Does your PMDD lead you feel isolated, alone and misunderstood around others...even with friends, family and colleagues? Do you suffer with social anxiety over chatting with a neighbor or making a routine phone call? Does feeling unseen, unheard, and sensitive to rejection cause tension between you and your partner?
This is all super common in PMDD. I myself have experienced every one of these issues!
Then, I found a mindfulness practice that helped me to feel less alone in my struggles and more compassionate with myself and with others. It leveled the 'playing field' in a way, because I no longer saw myself as uniquely broken and suffering.
Over time, I was able to show up as myself around other people, without feeling so anxious and misunderstood!
In this episode I share:
- The practice that helped me to feel less anxious, different, and alone around others.
- How this practice helped me to show up as myself again, with more ease.
I believe that you can get there too and I'll be sharing this guided meditation next week, before taking a holiday break!
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Diane
If you want to learn how you can live better with PMDD, this podcast was created for you. This is mindfulness for PMDD with Diane. I'm Diane and I'm a registered dietitian and lactation consultant. I'm also a mom, a PMDD warrior. and a trauma informed mindfulness teacher. And this is where I discuss topics related to PMDD through the lens of mindfulness and meditation and where I share all about how mindfulness has gotten me to a place of greater peace and acceptance with my PMDD.
I also chat with people who have helped and inspired me along the way so they can share their wisdom with you too. So let's get started.
This podcast is not a substitute for psychological therapy or medical advice. Please take care when listening to this podcast, as some may find certain words or subjects triggering or difficult to hear. Take only what serves you and leave the rest behind.
Hey, friends. PMDD can make it really tough to be around other people. You might have crippling social anxiety that can make it feel like such a daunting task to just make a phone call or chat with your neighbor who you're usually pretty friendly with. Or to engage with people at a party, or even face people at work, even the ones you like.
I remember at the height of my social anxiety, I once ran into a bedroom when I noticed the landscapers were outside. And I always used to make my husband make any necessary phone calls for me. I just couldn't handle it. yOu might feel like no one gets it or like some people just flat out and validate your PMDD experience. I mean, PMDD is an invisible condition, especially when you appear just fine in the follicular phase. And you might feel super alone in your experience because you haven't met anyone else in your personal life who is living with PMDD.
For a lot of us, PMDD becomes a little voice in our heads that only wants to tell us how useless and worthless, incapable and Unlovable we are, and that can really affect our relationships and just how we engage with others in our everyday lives. We might also have that little voice in our head telling us how mean we are in the luteal phase, or how we're just awful to live with, or maybe even telling ourselves that we're a bad partner or a bad parent.
And speaking of partners, we might find ourselves struggling in relationships if we feel like we aren't being seen or heard or supported. Or if it just feels impossible to have a productive conversation,
but there's one particular meditation that helped me to start breaking down all these walls. When I first tried a version of the loving kindness meditation, I didn't exactly love it. It felt a little awkward to send out kind vibes to others and to myself in the form of a meditation. But when I started to really explore using mindfulness to help my PMDD, something changed and I really started to understand and feel the benefit of this meditation the more and more I did it.
I really started to appreciate the meaning and intention of it. In a loving kindness meditation, we repeat kind, supportive phrases. in our heads to other people and to ourselves. Now, if you tend to roll your eyes at meditations that repeat a particular word or phrase, then, well, number one, I totally feel you because I've been there.
And number two, I realize you might already be I'm not going to be putting up a wall to the idea of loving kindness, but I want to invite you to give it a try, because it really can help you feel more compassion toward yourselves and toward others, to be kinder to yourself, to realize that we're all just out there being human and trying to survive.
And the more clearly we can see the common humanity we all share. The easier it is to engage with others, to feel less alone, to communicate better with others. Plus, I want to encourage you that you can tweak the phrasing to make it your own.
In fact, in my program, Mindfulness for PMDD, I help and encourage you to find what feels good and right for you when exploring mindfulness and building your own mindfulness practice. I really believe that when us PMDD warriors are supported in finding the forms of mindfulness that work best with our own individual PMDD and our own unique life circumstances.
Then, we can fully realize the benefits of mindfulness.
So anyway, when I was thinking about what topic I wanted to discuss before going off on my holiday break, I thought between all the socializing required of us at the holidays and all that is happening in the world right now, we could probably all use a little loving kindness. So, next week, I will share a loving kindness meditation with you called Classic Kindness, so you can look out for that.
And then I'll be off for two weeks so I can hang out with my husband and my son over the holidays. In the meanwhile, please feel free to connect with me on Instagram. Feel free to message me on there. And while you're over there, you can tap the link in my bio and be directed to a page where you can learn more about my program.
So until then, happy holidays and I will catch you in the next one.
Thank you so much for listening. If you liked the show, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. For links to everything mentioned in this episode, you can check out the show notes and you can find me, Diane de Jesus on Instagram at mindfulness for PMDD. Now I invite you to pause, take a breath and look around.