Incidentally, I have some pretty severe peaks and valleys in my sex drive, too (i.e., ranging from “sex would be OK, sure” in the second half of my cycle all the way up to “advertising my services with a bullhorn at the local docks” in the first half) and I wonder sometimes if I’m just overly sensitive to hormonal fluctuations in general.
I don’t get this thread.
Exactly the way everyone else, male or female, deals with the challenge of detecting and coping with mood swings. You’ve never had a bad mood? How did you cope with it?
I think PMS gets hugely over-mystified, and gets used to make women seem like lunatics. Seriously, those crazy irrational women-things do not go screaming raving mad for X days per month. We’re just like people: sometimes we get bad moods. Sometimes those bad moods are triggered by fatigue, sometimes they’re triggered by too much shit going on in life, sometimes they’re triggered by absolutely nothing identifiable, and sometimes they’re triggered by hormones.
Lo-Slung Denim’s description was perfect for me, too - I get a slightly lowered tolerance for things that would bother me anyway. Two or three days a month, stuff that would ordinarily bug me at a 3 out of 10 bugs me at a 4 or 5. I don’t suddenly start screaming at tangerines in the supermarket for not being fluffy kitties. I get the same lowered tolerance if, for example, I’m really tired or under a lot of work pressure. So do many people I know. Male and female.
PMS (as opposed to PMDD, which is a whole other zone and one I know nothing about) is just a bad mood. There’s nothing unique that makes it less identifiable or less rational or less controllable than any other bad mood. You deal with it the same way everyone deals with every bad mood.
My symptoms: depression, anger, tiredness, pain.
I was on birth control for many years that stopped my periods and my PMS symptoms. When I stopped this birth control, the symptoms of PMS came back, and as I was completely unfamiliar with them it’s taken me a bit of practice to recognise when I’m having them. Complicating this is the fact that my period doesn’t happen on an exact 28 day cycle, which means that sometimes I can look at a calendar and recognise what is happening and sometimes I can’t.
The depression is still a problem. Some days I feel like throwing myself under a bus. My life has improved considerably to the point where, when I think “My life is shit and I hate everything”, I can see that there isn’t anything wrong and can say to myself “This is PMS. You will enjoy life again in a few days.” When there was something wrong, it was lot harder.
The anger is merely getting pissed off at things that I would usually let slide. After much practice, if I’m getting annoyed about little things I can usually step back and say, I’m not being myself. The worst thing about this is that these things really do annoy me, even if I’m not PMSing, and if I were less laid back I would probably be annoyed at these things on a daily basis. So I feel entirely justified in being annoyed and it takes some serious self-talk to stop being annoyed. An issue I still have to deal with!
Tiredness can be toxic, as it’s hell on an exercise regimen. I have to just power through it. Some months it’s better than others.
Pain I’m not too bothered about. I don’t like pain meds, so I just take a warm bath and try not to let it affect the way I treat people around me.
I take Advil as soon as I start feeling the back/hipache. I try to avoid salt all the time but even more when I know the bloating is coming on. It really helps to drink more water too.
I don’t get angry, I feel distraught and tearful to the verge of devastation. I have more anxiety to fight and my body doesn’t feel strong enough to deal with it. My skin feels buzzy and I don’t care to be touched at all.
And then there’s the stupid acne break-outs, but those come like maybe one day before so at least I know (I don’t have a regular cycle) it’s about to be over. Once I start my period I feel giddy. Almost uncomfortably giddy at first! But it’s better than the devastation and pimples so I welcome the downhill flight.
My pms symptom is severe depression. When I start thinking how the world would be better off without me, start thinking that I’m stupid, utterly useless, ugly and fat, I go have a look at the calendar and realize “ah ha! periods only 2 days away”.
Knowing that it’s temporary and that as soon as my period starts I’ll be back to normal, stops me from offing myself.
A few days before my period I am irritable and can be snappy, and trying not to be sometimes makes it worse. I have back ache, cramps, bloating, frequent trips to the toilet, crave carbohydrates and chocolate, and since my children were born I have swollen, tender breasts.
The worst is the panic attacks that come a couple of days before. Out of nowhere I am convinced I am dying or something awful is happening to my family. It is a very real fear but after all these years I can now start to talk myself out of them by going to down and showing myself the calendar, and seeing that my period is but a couple of days away. Things are improving since I began taking a combination of Vitamin B6 and Evening Primrose Oil.
The day before I can hardly keep my eyes open, I am exhausted. 2 days into my period I’m right as rain.
It’s easy for me: when I start tearing up over silly things or just feeling sad, I check the calender. It is inevitably the week before my period, and that always makes me feel better. My PMS-related ‘moods’ are mild and other people rarely factor into them. I’m a very even-keeled person, emotionally.
I’m not. Even on a non-PMS day my mood is all over the place. My husband is also very even-keeled… it must be wonderful. It also pisses me off to no end how ‘‘stereotypically PMSy’’ I become around that time of month! Not all women are like that, dammit! Just me. 
I don’t have severe PMS symptoms, but they range from joint pain, bloating, breast tenderness/swelling, acne breakouts, fatigue, libido increases and food cravings. If I’m hungry all the time, feeling fat, and all of a sudden, every guy I pass is on the “I’d hit it” list, I know my period is coming soon. Okay, maybe not every guy, but far more men are attractive when I’m 2-5 days away from my period than any other time in my cycle.
I used to be on birth control, and for a while it was good, but the last year or two of it was bad. Really bad. I’d get to the week beforehand, and I’d have mood swing days so severe that they got official “holiday” status in our house: Squidgemas and Squeester. On birth control, I’d have a 2-5 Squidgemas day range, building up to actual Squidgemas, then tapering off. Depending on the month, these days it’s more likely for Squeester to last more than one day. When I had my IUD, it was apparently inserted incorrectly, so I was prone to much heavier periods, my usual irregular cycle, and massive cramps due to uterine contractions. It was pretty bad, and luckily enough I got it fixed.
In regard to pain, I tend to try to tough it out, or if it interrupts my sleep schedule, use naproxen to get rid of it. If I’m fatigued, I take my B vitamin complex and add more coffee to my routine. For increased libido, Acid Lamp gets ravaged until I’m satisfied. For bloating/acne/etc, I just deal with it by either wearing my looser clothes and covering up the acne or trying to make the swelling of my body less obvious.