Sep 1, 2020
Once Every Month, I Feel Like Quitting the World
The gift of self-awareness that PMS, anxiety, and depression gave me
For a few days every month, I feel like quitting everything.
I feel like quitting my relationship.
I feel like quitting my job.
I feel like quitting my family.
I feel like quitting my house.
I feel like quitting my country.
Some months, I feel like quitting life itself.
Being able to type that feels like a massive release in itself. Because for so long, I carried the shame of these feelings around silently.
Throughout my teens and 20s, I pegged myself as one of those who “didn’t really have PMS”. I believed that for over a decade, because unlike other women I knew who had physical pain and cramps so bad they could not walk, I’m not in pain so blinding I can’t see straight. But the pain of drowning in a sea of sadness can sometimes be blinding especially when you have to blink hot tears away. The tears usually choose to come at inconvenient times, like the middle of a workday when I’m at my desk, typing out an email, or when I’m driving in traffic.
Feelings hardly ever equal reality
In those moments, it really doesn’t matter what my life looks like on the outside. The facts don’t matter. I might just have achieved a goal or started a new chapter. But in those moments, I feel like a failure at everything. I feel like quitting everything because all I can see is the ways I don’t measure up, the mistakes I’ve made, the things I could have done better, and my emotions tell me that the only way I’ll stop f**king things up is if I remove myself from the picture.
Some months, those feelings lead to rash decisions and words that I wish I’d left unsaid. Those fleeting feelings then suddenly become a real possibility that something might come to an end. Some months, I wonder, “How can anybody — any partner, friend, or family member — be expected to deal with such heavy emotions on such a constant basis? Heck, I would quit being with myself too, if I could.” But other months, I manage the anxiety and sadness better, and no one realizes that for a few days that month, I felt like the loneliest person in the world, and wondered if I really mattered to anyone.
For many years, I thought my emotional turbulence was due to my personality. But over the past few years, as I started tracking my monthly cycle using the Clue app, I realized with great clarity that my most emotional days tend to converge within the same week every month.
Shame = The reason we don’t talk about PMS enough
And as I began to read more, I realized that I am not alone. Clinical studies have shown that 40% of women experience stress and depression in the 4 days leading up to their period. I began to wonder why this fact isn’t talked about more, and how I didn’t know this earlier.
As I began to track my symptoms more objectively, I was able to remember even more clearly those days when I felt a panic attack coming on while sitting at my keyboard, and had to run to the toilet just to cry in a cubicle for 5 minutes to get it out of my system. I began to notice that although I didn’t experience abdominal cramps, I would have trouble sleeping, low energy, and aches in my body. And the lack of rest would further contribute to a poor emotional state.
Most of the time, these emotional “glitches” happen for no real reason other than a tiny trigger (disproportionate to the intensity of my reaction to it). Rationally, I know these triggers are small. But emotionally, I feel barreled over by the weight of my feelings.
I choose to call them “glitches” because I genuinely believe having overwhelming feelings don’t define me, who I am during PMS is not my “normal” self, and when my emotions “leak”, they are a “hardware” error, not a character flaw because I haven’t prayed enough or meditated enough or been self-aware enough.
What I believe to be true is that I usually take good care of myself and I usually am considerate and aware enough to avoid “dumping” my feelings on others. But what I’ve often experienced, as I’ve tried to explain what I was feeling to others during PMS, are implied reactions that I could be doing more to deal with my feelings better.
So this is why we don’t talk about it enough.
Psychotherapist Elizabeth Sullivan writes that for women who suffer from PMS, they “also feel guilty and ashamed for these “mood swings” and for the perception that they should be controlling their hormones or rising above them. It’s seen as a personal failing or a fake or a joke, not a physical human experience.”
The gift in the storm
She also offered a different way to look at the emotional turbulence that I typically experience during PMS week:
“But what if PMS could be put to use? What if it could be a way that women in the world today could have a bit of a ritual or reminder that reconnects us to ourselves? The irritability during PMS is a reminder that women often tend to relationships and attachment more, and when they do not do this, attachment gets rockier.
It may not always be a bad thing. Sometimes it takes some irritability to spur some honesty that’s been hard to bring up. Or it may be destructive (I’d love to see a study correlating female-initiated breakups and PMS), but it exists. Repression or denial are not strategies. And letting PMS into the public light may well offer us some help. PMS might hold the promise of a more self-aware life for women.”
She may be right. I know that since I started tracking my cycles more rigorously, I have become more disciplined about guarding my energy, more ritualistic about scheduling in time for self-care and good nutrition (at a time when my body is working on overdrive just to sustain itself), and more intentional about conversations to let those around me know what I’m dealing with.
Right now, I’m still taking baby steps. I look around me and see other women who have got certain things more figured out, and I learn from them. Recently, I discovered that I have female friends who tell their bosses when they are on their periods. It gave me the courage recently, when my boss remarked that I looked sick or tired, to reply with, “Yeah, I actually am pretty tired, it’s that time of the month, so I’m more tired than usual.”
I see Instagram stories of other female friends who green juice daily during PMS week. I’ve started making sure I have a fresh juice or raw salad at least once every day during that week too.
Mindfulness: An underrated PMS coping tool
I also have a deep appreciation for what yoga, meditation, and mindfulness have taught me. I use them to deal with my PMS symptoms. I have been learning that feelings and thoughts come and go all the time, and we do not need to react to them — we can just observe them. The stories we tell ourselves are not real — but sometimes, our reactions to them can start to affect our reality. Instead of going down a self-destructive spiral, we can change the narrative at any time and tell ourselves better stories, that make us want to then act in better ways.
I STILL feel like crying at inappropriate times at least once a month. I STILL feel like quitting the world once a month. But I am ALSO getting better at reminding myself that I will feel better and the world will look a bit brighter after a good meal, a warm shower, lighting a scented candle, talking to a friend, reading some poetry, listening to soul-stirring music, or just spending some alone time writing.
And for this month, maybe those little reminders are all I need to keep myself going, for another more month.
