I’m new here

Hey all, I’ve been dealing with PMDD quite a long time now (which is pretty wack if you ask me). It took me a few years to be able to distinguish PMDD from my CPTSD which prolonged my lack of treatment. I’m currently 26 and I’ve been in therapy for 9 years. I’ve done some very amazing work in those 9 years and even more so in the last year. I see my therapist 2x week and recently upped it to 3x to push some boundaries as far as my internal walls are concerned but we keep running into an issue. Every time I’m waiting for my period or start it, every new neuropathway I have created becomes inaccessible to me. We had a conversation yesterday about my PMDD almost reinforcing a lot of the negative neuropathways leading to us going 2 steps forward and then what seems like 1 1/2 back once my PMDD kicks in 🥺. (I promise there’s more context between me and her on this, this is just to quickly summarize)

I’ve tracked my PMDD over the years but with my therapist help, in the last year, we’ve really hammered down the cycle of it and what we’ve discovered is that, sure, each cycle has some consistencies but for the most part it always manifest differently (both with timing of symptoms and which symptoms I experience). Wether it’s the physical ailment, the severity of my SI and SH ideation, the volume of paralyzing intrusive thoughts, ED problems, extreme paranoia to the point of it being impossible to leave the house/trust my therapist/lean on + trust my fiancé, and so on.

I found the right medication mix for my mental health/CPTSD around the same time I started seeing her. What I found is that this has lessened the length of the PMDD symptoms but not at all the severity. Before being medicated my symptoms would manifest 2 sometimes 3 weeks before my period…and they didn’t always go away when my period started 🥺 so not only was I dealing with my trauma hell but also hormonally…I was falling apart.

This time around, my mental health symptoms picked up 3 days before my period started and exploded the 1st two days of my period (today being the third). Last night was a nightmare. My fiancé had to take me out on a walk at 2 am because I couldn’t stop sobbing hysterically. I literally couldn’t breathe 🥺and kept experiencing small CPTSD flashbacks too.

I’ve tried oral birth control both combo (regular dose, super small dose) which I unfortunately cannot remember the exact name of and also Slynd, nuvaring, and IUD (mirena) all of which came with plenty of side effects and not a single ounce of relief for my PMDD. I’ve gone to a PCP who checked pretty much everything (including my hormones) and things were fine (minus my iron). I’ve tried nac and magnesium, I’ve tried boosting my iron, deep breathing, yoga, meditation, sleeping, staying hydrated, talking it out in therapy, and currently take hydroxyzine and gabapentin when the noise in my head becomes deafening and physically I feel like everything is buzzing.

I don’t know what else to do. I wasn’t sure what to look for in this subreddit but all I want is advice and maybe some direction as to what post to look for on here. Last night my fiancé suggested I’d check to see if there was a PMDD subreddit because of how alone I felt with this and how much I worried how others with PMDD were feeling too 🥺. I hope y’all are doing okay. Please stay safe.

Ps. Idk what tag to put this under so I put it under general. I hope that’s okay.