cycle? What does that even mean? What's normal? What's falling outside of normal ranges? And what can we expect as we move through the reproductive continuum? So all of that is part of a course.
00:15:10
Speaker
And then I work with people one to one as well, either in one month containers or three month containers. I have a group program that I run sometimes. I also do functional lab testing for people if you're wanting to dive into the physiology and biology that's perpetuating some of these symptoms to personalize the approach. Yeah, so tons of options, workbooks, group support calls, like I'm really trying to
00:15:39
Speaker
help as many people as I can with this because like we said it is life or death and I have been there. I have been at the lowest of low points. Do you see any common threads in the labs that you run for your clients? So currently I'm really deep into hair tissue mineral analysis which is looking at mineral ratios, metabolic types,
00:15:58
Speaker
mineral status. And there is a surprising theme, just some mineral imbalances and mineral ratios, which are not surprising to see when we're looking at metabolic types and how metabolic types impact your symptom presentation and even your behaviors and some like what seems to be personality traits like we talked about, but really are just behaviors and ways that that symptom is making you seem as a person.
00:16:24
Speaker
Minerals create enzymes, enzymes create hormones, hormones impact premenstrual symptoms. So looking at that foundational level of just what is going on there and how can we support that? It's a lot more complicated than just looking and saying, okay, you're low on calcium, so we need more calcium.
00:16:40
Speaker
That's not really how it works. There's a lot more nuance to that and looking at detox pathways and like I said, those foundations zooming out and taking that approach. But yes, there are some patterns of deficiency that are showing up in my
00:16:56
Speaker
personal client base. I have PCOS as well as PMDD. Do you see an overlap in PCOS and PMDD? I wouldn't say every person. I have a lot of clients who have endo and are dealing with these symptoms. PCOS and are dealing with these symptoms. It's very bio individual and so that's why I really like the approach that I'm taking, the approach that I'm taking now and why I'm so committed and enthusiastic about it because no one ever took this approach with
00:17:22
Speaker
as I was going through this alone. No, it was just a blanket statement of, you know, this medication or this medication? Where's the data? What's actually happening in my body? Being in a toxic relationship, I mean, the stress is so...
Need for Personalized Treatments
00:17:36
Speaker
unavoidable. That's taxing every body system. That's going to make your symptoms way worse. Well, and so often too, like the advice of, well, improve your sleep or, you know, reduce your stress. It's like, okay, that's great. But like, how do I actually do that? And that's where, you know, health coaching bridges the gap where it's not your physician's job to educate you on your biology. It's not your physician's job to teach you specific coping mechanisms and skills and tools for that. Like,
00:18:05
Speaker
Unfortunately, you know, they're working within their scope and if you need support on like, okay, how do I actually do that? That's where health coaching comes in and help, you know, talks you through and helps you build a plan that's going to work for you and get to point A to point from point A to point B rather than just being like,
00:18:21
Speaker
Okay, we'll just sleep better. Great. Thanks for that advice. Yeah. Really handy. Yeah. And then like, oh, well, you're having sleep problems. Here's some, you know, drugs for the sleep. And then you're not really getting restful sleep. You're just getting medication sleep.
00:18:38
Speaker
Anyway, one thing that also the conventional route is very linear. When you're taking an antidepressant, you're on that antidepressant and it's really hard to go off and on an antidepressant. Like you said, they can be life-saving and I'm not anti-antidepressant.
00:18:57
Speaker
But 4 p.m. DD for someone like me, I just need some help three to five days out of the month. I don't need to be on antidepressants all the time because I'm not depressed all the time. I just have a few days and there's not treatment options out there that are like, oh, yeah, you can just take this pill for a couple of days and it'll get you through. It's all very
00:19:17
Speaker
masculine dare I say that these treatment options are very masculine they're not cyclical so I think that it's something that pharmacology should look at and say can we develop something that is more cyclical that is more female but that's something that health coaching addresses and let's support our body so that our body can achieve a state of homeostasis.
00:19:39
Speaker
And I mean, I think unfortunately with the mindset, like we can do an entire talk on mindset, right? And how mindset is impacting what you think is possible for you or what you're capable of, which comes down to self-esteem again. But there are these mindsets in the PMDD community that I see a lot where, well, I'll help to change everything in my entire life. And a lot of the clients that come to work with me, they're really nervous because they're like,
00:20:02
Speaker
I need to like all my attention on this course and I have to take notes and I have to be sitting down and I have to be ready to change all of these core areas, every aspect of my life. And the reality is that like, no, that is not true. And that's a limiting mindset that's holding you back from making any change.
00:20:18
Speaker
because something that happens over and over and over as I do follow ups with these clients is they're like, wow, I've been able to see symptom reduction and feel better and I didn't have to change everything. I made small changes and I had some education and understanding of what was happening in my body, which changed my mindset.
00:20:36
Speaker
around the experience, which gave me more energy to help change other things. It's kind of this really crazy snowball effect that really comes, I think, foundationally from the education. But there's so much mindset that holds people back from feeling better. I mean, it are tons of mindsets, right? And that's fine. We've all been there. I just challenge people to question what they're thinking because your thoughts are not reality.
00:21:02
Speaker
all the time and how many times have we in PMDD had thoughts terrible thoughts that aren't true and we believed them and how did that play out you know we're spiraling then.
00:21:13
Speaker
And so getting those tools to work on mindset and having support and having someone there sitting with you through it and being like, is that really true? Are there other options? Have you really tried everything? Like just being a sounding board, a gentle sounding board for your experience can be so huge. And that's not even getting to actually noticing the symptoms. Like they're all of these little very powerful symphonies that can happen along the way that change your experience of the condition.
Viewing PMDD Symptoms as Signals
00:21:43
Speaker
Okay, so I did an episode with a chronic pain specialist. And one of the ways that she works with mindset in treating chronic pain is to embrace the pain and to listen to it. To really say, what are you trying to tell me? So many people find that when they listen to their pain, the pain resolves.
00:22:03
Speaker
Did you take that approach at all with PMDD? Not embrace it in the way of, let's listen to these bad thoughts that I'm having, but embracing PMDD as something like, okay, it's something that I have. Let's lean into it. What is this mood disorder trying to tell me that I need to change about my life or what I need to do to take care of myself better?
00:22:26
Speaker
Absolutely. I love that question, Stephanie. And that's so true. And that's something that, you know, hearing that you might feel some resistance to it because it's uncomfortable to turn towards something that maybe is destroying your life. But there is a whole other spiritual realm of the menstrual cycle and menstrual cycle history that is deeply entrenched in that kind of ideology of like,
00:22:54
Speaker
This is a cyclical process that we're moving through. Different parts of the cycle are aligned with different types of behavior and energy for certain reasons that are biological. And when that's out of sync, the best way to say this, I think, is that your symptoms are signs. It's an SOS from your body telling you something.
00:23:17
Speaker
If you're having really swollen and tender and sore breasts, to me that points me to like seven different situations happening in different body systems that we need to look at and I need to ask you questions around and we might need to make some changes too to reduce that, right? So they really are signs and taking that approach, just adding curiosity to a problem. What is this teaching me?
00:23:39
Speaker
can start to shift that mindset. I think it's hard to do that alone because you don't have the education piece and you're just kind of like navigating. That doesn't mean you can't make massive strides. But I think, again, having support going through that can be really helpful because it's a painful to go down that route of examination with yourself and look at how PMTD has negatively impacted your life and how it's made you behave and who is hurt.
00:24:04
Speaker
That's a hard thing to do alone and hold space for alone and can be another stressor.
Cultural Stigma and Menstruation Appreciation
00:24:10
Speaker
And it makes us not embrace our periods because there's so much of a culture of putting us on birth control to have us not have periods and looking at periods as an inconvenience instead of embracing the cyclical nature about our bodies. And PMDD makes that really hard to do because
00:24:30
Speaker
You feel like this monster is coming along every few weeks. And so embracing that can be quite terrifying. But like I said, having a coach that understands and that can help you reframe that experience can be helpful. And you may even be able to learn to love having your period. I had very irregular periods throughout my 20s and 30s even. And not until my late 30s did I actually start
00:24:57
Speaker
like having regular periods. And I've supported my body enough that I'm actually having a regular period. So it's kind of a badge of honor for me. It's a mindset of we do need to embrace our cyclical natures. I love that. It's so true. And I completely agree. I mean, we have generations and generations and all the way back through history of weird stigma and shame around menstruation. But it's taking new forms now. I think it represents a lack of education.
00:25:26
Speaker
because if you understand what the menstrual cycle is, and what it's doing, and the fact that it is, you know, in simple terms, a report card of your overall health and vitality, and you start to learn like all of these magical things your body does and how that
00:25:41
Speaker
cervical fluid that you produce throughout the month, which is gross and disgusting and we should be ashamed of as kind of the vibe that we get growing up is actually like magical and incredible and protects you and does all of these cool, crazy things and changes throughout the cycle. When you start to get curious and you start to get kind of excited because you're like, wow, my body is actually amazing and incredible and really trying to help me not destroy my life, which is what it feels like in that victim mentality mindset.
00:26:11
Speaker
then you again are shifting your frame of reference and your mindset around the entire cycle. And I think if we had education on our biology growing up, maybe there would be more respect for the cycle and less stigma around the whole thing in general.
00:26:27
Speaker
Are there any final words that you want listeners to know? Yeah, I mean, just know that you're not alone. If you're dealing with these severe symptoms, you're not alone. That it's common, but that doesn't mean that it's normal and that you just have to keep white knuckling it through your cycle each month. There are so many.
00:26:43
Speaker
small and big things that you can do to change your experience. And like we said before, there are so many options for approaching those symptoms. So I hope that you come out of this episode feeling a little bit more hopeful, which is really the truth around PMDD.
Seeking Help and Support
00:27:00
Speaker
You can't change it.
00:27:01
Speaker
If you or someone you know is struggling with PMDD, it's so important to get help. You can improve the condition and your life. To work with Jess Fleming, you can find her on Instagram as hermoodmentor, to which I've linked in the show notes.
00:27:20
Speaker
Trauma and PMDD are heavily linked, so trauma recovery is an important part of treating the condition. And of course, if you are in an abusive relationship or have abusive people in your life, this will only exacerbate the imbalances in your body and your symptoms. So have a talk with yourself, as you might need a life detox.
00:27:55
Speaker
The Life Detox is produced by me, Stephanie Greenwood, and brought to you by Bubble and Be Organic. The views and opinions expressed are the speakers' own and do not necessarily represent those of myself or my company. Material and information presented here is for general information purposes only and is not medical advice. Being a guest on this show does not imply endorsement of Greenplay LLC or any of its projects. Stay well, friends.