What PMDD and Perimenopause Really Feel Like: My Honest Story (The Overbearing Symptoms & Sadness That No One Understands)

For around five years now, I believe I’ve been suffering from perimenopause.  The symptoms started when I was 35 years old, and I’d not even heard of perimenopause before.  

It all made sense when someone told me about it, and that night, I read up on the symptoms.  I literally had around 20 of the symptoms, and it explained what was happening to me emotionally and physically…

From my breasts that felt like punchbags black and blue, full of bruises for around 10 days a month before my period (making every step on the treadmill I loved so much at the gym excruciating that I could no longer run during this timeframe before my period)…  through to the irritability, mood swings, eye headaches and aura migraines that had become a monthly tradition for my premenstrual body.

Even at just 35 years old, I had already started the night sweats. Just occasionally at that point, but over the next five years, to where we are today, they would drastically increase in severity and the number of nights they occurred, that I now soak through the sheets, the duvet, and sometimes pillow, and wake up in the middle of the night feeling like a tap is turned on and running on me.

Oh, and to top it off, I usually can’t fall back to sleep and lie there tossing and turning, trying for hours, only to be an overtired, grumpy and even more irritable mess in the morning with extra brain fog that day!

On walks, in the winter, I find myself overcome with heat and have, on multiple occasions, stripped off my coat, hat, scarf and jumper, down to my t-shirt to cool down, walking along probably looking bonkers, but it’s like someone has quite literally turned up my thermostat and it comes on so quickly.  Oh, the joys.

Then there’s the crashing fatigue, which is the best way to describe it.  I literally crash.  With fatigue.  Out of nowhere.  Usually around 3pm or 4pm in the afternoon.  It hits me, out of nowhere, it just hits me. I have no energy. It’s gone.  It just disappears, like magic.  Even though half an hour ago I was fine. 

So, it takes me by surprise.  I need to lie down.  I feel drained. Zapped. Like someone has suddenly removed all the energy from all my bones and muscles, and they don’t want to do anything anymore.  I’m not sleepy tired.  Just energy tired.

Irritable.

Moody.

Spotty.

Backache.

Bloated.

Insomnia.

Oh, and the hunger.

Constantly hungry for the last few days before I come on.  Nothing will fill me up.  Ravenous. And not for good food either.  Arg! Why won’t anything fill me up?  I just cannot get satiated.

But then, more recently, I have learned of PMDD, and again, the symptoms are uncanny to what I have been experiencing. 

Upon reading them, I believe I have always had PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder), but now, with perimenopause kicking in, the symptoms have ramped up 100-fold and are too distinct to ignore.

While I have had a trying few years with estrangement, bereavement, a stressful legal situation and a deeply scary moment that shook my world, I have also been contending with a monthly onslaught of hormone-induced emotions, making me feel like I’m bipolar, or literally losing my mind. 

Not only can my emotions vary wildly from day to day, but sometimes it happens within the same day.

I’ll go from happy to hopelessly depressed in the blink of an eye.  Motivated and on fire, full of ideas and inspiration, to crying because nothing is right in my life. 

I’ve quite literally become a crybaby.  I never used to cry, well, very rarely at all.  Now I cry every month.  Often multiple times. Sometimes I can’t turn it off, and I cry uncontrollably.

I feel the most unimaginable loneliness and sadness.  I feel like no one likes me.  I feel so lonely, even with my husband and children there. I feel so sad.  So unbelievably sad.  I can’t begin to explain the sadness inside.  

Empty, hollow, miserable.  

Down, dark, unbearable. 

Wondering, what even is the point?

One minute I’m fine, the next minute I’m not. And sometimes I’m really not.  

A dark shadow takes over my brain and my thoughts.  I know it’s not real.  I’m sure it’s just the time of the month.  

But how can I be sure? It feels so real. 

It’s my brain, my thoughts.  What if it is real this time?  

What if this really is me and my thoughts?  What if I am hopelessly depressed?  Doomed to feel this way forever?  

I can’t switch it off.  It won’t go away.  My brain is heavy.  I’m tired.  Tired of it all.

What if this is really me and my true thoughts?

But they’re not.  They’re not really me. I just don’t know it at the time.

I’m not going crazy.  My thoughts, somehow, are not always my own.  Even though they are my own. It’s an impossible thing to imagine, for most people, who don’t experience this and can’t possibly even begin to understand.  

I know I’m not going crazy and I know it’s not really me, because as soon as my period starts, the symptoms, and by that I mean all of the above, disappear, usually immediately, on the first day of my period, sometimes by day two. 

Again, like magic. Poof.  They’ve gone.  I’m normal again.

I’m back to myself.  My body doesn’t hurt.  My head doesn’t hurt.  I feel normal.  I’m not teary. I’m productive and motivated. I feel happy.  I feel balanced.  I can sleep.  I feel like a fool for the way my emotions were the week before. For believing them.  For thinking they were real.

It’s insane.  Quite literally insane.  And all while carrying on like normal. Working full time.  Being a mum.  Going out into the world. Pretending to the outside world that nothing is wrong.  Carrying on as best as possible, as though nothing is happening. Only my husband sees the symptoms.

And sometimes I get all the symptoms.  Sometimes a few.  Sometimes for three days.  Sometimes a week.  The worst has been a full two weeks. And, very rarely, the very rare exception, there have been none at all.

Totally unpredictable. What a rollercoaster.

Every,

Single,

Month.

I should have known.  I should have been prepared.  But no one told me about perimenopause.  I never even knew it was a thing.  I was just thrown into it.  But I should have known I wasn’t going to have a peaceful menopause, at least…  

My body, I like to say, is allergic to hormones.  I already knew that.  I knew it from what I thought was my PMS (premenstrual syndrome), but I’m sure, for me, is PMDD.  And I already knew it from the hyperemesis gravidarum I suffered from in both my pregnancies.  My body hates hormones and likes to let me know it.

This isn’t going to be an easy ride.

But why?  Why, Mother Nature? What is the purpose? It makes me wonder, though, why does it have to be like this?  To teach us better resilience, better strength?  Or just a pointless biological predicament that we have to endure. 

For those who sail through each month and menopause with ease, you are lucky.

But, if you’re going through it too… I feel for you. We’re going to get through it.  Through to the other side.

Luckily, through this monthly chaos that consumes me, I have the unwavering support of my husband, who, although he can’t ever truly understand how it feels, has the most incredible patience and understanding with me every single month.  Without him, I don’t know what I’d do.

Before you go…

Do you suffer from heavy periods? Perhaps my article How to Stop or Manage Heavy Periods Naturally will be helpful.