Intro
For years, I thought I was lazy.
I loved drawing—but every month, it felt like somebody quietly unplugged me. I’d stop creating, doubt everything I’d made, disappear from people I cared about, and wonder why I couldn’t simply push through. Then one day I’d wake up feeling like myself again… until the cycle repeated.
Eventually, I learned that this wasn’t laziness. I have premenstrual dysphoric disorder—PMDD—and it has shaped nearly every part of my life as an artist.
PMDD affects an estimated 3-8% of menstruating people, and even if you don’t have it- maybe someone you care about does. It can profoundly impact creativity, work, relationships, and self-image. These things are the core to what makes us whole, so struggling with them can be rough. I want to talk to you guys today about my experience with it as an artist, and give you a perspective from a Creator standpoint. I’ll include a little research, my experience, and some tips and tricks so that if you’re going through it- you’ll know there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. If you aren’t going through it, stay seated because the perspective and knowledge may still come in handy.
What is PMDD?
Hello, everybunny. I’m Yukibunns, a ghost bunnygirl creating something beautiful from beyond the veil. Today I want to talk about what PMDD is, how it affected my art and online career, and the systems I’ve built to make the difficult parts of my cycle more survivable.
It’s often summed up as “PMS on steroids”, but I don’t know that this description really does it any justice. So, PMS or Premenstrual Syndrome is that bit of time before you have your monthly bleed where you have symptoms like mood swings, breast tenderness, cravings, fatigue, bloating, headaches, all of that stuff you’ve probably heard before. They happen because of a sensitivity to rises and falls in estrogen and progesterone.
To illustrate that for fellow visual enjoyers, your cycle starts during bleed time. After that few days or week, you enter your follicular phase where the uterus preps for an egg. Following that is ovulation, and then after- the luteal phase. Progesterone rises, and if you aren’t pregnant, estrogen and progesterone will eventually fall as your period approaches.
Your brain goes oh so no baby? Go fck yourself - and wreaks havoc. So while both pms and pmdd seem to have the same cause at the moment, an irregular response in the brain from the shifting hormones, how do you tell them apart? Well, while 90% of period havers are said to have pms, but it’s said a 3-8% have pmdd.
The distinction is, at the present (and I said this because I don’t feel like science is really up to date nor fully understands this) - PMDD is more severe. Life altering. Life threatening. Think disabling, extreme mood shifts, anxiety, and depression. It impairs your ability to work, socialize, and in my humble onion- exist. You will have this… in your gut, unfixable hopelessness and fear that feels **urgent** and like you have to fix it **NOW** or something *horrible* will happen- with no reason to pin it to. Makes you feel crazy. But you’re not crazy.
Let me take a brief second to pin that thought to the board for us to look at before rolling past: that dysphoria with no logical reason to justify it leads to your brain searching for something, and is where so much of the relationship ruining comes from. You could be perfectly happy with a partner, but suddenly pmdd time encroaches and you start suspecting them of cheating. You could love and adore a family member, but then you pick fights with them and everything they’re doing seems wrong or out to piss you off in particular. When you are self aware of pmdd, this becomes so much easier to navigate because now you can tell your brain, ok, we have a logical reason. It’s the luteal phase, I just need to chill and trust that everything is going to be alright. For people around PMDD havers, you can breathe a bit, because your person is going through something that may shift their thoughts and behaviors and this may not be your fault. Let me be clear that PMDD doesn’t excuse bad behavior and hurting someone, but rather that awareness of what’s going on gives everyone a chance to pause, communicate, set boundaries, and navigate relationships more healthily.
Here’s a cute quirky list of common symptoms of PMDD:
If you feel that you or someone you know may be experiencing these things, it could be PMDD and it very well could be worth exploring with a professional. The diagnostic criteria you will need to experience at least 5 symptoms, including a core mood symptom. It interferes significantly with day to day life. Symptoms are concentrated before menstruation and improve shortly after it begins. They will probably expect you to track your daily symptoms across two cycles. These are to help make sure you actually have PMDD and it’s not that a different condition is worsening premenstrually. The distinction can be important because some of these symptoms coincide with other issues like Thyroid problems, ADHD, and anxiety and depression.
My Experience
Now that we know what is, I’d like to share my experiences. I didn’t have it figured out for years. I thought the symptoms didn’t really appear until 19, but looking back, there were signs. I would have mood swings towards the positive direction when my monthly started, being way more energetic and bouncy. I remember thinking it was odd because the thing you usually hear is people on their periods could be cranky and mean, but it made no sense to me. Probably the reason being is when your natural state of being feels depressive and tired, when that fog suddenly lifts its like a breath of fresh air. I had relationship devastating arguments with boyfriends, only to start my period and think I was being irrational and cruel. Made me feel like the crazy gf they warn you about, though it’s only 50% of the time.
As a girlie with hypothyroidism from roundabout age ten and not diagnosed until teen years and only barely medicated by 19, I was very much used to life of fatigue, brain fog, anxiety, and depression. That was just life, I thought. Scarily enough, that was the best I’ve felt up until then, so I took things as they were. It wasn’t until my early 20s where I went.. hmm. Something is up.
When my thyroid levels were finally seeing some improvement, I noticed that some symptoms were still there. Then I noticed.. there seemed to be a pattern. I had no idea until I started seeing a therapist, and one day she recommended to me to ask a doctor about PMDD. She said, “Sounds like you might have Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder.” And warned, “You’re going to have to REALLY advocate for yourself, though.”
I wouldn’t understand the gravity of that statement until I got a doctor’s visit in, and asked my Dr. She didn’t know what PMDD even was, and pulled away from the conversation briefly to look it up. She then asked me some diagnostic questions, and said, “Yep.” While this interaction wasn’t terrible, future ones with other doctors were increasingly difficult. I had to nearly beg through tears once for a birth control prescription, forcing a doctor to walk out to discuss it with her supervisor. A petite woman walks back in with her, explains she also has it, and agrees that it’s safer and better for my quality of life to take it.
I had to jump through hoops to try to get some sort of disability documentation for missing work for days or a week or so at a time, because the symptoms would be so bad that even getting out of bed was nearly impossible. My at the time doctor would only approve me for the LAST THREE days of my cycle until bleeding started, which is like guessing how many jellybeans are in a jar at a festival. You can try to make an educated guess, but you just don’t know, even on birth control. At least for me. And the symptoms would always start on a Thursday, and last from then on, into the next week, and until my period started, with that starting Thursday and the last few days being the worst when I was my most regular. It was essentially useless and I never heard back from the company, so I gave up after a couple of months and quit the job.
When I was first diagnosed, there wasn’t the information we have about it today. There would be minimal YouTube vlogs, a small handful of informative videos. Ambiguous Reddit threads of others sharing their experience which was a little validating. Public medical research on PMDD would be minuscule, in comparison to things like pregnancy, which would have millions of documents. Though that makes sense, the point being is the information well and resources were pretty bare bones for something that affects a decent amount of people.
Pair this with friends and family not really taking it seriously, a lot of the coping I’ve learned was from the ground up. When people around you treat it like make believe, your brain is gaslighting you, and you don’t feel like you have any guardrails to lean on.. you figure it out.
Through my videos and streams, even with my frequent absence, talking about it has inspired others to look into it, and credit me for the catalyst to their diagnosis. I did not have that person, there was no creator publicly talking about it and advocating for it. Today some bigger names have come out about having it and the conversation around it is growing, but I still want to be that person in the event someone out there needs it.
I’ve also never seen an in depth conversation about PMDD from the perspective of an artist or online creator, and I want to break the ice on that. I can’t find the resources, so I’m going to make them and make it easier for you to find, so to speak.
How it Affected me as an Artist
When it comes to creating, the things that were affecting me the most were energy, task initiation, executive functioning, dysphoria, and an aversion to friendly interaction with a hefty dose of guilt. All of these ingredients together create the most dumpster soup imaginable for artists, vtubers, and creators of any kind.
My creativity and productivity would kind of be on a cycle, but not a good one. The monthly would arrive and the creative ideas would explode like fireworks, I’d want to start 4 major projects and would blast through commissions with lightening speed and ease, adoring the work in the process. I’d feel ignited, inspired, and pleased with what I would make. Then.. struggle time would appear. I would disappear online, stop answering DMs, be unable to touch commissions, and be a shell of myself barely able to pull my own cheeks out of my bed.
But then when period time would come again, it’d be a game of catch up. Finish the projects I started when my head was clear, go back to commissions, make up for lost time. That kept building and building until a 2 week commission would take 2 years, and the cycle would be weeks of being crushed by guilt and inadequacy, followed by me side eyeing responsibilities because I feel too ashamed and pathetic to even touch them. I felt like I couldn’t be trusted. I mean, in a sense, that was true.
I knew what the non-PMDD me wanted to do and wanted to achieve, but weeks of stalling and no movement would set me back so far that the hope of ever being on track again felt like a delusional dream. In every way I would feel like a let down, and when you tell yourself something enough- you start to truly believe it and your brain puts it into action.
I’d say out of everything in my life, this cycle was the hardest to break. I don’t know that everyone will struggle in the same way I did, but the self doubt and guilt combined with hopelessness left me feeling so immobilized.
I would want to draw something to perk me up and get me into motion, but doing hobby art or anything made me feel guilty. So then I’d do it quietly/not publicly, not posting art I made and leaving my account dead. This also made me feel guilty, so I stopped drawing and started playing games instead. The more guilt and shame I felt, the harder it was to get back on track and the less strong I was to any sort of friction in life.
My creativity was gone. I was in a constant state of burn out, or everything I made felt like slop. A lot of opportunities fizzled out of my hands, while other artists around me kept growing and growing. I would be in my bed, scrolling on my phone, seeing people get to draw art for games and companies they loved.
Even during better periods, drawing things I liked and wanted to do, pmdd time would make it feel like strenuous effort instead of something I love and enjoy. Normally, drawing comes naturally. It’s like eating or using the bathroom, I’ve been doing it my whole life and it came effortlessly. But pmdd time comes, and it’s like lifting weights but your arms are made of noodles.
From a streaming perspective, it was soooo hard. Streaming requires charisma and energy, because you are entertaining people for hours at a time. Some days this would be a breeze, and I’d feel so good before and after. Pmdd time? The concept of interacting with people in any capacity is too much. The pressure would feel back breaking. Despite the overwhelming fatigue it feels to be responsible for other people’s time, you have to keep in mind too that you are sensitive. You could be laughing, crying, or in a murderous rage at a butt hair trigger. You could shut down. Shutting down is my main response, which sure isn’t handy when streaming.
What really sucks too is in the world of content and algorithms, you are punished for honoring pmdd and taking breaks. Streaming for some weeks and not others is career sewer slide on twitch. Irregular patterns on YouTube will make the algorithm show your video to less people, even IF they’re subscribed. You could have thousands of Twitter follows, but if you don’t post regularly, your post could get likes in the realm of tens or even single digits. Source: my Twitter.
I’ve lost out on brand deals because who wants to work with someone so inconsistent? Why waste time and money on me when there are people out there that look and act like they want it more, are working harder for it, and deserve it. My inactivity doesn’t read as profitable rest and recuperation- it reads as a flaky and untrustworthy. Unprofitable.
The realm of collabs is also so hard it’s unreal. Add chaotic time zone differences, people’s schedules, making sure everyone has the same game and you get along.. all of that on the plate BEFORE having to figure out if it coincides with Hell time and if you have the mental and social bandwidth for it. Personally, I hate collabs. Collabs are a great way to build friendships and a community and a network, but it comes at too much of a cost for me. This cost I think is the biggest hurdle to vtubing I’ve ever and will ever experience. Not because collabing in general, but because the stress and anxiety of having to put on a show and bounce off others when you are completely drained is too much.
It’s hard to maintain friendships or relationships in general, so navigating it all can feel safest when you do it alone. Let me tell you guys, when my YouTube was popping off the most, the overwhelming need people had for me and the fact that anyone had instant access to my time and peace was one of the most draining things I’ve ever experienced. Having people irl and online seemingly constantly needing me gives me irreparable indigestion. Makes my asshairs gray. Pickles my cucumber. It would make me shut down even more, retracting more and more into my shell, and again- the good times return and I can breathe again, except I have this overwhelming pile of everything to get back to and it’s soul crushingly suffocating. No one wants to be friends with someone when it’s this much effort to keep in contact with them. Especially when they feel they aren’t getting the same effort back.
I think all creative PMDD havers will probably experience self doubt, overwhelm, task paralysis, or a lack of skill during their struggle time. My dear artists, please know you are not alone in this experience and there are for sure ways to better it and make it easier. I know this has been a lot of negative talk, but I’m close to throwing you a rope, so don’t give up hope just yet.
The Research
I want to run some numbers and where the current research leaves us, so we are all equipped. The mechanism, comorbidities, medications, and whatever else simply having the knowledge on can help without being too overwhelming.
For starters, PMDD is recognized in the DSM-5. For those unaware, that is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, used to provide standardized and universal care, language, and diagnosis for brain or behavioral related disorders. “I do. I do have the metnal illness.” It’s not considered a hormonal or endocrine disorder, because you have the typical expected hormones- no unusual numbers there, it’s just how your brain interprets this change in hormones. Unless you have some other disorder, People with PMDD tend to have normal estrogen, progesterone, and ovulation.
Progesterone creates a substance called “Allopregnanolone”. which we can shorten to ALLO. So after ovulation, you get a rise of progesterone and it creates ALLO, which acts on GABA-A receptors in the brain. That may seem like a lot of medical jargon, but here is what that means. GABA is your brain’s major calming system, and an increase in ALLO should follow suit with reduced anxiety, promotion of sleep, and feeling soothed. Instead, your brain doesn’t respond to ALLO predictably. Like a volume knob wired wrong, you could get increased irritability, anxiety, rage, and depression instead of those calming effects.
Serotonin also has a part to play. If you’re familiar with the concept of depression, you’re probably familiar with serotonin. It helps regulate impulse control, appetite, pain perception, sleep, emotional resilience, anxiety, and mood. People with PMDD do not have chronically low serotonin, thankfully. What instead happens, is serotonin signaling is influenced by estrogen and progesterone, and with changes in those- serotonin activity changes too. In people with PMDD, the hormonal fluctuations can have a more profound affect on serotonin pathways, resulting in depression/anxiety/emotional overwhelm/rejection sensitivity and unaliving self in severe cases. Because of this, people with PMDD may benefit from SSRIs, and sometimes take it only during their luteal phases. It may be helpful to think of the role of SSRIs in these people not as treating depression, so much as helping stabilize the hormonal effects on serotonin. I personally am on an SSRI, but I take it every day.
Another system that is affected is the HPA Axis. This is the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis. Again, may sound like a lot of medical jargon. The HPA axis is in cahoots with your fight or flight system, working to help you survive perceived challenges by: Influencing mood and cognition, modulating immune function, increasing glucose availability, mobilizing energy, and increasing alertness. This is how homo sapiens evolved to survive, and involves cortisol. Like ALLO and serotonin, it’s not that there is an excess/overactive or underactive HPA axis, its a dysregulated one. Instead of your natural ability to sustain alertness and adapt to stress, you can have a blunted cortisol response, making everything during your luteal phase feel like an emergency. Despite normal or lower cortisol, your subjective stress appears higher and you have abnormal stress reactivity. Cortisol rhythms may also get wonky, and cortisol plays an important part of our daily cycle, like sleep.
Dopamine and the HPA axis are highly connected. Dopamine is your motivation/reward chemical. A tiny bit of healthy stress is good for a temporary increase in dopamine, which makes you more capable of getting the hunt, so to speak. You have a drive for goals, interests, and pleasure. Chronic increased stress dampens the dopamine responsiveness, resulting in executive dysfunction, low motivation, apathy, and difficulty experiencing reward. There is emerging research suggesting that this could play a factor in PMDD. If you’re familiar with ADHD, this may sound similar, since dopamine and norepinephrine are affected. They heavily interact with cortisol, stress responses, and reproductive hormones. There is an estimated 40-45% of people with ADHD who also experience PMDD. The high correlation and overlap is thought to be stemming from how hormonal changes affect neurotransmitters. I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until this year, and let me tell you.. being put on a norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor has helped a LOT both with adhd AND pmdd symptoms.
Some other fun comorbidities, in example: PCOS. PCOS is extra fun, because your cycles can become less predictable, thus leading to less predictability of PMDD cycles. Kind of hard to track monthly symptoms when you can go extra weeks, months, or even years without a proper cycle. There is an estimated 30% of those with PCOS who also have either severe PMS or PMDD. Another one is hypothyroidism. This number is scarier. 63% of those with PMDD may experience some form of thyroid dysfunction. Thyroid issues run in my family, as does pcos, so it feels like I didnt have much of a fighting chance. A lot of coexisting depression, anxiety, fatigue, mood regulation issues and what not make trying to pin everything down to the point of being able to exist REALLY hard. Hard- but not impossible.
One more thing I want to include, and that is a not-so well developed link between histamines and PMDD. Take this bit with a grain of salt, but if you are at your wits end and dont know what else to do, maybe asking your doctor about it could help. There is a theory that in some people, the luteal shift of hormones also affects Mast cell/histamine reactivity, causing inflammation like symptoms. This could be some sort of histamine intolerance already, like allergies, migraines, hives, flushing, reflux, tummy troubles, food-triggered symptoms, though presumably worse during PMDD. There are no solid studies on this at the moment, but there’s been anecdotal evidence of people improving symptoms via medication like Pepcid or low histamine diets. It is no cause of pmdd, but just a last ditch effort thing for you to consider if need be. I felt like I saw improvements on pepcid, but after being on my ADHD meds regularly for a bit and being off of pepcid, I dont notice a difference and would say the ADHD meds are more beneficial. That is my personal experience though, I can’t guarantee it would be the same for everyone.
Let’s tie out this section with some rapid fire numbers. 22%-86% of PMDD havers are reported to have an increased risk of ideation of taking their own lives, 11-42% of them have made plans with 7-61% of them acting on it. PMDD is associated with a substantially increased risk of suicidal thoughts, plans, and attempts. The exact numbers vary widely between studies, but the danger is real and deserves to be taken seriously. PMDD wasn’t recognized in the DSM-5 until 2013. The average age of onset of symptoms is 26. Research finds consistently finds higher rates in people with PMDD of depression and anxiety disorders, OCD, PTSD, ADHD, endometriosis, pcos, and chronic migraines. Being symptomatic can last for 25-50% give or take of a month. Try to contextualize in your mind how much of that time that is put together… and how devastating it must feel knowing such a large part of your life feels worthless or like it’s been spent from you.
Getting Help
Lets talk about what you can do to get some help, what you can do to improve what you’re going through, and some personal tips I can give from my experience as a student, an adult with a job, and mostly an artist and online presence.
For starters, we have to get it out of the way, I’m not a medical professional and if you haven’t already- you need to be in contact with one. If they are not being helpful, you need to go to someone else. It’s okay to shop around so to speak for doctors or therapists, it’s better to spend time looking for the right help than to waste time, money, *and* your precious mind with the wrong help.
With that out of the way, here are some things you can do or try or even just think about that could help you. I think a good start is to recognize the “pmdd brain”, getting a sense for how you are when it’s that time and how everything around you is affected. Might sound like useless advice but one of the most helpful things I’ve done beyond learning what pmdd was and that I had it, was to recognize what that looked like for me and being honest with myself about it. I would sleep 12-18 hours a day, I had brain fog so bad I’d assume a brain sucking alien paid me a visit in my sleep or something, and stuff that would otherwise be normal to me would be so stressful I would have a breakdown about it. Then of course after a breakdown I’d feel even worse because why am I, an otherwise calm and capable adult, resorting to crying like an infant? I was so extremely self critical that even simply acknowledging these symptoms to be real and valid was enough of a help to make things way less bad. Instead of full on sobbing and shaking curled up in a bed, it’s rather I’d be sitting quietly upset with furled eyebrows. Still upset and going through it, but able to handle it way better. Pay attention to your body, honor what it’s telling you, and don’t try rationalizing it away or trying to convince yourself that you’re too strong to go through those things, either. It happens. What you are going through isn’t a discipline issue, a matter of needing better sleep/diet/exercise. Though they can help, it’s not a cure. If stuffing down your emotions and bottling them up until they explode and become a severe problem isn’t great, I promise you doing the same with what you’re going through isn’t either. Give yourself grace.
Part of this feeling may come from the fear of letting down or disappointing people, or the simple fact that life goes on whether you do or not. My next bit of advice is to find good people you can rely on. I learned the hard way that my social circle of who I could really trust and be vulnerable needed to be so small it barely existed, because people pleasing and trying to keep everyone by your side no matter how much you care about them just simply isn’t going to work. You need to let go of unhelpful attachments but recognize that some people may be safe for you and having them can be everything when you feel everything else is crashing around you. The me from 5 years ago would be confused if she saw the me today and what my friend groups look like, because a lot of people aren’t cut out to deal with me and me with them, and I had to accept that’s okay. This and learning there ARE people who will be compassionate and understanding, and I can lean on them. I’m sure you know very well, but if you don’t, it can feel like hell going through something like this and none of the people close to you feel safe, like they act like what you’re doing is make belief, or you’re intentionally harming them or pulling away. Its hard to accept but even if you and someone else are otherwise great people who get along, the best choice may be to let go if you find they are not honoring your needs or their needs aren’t being honored by you.
With these tipperonis I’m going in a direction of least to most related to creatives, and the next one is gonna be to adapt your life to your cycle. The better you honor your cycle, the better you are going to feel. If you know your luteal phase is coming, don’t throw down food that’s going to irritate your body or exercise too aggressively or do things that would otherwise worsen what already sucks to begin with. This is something I just recently have been trying to get down to a science.. I’m a girlie with pcos, so I gotta go light on sugar. I have hashimotos, so triggering foods like broccoli or raw kale I especially avoid around struggle time. I have tummy sensitivities and gluten problems, so honestly I stray away from FODMAP type foods in general. I eat high clean protein and fiber with any carbs being vegetables or beans. I don’t eat processed food anymore if I can help it. That’s probably a lot stricter than most people are willing to do, but I promise you I am not missing sweets or junk food with the difference I feel in happiness and heath. What each person does is probably going to be different, so don’t feel pressured to do what I’m doing in particular, but don’t be shy to honor your cycle and work life around it, not the other way around.
With this said, another piece of advice is making a “PMDD menu”, or really just a day to day “menu” that you can fall back on. This is a trick for people with adhd too, which I think can work for anyone really- What you’re doing is creating a framework for your bad days to make them easier on you when they happen. Some might refer to this as “defaults”, but its about the same strategy. You know how on some days you wake up, and you’re just like “HELL no.”? You don’t have the energy to eat so you throw together the easiest things in your cabinet that would make a nutritionist clutch pearls, or you order out. Some tasks get neglected because you just dont have the energy for them. You have nothing to fall back on and the entire day spirals out of control. The goal is to create a sort of netting to fall back on, so things are easier and you aren’t adding decision fatigue onto your other mountain of problems. You could premake or get easy to make meals for the days that suck so you can just grab and go or pop in the microwave or what have you. You could plan out certain activities that give you something to do and remove the guilt, so you aren’t doing more than you can handle. People also talk about adding “snacks” or “dessert” to their menu, considering it like an essential, which is something that makes you feel good, too, so it doesnt feel restricting. This could be an everything shower, chilling reading a book with a candle, things of the like. Some people are really cute about it, and make like a real menu, with appetizers, main course, and desserts to choose from. Personally my energy varies wildly and I also am not great at staying on top of anything structural, so in my mind I have bad days, average days, and good days. Good days Im less structured and can wing it, because I have the energy to. Bad days I have things that can cushion my fall so things are easier. I have meat and veggies that microwave easily, or things I can throw in an air fryer. I have tasks that are less hard to do that I can focus on or make myself feel useful doing so I dont swallow down guilt of not doing enough. This is going to be a very personal thing because everyone is different, so it’s worth it to spend some time thinking this over and making yourself a PMDD menu to make the harder days easier.
Another ADHD adjacent bit of advice, and one that I recommended in my art block video (rerelease coming soon) is to lower the threshold to do stuff. We tend to look at the big picture or expect fully fledged outcomes out of ourselves, which doesnt help when you’re already immensely overwhelmed. Instead of “Im going to draw a whole piece today”, I would approach it more from “Im going to do a sketch today”, or even play around a bit. Test brushes, redo an old doodle, try a challenge. The hardest part of getting anything done is getting started, taking that first step, so ask yourself how you can avoid that friction as best as possible. If you know dishes need to be done, you’re much more likely to achieve a better outcome if you approach it like, “Im going to spend 5 minutes doing dishes”, or, “I’m only going to rinse stuff”, or “I’m only doing the cups.” Before you know it, you’ve made some progress — which is better than none at all — and it’s easier to keep going from there if you find you have the energy to do it. For video scripts, I told myself, “We’re going to work on this for 2 minutes”. Two minutes is easy, and that gives that lil tingle in your brain of checking off a goal, and easy to surpass which makes you feel even better. Reframing it from “Im writing a script” to “Im spending 2 minutes writing” lowers the activation energy needed to get going and makes it more likely that I will make some progress rather than nothing at all, and then spiraling because I did nothing.
This one may be hard to ask of yall, but I would recommend if you recognize that you’re actively symptomatic and a decision can safely wait, consider writing down what you’re thinking or feeling and revisiting it after symptoms lift. If we’re being fully honest with ourselves, this is the most impulsive and volatile time of the month, and generally not a good time for making big decisions. If you can, I would wait it out. I don’t know if all PMDD people relate to this or its just me, but I’ll be ready to jump the gun on anything- not just big important financial decisions or relationship ruining arguments. A new huge time consuming project sounds just about right, or dropping everything to try something new. It sucks a lot but I try to make myself wait it out a few days. My life would be a disaster otherwise. Nothing would ever get finished.
For my creative PMDDers, especially those whose creativity is also their job, you’ve gotta find ways to separate creativity from productivity. It’s especially hard to do when your hobby-things-computer is also your work-things-computer, so you’re there no matter what and its hard to switch your brain from work mode to chill mode. If you struggle to exist without being productive in some way, but being creative is comforting, here’s what I do: record. I have builds on minecraft or house flipper that I could turn into video if I needed to. It gives me something to focus on in the moment and its not a complete waste because I COULD use it, even if I don’t end up doing so. Games or activities that let you flex your creativity without feeling shackled by pressure is a good idea. I’m definitely an Animal Crossing girlie, doing little busy work and decorating my island. It keeps me fulfilled enough without making me feel extremely bad. If you can do creative things without attaching the pressure of being profitable to it, then power to you, do the thing. Don’t let your brain bully you out of doing something you love for fear that you arent doing good enough.
With that said, you also need to give yourself grace and ignore the critical side of your mind for a bit. I regularly go through cycles of heavy self doubt in every way possible, from art to looks to health to literally anything. I should give up, I shouldnt even try. Sometimes I can’t even look at my art because all I see are flaws, even though I know its probably beautiful to most others. Once you’ve recognized that struggle time has rolled in, its time to ignore the little voice in your head. Actually, scratch that, the big voice in your head. Because that voice is a jerk and you deserve better. If you need to, keep off of social media. Schedule posts instead so you keep things active while also keeping your peace. It’s going to feel like everyone and their pet turtle are doing better than you, you don’t need to keep yourself in that environment.
Last bit of advice, rest is essential. Rest is part of the process. I feel like if I haven’t slowed down and given myself proper rest, the next month’s PMDD cycle is harder and more difficult to churn through. Its as if my body made a force rest setting. You could think of it like how some people think of whatever they have going on as a super power, ie autistic people see it as a strength in some avenues, such as their special interest, instead of looking at it from a perspective of handicapped. Your body is so amazing that it will make sure you get rest and not overwork yourself. Or, at least, that way of thinking helps me sometimes. Even if you dont have PMDD, rest is essential for everyone and everyone deserves it. Your body is telling you to chill, so you might as well chill.
No matter what your brain is telling you, you are an amazing and very capable person. You go against the grain and thats one of the many things that makes you special. You are so strong and way more capable than you could ever know. If you won’t allow yourself to believe that, then trust me because I’m saying it to you and I mean it.