To think being told to put up and shut up with perimenopause and PMDD by older women is unfair?

[RosieIs44]

I didn’t realise that my extreme moods, including flashes of rage, barely being able to function and thinking about ending it all, was actually PMDD getting worse in peri. It was only when I kept a diary and noticed it was smack-bang mid-cycle that things went horribly downhill. HRT made it worse but luckily SSRIs have lifted me out of years of darknesses.

Thing is, the older women in my life (family and friends), who are 70 plus, have given my “diagnosis” short shrift, tell me “we all got through it and you will too”, question PMDD as a real thing etc, it will soon stop, just put up with it etc

It’s frankly infuriating as I very nearly didn’t get through it and have wasted years of my life struggling. But they make me feel like a flake.

So was peri/meno/PMDD actually easier for older generations? Or what else is going on here? I thought they’d be pleased we had access to better support now…

Yes and we used to cut off limbs rather than fix them in some cases 🤦‍♀️

I hope you feel better soon. Getting help and support is exactly what we should be doing. Ignore the ignorant

It's great you are able to access help. But obviously they are also correct. The menopause was not medicalised historically but neither was childbirth! You either got through it or you didn't. They did. Likelihood is you would too. But why suffer if you don't have to? Take all the help you can get and be grateful this is the era you have been born into.

You see a lot of these people on here, telling you how they "managed" and we should all suck it up.

I bet they would be happy if we still didn't have the right to vote, because after all, generations of women "managed" without. Health, society, employment...who needs progress hey.

They obviously didn't manage so well if they are still bitter and resentful after all these years 😂

Take and do anything that can help you, that's what they are for.

I have no patience with this "it was shit for us it should be shit for everyone else too" attitude.

Or with the "I was ok, why are you making such a fuss" attitude from someone who had a completely different experience to you.

It's such mealy-mouthed crap.

Ignore. You don't need your experience, decisions or knowledge validated. Or tell them briskly that their opinions are not needed. Or lean right in and say you let AI make all your medical decisions for you now.

Congratulate yourself on steering yourself through an incredibly difficult time. That's what matters, and you did it.

It was easy for some, tough for others. But no one cared about them either way and women just had to get on with it. Perhaps with the dubious help of valium, or self medicating with alcohol, or simply dragging themselves through their days because they believed there was no alternative. Whether the unsympathetic older women you've encountered genuinely had it easy and think you're fussing about nothing, or think because they had to tolerate it, so should you, is anyone's guess. However, I think you've been unlucky as most women I've encountered are sympathetic and supportive and as you say, pleased it's recognised now.

Yes I think it’s a mix of what @5128gap says. It just genuinely made me wonder if somehow things were easier, hormones have changed etc. I guess because it’s women’s health, there’s no proper historical documentation of symptoms etc. I’d read a book about it if there is one! And PMDD which I’d never heard of, I’m sure is a big reason women were historically said to be having nervous breakdown or even sectioned. It’s actually heartbreaking. I mean, it’s still hard enough to access the proper care now but my goodness am I grateful for how far it’s come.

I would also add to that I think there's a world of difference between managing this when your children are largely grown up and less demanding, and you're not in a paid job, which would reflect more women's experience in the older generation than women today.

YANBU I hate the mentality that a lot of people have in many subjects like this, always wanting to put people down and not wanting improvements made because they've missed out.
Fuck that! I'll be educating my daughter the best way I can and will help her with finding ways that assist her to enjoy life when these horrible life events pop up.
Womens health is so overlooked it should be considered neglectful.

@5128gap good point. So many of us have small children now… and peri must be hitting at a similar time as pregnancy for a lot (inc me)

@TomatoSandwiches one of the women who is most vocal about it all being in my head, to toughen up etc is an ex medical secretary 😑

Unsurprising yet still depressing.

YANBU. Im sorry you are going through that OP, sadly that attitude still seems to prevail. The truth is some people can sail through hormonal changes without noticing and for others it can ruin their lives.

Im lucky in that my older relatives/friends are very understanding and dont expect me to have the experience as them (my mother actually had a friend who was commited due to mental health issues in menopause).
What helped for me though was the fact I changed so dramatically during peri! Everybody tells me its like I had a personality transplant (or am now medicating!!LOL). Truthfully I never realiesed that I had PMDD until it went! I just spent most of my adult life with depression, mood swings, binge eating, living in a hovel as I never cleaned and struggling financially at times because I made insane decisions that I couldnt explain for the rest of the month!
Maybe if this kind of thing was more normalized and understood then I would of known I had a problem!

I've had "we all get period pain"

I've got stage 4 endo which isn't managed with morphine but apparently everyone gets period pain that means they're screaming

The thing is, lots of women of my grandmas’ era didn’t speak about period problems or the menopause.

My DM told me my stepgrandmother had had bad flooding during the menopause and that my nana had had a hysterectomy but wasn’t well at all after that. That was quite literally all I knew. When I got bad PMT in my teens my grandad told my DM that his mother who’d lived with him as an adult had suffered with bad mood swings, he thought around periods time. But people didn’t know much about it then, compared to now. It was probably tied up with perimenopause and menopause if I calculate her age back then.

Very similar to me. I think I was in my late 20s when I realised I had PMDD but I was given little to no help by doctors apart from the BCP which helped to a degree.

@henlake7 oh my goodness that sounds so similar to my life. Absolute hovel (which I’m only just sorting out now) and also, even though some menopause experts suggested PMDD, it wasn’t until I took anti depressants to help get through an extra stressful time, that the flashes of rage lifted so I knew for sure!

May I ask what you’re taking? I briefly took Wellbutrin as normal SSRIs give me a rash, but it seemed to increase the irritability which was terrifying… so the rash is far preferable.

We couldn’t quite nail HRT either, which worries me as I’m now 47. It had me on the floor and making desperate calls for help.

Are you talking about 80 or 90 years ago? Because HRT has been available and used since the 60s. It fell out of favour 20-odd years ago, but it was still available.
I think it may piss older women off because people bang on about the menopause as if no-one ever heard of it or experienced it before.

Christ, it wasn’t that long ago that women were being locked up in asylums at menopause with their ‘nerves’ - also, my nana looked like a little old lady at about 50.

Yanbu- hooray for modern medicine that keeps us out of asylums. There’s an ‘influencer’ on Twitter who shames women for not treating menopause as a ‘natural life stage’ - it’s all so fucking toxic.

I’m sorry you’re having a really hard time with this. Research up to date resources and do take whatever is available you.

I think you’ve turned to the wrong women for information and advice. Well, you know that. What I mean is not all women of that age will have that attitude. Perhaps my mum was a good example of what a lot of elderly women can offer. She said, “To be honest, I can’t really remember.” Fair enough.

I think the people you have spoken are more like the elderly woman who told me that she never made a sound while giving birth and all that crying and screaming is put on to get attention.

My cousin had PMDD and had a full hysterectomy at 40. It save her life, she had suffered severe depression for years. She is so much better now.
I had endometriosis throughout my 20s and 30s, after my DS was born I had a Mirena coil fitted which was a life saver and defo helped me through perimenopause.
I took HRT for 4 yrs mainly for muscle aches and pains ( it didn’t help!) but I was dreading it stimulating my endometriosis. It did cause enlargement of fibroids which in turn caused awful sciatica.
I am now hormone free, after being diagnosed with breast cancer I had to come off HRT and take Anastrazole.
My mood is so much more stable now. I no longer feel the ups and downs. Pretty much cope with everything nowadays.
Still have all the aches and pains but I’m getting old (60)😂 and have to accept that some of the joint pain is down to a life well lived and I can no longer blame the hormones. Some of it is Anastrazole so I just push through it.

For some of us hormones aren’t the answer to everything and lack of them is actually a relief.

TBH I didnt really need to take anything!
I just found my mood stabilizing and my whole life changing around 48-50 yrs old when peri started. I do take HRT but its more for insomnia and joint pain .

I lost 7 st, started exercising, actually wanted to go out and do things, (tidy my house!!LOL). Just started to be a more positive and level headed person.
Its only when people actually started mentioning how very different I am that a light bulb went off and I realiesed maybe something had been wrong before!

Obviously everybody is different but for me it seems to be just getting off that monthly hormonal roller coaster that really helped.

I was thinking of my own mother, who would be late 80s if she were alive. I remember her suffering very badly with her mental and physical health when I was a child, which with hindsight would have coincided with her menopause. She was diagnosed with 'bad nerves' and prescribed anti depressants. It wasn't uncommon. I knew of a number of older women in a similar situation. And HRT may well have available but knowledge in the public domain was scanty, and a woman's access would be pot luck and dependent on her individual GP.

Germaine Greer was writing about menopause in The Change, published in 1991 - she was fairly against HRT, in the first edition at least, from what I recall. My mother if she were alive would be late 80s also, and was on HRT for many years, which led to her death as it happened. It was used by a fair percentage of women until those two major studies put many GPs off; it's really only been hard to get since the early 2000s because of those studies.

I agree OP, I have had some really dismissive comments from older women in the family, from 'I think you are too young" (I'm 47) to (when I explained about having HRT and an app the GP recommended "I think that's not really on when there are really ill people waiting for appointments" Hmm, thanks!