PMS is normal, right?
Just something that happens. We can’t help it and it’s just a bit of a lottery who has it and who doesn’t and how hard it hits us each month.
That is what I thought.
And it’s such dangerous thinking. And totally and utterly untrue.
Now before you give me up as a raving mad woman, let me go back to the beginning. It all started after the birth of my son.
Part of the unfortunate part of having a baby, among many things that motherhood seemed to be costing me, having more and more debilitating premenstrual symptoms was another tick on the list of this new excruciatingly difficult existence.
But this wasn’t anything like what I had experienced before motherhood. The worst depression for the 7–10 days before I was due to come on my period, coupled with PTSD like anger outbursts, OCD, unexplained rashes, chest pains, insomnia, hypersomnia, ruminating thoughts, brain fog, memory loss, suicidal ideation, social anxiety, a complete and utter loss of motivation, joy or confidence to face the day.
I became a shell of the woman I had been before motherhood.
And I know that’s a common rhetoric “Oh, you’re never the same and your priorities change after kids.”
No one said anything about completely losing the ability to function for half the month 2 years in.
Back and forth to 7 doctors, I was repeatedly told I needed to not put so much pressure on myself as a new mum, prescribed hormonal pills, antidepressants and therapy.
But nothing worked. Blood tests always came back normal. I was discharged from therapy.
Life had become a disaster zone. Like thimbles of water on a blazing house fire, the fabric of my entire being was effortlessly attacked from every angle with short bursts of temporary relief.
Despite a lifetime of overachieving, I had to leave my teaching job, my friendships were disappearing month on month as I hid under the covers swallowed by the guilt, shame and fear of myself, my body and my life.
No one prepares you enough for motherhood. And no one prepares you for PMDD.
What is PMDD? I didn’t know either.
Even for the 3 years I had it. It was actually my mum that found the condition on the NHS website. Not one GP mentioned it to me. It’s completely under the radar.
PMDD — premenstrual dysphoric syndrome could go down in an appointment as ‘severe PMS’, but anyone who has had it (and especially if they still do) will shake to the core if PMS is compared to PMDD. PMS on steroids you may get away with.
I clearly remember the conversation I had with mum when she sent me the link. YES!! I’m not mad! This is what I’ve got. Eureka!
Skipping and euphorically dancing back to the GP I was fuelled with hope of a diagnosis and more importantly a solution. A fix. For I was well and truly broken.
But this jubilation was short lived — when I didn’t even qualify for the tests for my own illness. I was sent away with 3 months of cycles to track, 3 war zones to enter, 3 hurricanes to weather before I could be considered for a diagnosis.
What if I don’t make 3 cycles? I still feel the heartbreak, not just for me but for all the other women who hear that news. It hit me even harder, when he mentioned that he would see if anyone was “interested” in PMDD as it didn’t sit neatly in gynaecology or mental health. Interested? What?!
How is it that women make up half the population, PMS affects a whopping 90% of us and 5.5 % of us (that we know) cannot function because of it (PMDD), and there is no women’s health department to address this?
PMDD is the silent epidemic facing 1 in 20 women of menstrual age (when I say “women” please understand that it also affects non cis-gender and transgender people). That’s nearly one million women in the UK alone. And the statistics are frightening. 30% of women who have it attempt their own life (that we know) and guess how many go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed?
90 flipping percent .
When I unravelled my long painful story to the gynaecologist, she looked very uncomfortable, unsure and confused, offering me a chemical menopause with the logical explanation of ‘if your cycles are the problem then we need to stop them.’ Seems to make so much sense right? I almost bought it. But actually this is one of the many reasons why women are being let down and bearing the brunt of a broken medical approach to women’s health.
Exclaiming “women’s health is just one of those topics in science that’s under researched” and “try anything, it won’t do any harm” in response to the fruits of my frantic googling, the saviour image of my physician shattered.
Walking out of the appointment with unfathomable rage was the turning point of my PMDD journey.
That anger has served me well. It fuelled my healing journey like no other.
I realised I had to be the one to solve this, and solve it I did.
I voraciously dived into books journals blogs on hormones, endocrinology, stress management, bodily functions, nutrition .. etc like never before. Left without a job to go to, at least I had the time to swim in a sea of information before me, connecting the dots about what was going on in my body and most importantly why.
Why had this happened to me?
If I could answer that I could make sure it wouldn’t happen again. And the information I discovered was surprisingly effective.
Within 1 month my depression had gone. Within 2 months I was able to work throughout the month. By month 3 I had no symptoms, not even PMS or cramping. My motivation was only to get my energy, health and spirit back but I learnt so much about hormones.
The werewolf inducing monster. Gone. PMDD, the condition with “no cure”.
And it made me realise how flawed the medical approach is. The gaping holes in what we are told by the people we entrust with our health and give our power to.
So what did I do? Everyone asks me this.
Firstly let’s break down what is going on with the body. The menstrual cycle mostly relies on 5 main hormones oestrogen, progesterone, testosterone, LH and FSH. These hormones (not the synthetic ones in the pill), work with the brain to keep the body safe, functioning and balanced.
Hormones come in tiers. Tier 1 being insulin and cortisol — our life saving, survival hormones. And the ones for a healthy menstrual cycle are tier 4 — the last ones to be made and the first ones to stop being produced if tier 1 hormones are stealing the show.
So it was ridiculous for any gynaecologist to say that if there’s a problem with my menstrual cycle it must be the ovaries fault! Actually it’s way more likely to be a tier 1 hormone issue.
So what affects tier 1 hormones? Stress, diet, exercise, sleep, environmental toxins…. etc. And which organs are we really looking at for this? The brain, the liver, the gut, the adrenals etc. And anyway.. we are more than the sum of our parts!
And what questions were not asked? Anything pertaining to my lifestyle that was no doubt, like layers of an onion were the stacking factors to this debilitating condition. When I addressed the tier 1 hormones holistically, then all the problems I was experiencing disappeared. Even period pain. Completely gone.
The gynaecologist I saw in a follow up exclaimed that it wasn’t her role to advise lifestyle changes. Why not? Surely that makes more sense than shutting down communication between my brain and one of my vitals?
Secondly, I prepared physically and mentally for appointments. I researched the symptoms I was experiencing, matched to the possible root causes and then tests that would be needed to find out if I had any of these underlying issues. I researched the limitations of the tests available on the NHS and where I would need to dig deeper for answers or go private.
Essentially I did the investigative work in my own body before the appointment and made it easy for the doctors, because how much can they really know about all of this in 15 minutes?
Lastly, I used NLP and hypnotherapy, which transformed my ability to manifest as the real unfiltered version of me that had been suffocated for too long by the soul destroying stories PMDD was fuelling in my head.
And then I realised I wasn’t broken.
I was working so well that my body was warning me. What would have happened if I’d have continued putting pressure on my liver ruining my gut microbiome with the anti-depressants, hormonal pills and not learning how to manage my stress? Hashimoto? Crohn’s? Not just that. It released me of habits, relationships and beliefs that were damaging me.
The danger of the way women are being told to mask their symptoms, just get on with their hormonal imbalance and come at PMS/PMDD as if our bodies are defective is robbing them of their sanity, health and happiness.
If only we were told that being a woman gives us a unique life saving chance to be warned of threats to our being and by listening to our magical bodies we can have the opportunity to address parts of our life that are not serving us.
There needs to be an educational revolution about women’s health. No one should ever go through what I went through. Never mind the millions of women out there still blaming themselves and feeling broken in the dark.
The medical practitioners were amazed in my follow ups, not just about my recovery but the amount of knowledge I’d acquired and talked to me on equal footing, saying that I was actually educating them on some of the issues. At best they would take notes and references for their future reading.
I was no longer as dismissed or unheard. My new knowledge was my armour and my power.
Disappointingly, they didn’t share my energy to change the world view on women’s bodies and menstrual cycles. Interested, intrigued and moderately supportive. One saying he was looking forward to my blog. Well here it is. But that's not all.
Women deserve better than that. We deserve a revolution in the way the female body is viewed from the inadequate sex ed classes to the way our work schedule are organised with no regard to our 28 day (av) cycle.
90% of the female menstruating population needlessly suffering in a way that permeates every corner of their lives on the deepest level is an atrocity.
And who is fighting for them? Fighting for the women who have lost their voices and who are literally in the depths of despair. You will find that many those who have written books around period health to raise awareness are also those who have suffered.
Of all the women I speak to and my clients I help, what stings the most is the guilt and the isolation. Most blame themselves for the things they do with PMDD hits. They are suffering often in silence and alone. But it’s not their fault. There are too many things working against them disguised as ‘safe’ or ‘normal.’
‘Normal’ goes out the window when looking at these statistics.
By definition if the majority of the population is ‘normal’ but the majority has PMS to some degree then it goes to say that ‘normal’ living in modern times means having less than optimal health. Yes. The majority of us women need to give our bodies some attention. But what?
Like many of the interventions we are given — a helpline when you’re too depressed to speak, books when you have brain fog can be completely inaccessible.
This was when I realised that my secondary teaching career and years of suffering didn’t have to go to waste. More importantly my experience could be turned into a positive.
If there was anything I knew how to do, it was making difficult concepts fun and easy to digest.
I retrained as a hypnotherapist, nutritional health coach and Women's Health Practitioner (Institute of Menstrual Health) and founded an online wellness company - Gemma Clegg Ltd (not the most imaginative name I know!). I selected my team of a nutritional therapist and naturopathic health coach with utmost care - I wanted women who were equally passionate about delivering the best service possible to women in need, and where our strengths compliment each other.
As a company we offer solution focussed hypnotherapy, run guest speaking events for other organisations and companies to share this crucial knowledge and support, we run our own group and individual programs, create nutritional, mindset and lifestyle protocols and bridge the gap between what is offered in the medical world and what we as women actually need.
All programs include bitesize videos, relaxing and powerful hypnosis tracks along with a whole host of other resources but more importantly a community. The group is full of women learning about their bodies from a place of amazement, wonder and awe and the results have been incredible. The stream of breakthroughs in how their symptoms decrease every month, how their confidence is soaring, how they have the knowledge to heal their bodies for the long term and how they are better managing their relationships has made me see the gift in my PMDD nightmare.
However, I almost didn’t make it. So it’s time we start talking, start educating ourselves and supporting each other in the journey to blissful periods and cycles. Everyone deserves the chance to heal, but it means being a leader in your education and your power.
If you are body literate, then you are in the best position possible to make the most of your body and your life. Because no one knows your life and your body, the underlying causes of a poor menstrual cycle, like you do.
Start with my Masterclass: Barely Surviving To Thriving With Your Menstrual Cycle
