Many women of child bearing age suffer from what is called premenstrual syndrome. A few days before their menstruation they develop a variety of symptoms such as irritability, hostility, depression, mood swings anxiety, tension, agitation and many more. Immediately after the menstruation, these symptoms disappear or ease up. These women go on a fruitless search for a hormonal cure for their problem. The medications that have been found to be most helpful are certain antidepressant medications clearly indicating that chemical changes in the brain have something to do with their symptoms.
What is happening here’ Careful history will reveal that all these women have been through a series of major stressful events and problems in their lives. Their bottle is saturated and their balloon is inflated (stress stage three above). During the premenstrual period, the changing female hormones seem to affect the brain chemicals adversely. In effect, the ‘balloon inflates’ even more during that time period and so stress symptoms get worse resulting in premenstrual syndrome (P. M. S). When female hormones go back to their original state following menstruation, brain chemicals, too, go back to the former state (and balloon shrinks too), and symptoms improve.
As can be expected, most of these women ultimately reach their breaking point and come down with a stress-related disorder such as depression or anxiety disorder. Explains why some of them respond well to antidepressant medications. The best treatment for
P. M. S., however, is talking therapy to shrink the balloon, combined with an antidepressant medication and stress management. Try to tell that to P. M. S. sufferers.
They will certainly blow up at you! ‘This is not stress-related problem, buster! This is hormones!’ Of course, it is hormones, but only indirectly. Most P. M. S. sufferers seem to have a serious need to identify their problem as related to female hormones rather than stress because they perceive hormonal problem as ‘physical’ and stress problem as ‘mental.’
Here is a straight forward case of a 39 year old woman who came for complaints of P. M. S of two years’ duration. She said she felt just fine till five days before her menstruation began. Then she would suffer from multiple symptoms: tearfulness, irritability, sleeplessness, anxiety, mood swings and whatnot. Initially she said everything in her life was great. It must be hormonal imbalance. In the course of our conversation she revealed that just before her symptoms started two years earlier, she went through a traumatic experience with her husband of twenty years.
Her husband and she were going some place in the car when all of a sudden he flipped out and started yelling and screaming at her. He blamed her for all his problems and cursed her left and right for fifteen minutes. This outburst was such a nasty surprise and so shocking to her that she was completely dumbfounded. She said nothing. After ranting and raving for another fifteen minutes, his balloon seemed to have shrunk but hers went up! She was under the impression all these years that hers was a great marriage. She had no clue that he had harbored such ill will toward her all these years. Her relationship with her husband changed forever after this sordid event. The result was that from then onwards she suffered P. M. S. symptoms.
After I explained to her what must have happened, she left my office and went straight to the local library. She borrowed a book on anger. Through insight, awareness and expression of emotions, she shrank her balloon and got over her P. M. S. The key to P. M. S. cure is open-mindedness about mind-body connection.