Living with Depression, Anxiety and PMDD

[echo73]

Hi everyone. I’m new here. I am a wife and a mother of 2 beautiful kids, ages 7 and 5. About 3 or 4 years ago, I was diagnosed with depression and severe anxiety. I hadn’t been able to sleep, I stayed up crying, I had crazy messed up thoughts going through my mind. I really thought I was going insane. And I thought if I told someone that they’d say I was an unfit mother who wasn’t mentally able to take care of her kids. But finally I got the courage to talk to my doctor. It honestly blew me away. I kept thinking to myself, how can I be depressed?? Anxiety, I understand. I’ve always had anxiety. But depressed? What did I have to be depressed about? I was healthy, had 2 healthy beautiful kids, a beautiful home and a loving family. But at the time, I was also going through a emotionally abusive relationship. I was unknowingly being being manipulated by family. Social Media and the news had my anxiety out the roof... So when I was diagnosed my dr offered me medication. I refused. (Do not go by my experiences, there’s a lot of people who need medication and do really good with it) I’ve never been one to take medicine unless it was an antibiotic or over the counter pain meds like Tylenol. I told her I wanted to try to deal with it in my own way. So I started exercising, meditating, counseling and using CBD oil. I started doing really good until last year. I started noticing mood swings here and there. Lack of concentration. Weight gain. And crazy thoughts again. I kept trying to find ways to cope with it. And then I started to see a pattern. About 2 weeks before I started my period I would go through this. My depression and anxiety got worse, irritability, over eating, lack of concentration, crazy thoughts... I was getting scared because I thought, am I getting worse? Am I starting to lose my mind? Am I going to hurt someone, my kids?? Do you know how scary it is for a mother to worry about that? I love my kids more than anything in this world. So this is when I learned about PMDD. PMDD is Premenstrual dysphoric disorder. It is a severe form of PMS that includes physical and behavioral symptoms that usually resolve with the onset of menstruation. PMDD causes extreme mood shifts that can disrupt work and damage relationships. Symptoms include extreme sadness, hopelessness, irritability, or anger, plus common PMS symptoms such as breast tenderness and bloating... Treatments include prescription drugs, physical exercise, stress management (yoga, meditation..) and behavioral therapy... A study shows that only 5% of women get diagnosed with PMDD... I’m just now learning about all of this and wanted to share it in case someone else was going through something similar.

[Dolphin14]

Thank you for sharing that. I knew hormones fluctuated and could cause symptoms but never knew there was a name for it.