Ruby Irons

Life has a way of teaching us lessons we didn’t know we needed to learn. After my divorce, I found myself navigating single parenthood with four kids, rebuilding my life, and – surprisingly – feeling better than I had in years. The PMDD symptoms that had once threatened to overwhelm me seemed manageable, distant even. I was on medication, yes, but I was feeling good. Really good.

And then I fell in love.

The Calm Before the Storm

Dating again after divorce wasn’t in my original plan. In fact, I had sworn up and down that I never wanted another relationship – ever! But life had other ideas. Six months after my divorce, on what should have been a peaceful Sunday afternoon with the kids away at their dad’s, I felt something unexpected: loneliness.

That feeling became the catalyst for change. With the help of therapy – and finding a wonderful therapist on my first try – I began to heal. I learned about setting boundaries, managing what I could control, and letting go of what I couldn’t. I was building a new life, one careful step at a time.

During this period of dating and newfound love, everything seemed perfect. I felt stable, centered, happy. So I made what seemed like a logical decision at the time: I stopped taking my medication.

When Lightning Strikes

The return of PMDD hit with the force of a thunderbolt, just after our wedding in mid-2021. This wasn’t just a bad mood or temporary irritability – this was PMDD back with a vengeance, and this time, it brought a new symptom along: rumination. What makes rumination particularly insidious is how it takes normal concerns or observations and transforms them into dark, obsessive thought patterns that feel impossible to escape.

Innocent family dynamics became sinister in my mind. I would fixate on normal parent-child relationships and twist them into elaborate narratives of favoritism and rejection. What started as a fleeting thought would grow into an all-consuming story in my head, each chapter darker than the last. The most maddening part was that even as these thoughts spiraled, some rational part of me knew they were distorted – but knowing that didn’t stop them from feeling overwhelmingly real in the moment.

These weren’t just passing thoughts – they were like a record playing on repeat, each rotation digging deeper into my psyche, each cycle adding new layers of detail to scenarios that existed only in my mind. I found myself analyzing every interaction, every photo, every casual comment, building them into evidence for narratives that had no basis in reality. The shame of harboring these thoughts only added to the spiral, creating a vicious cycle of rumination, shame, and more rumination.

My new husband, watching the woman he’d married seemingly transform into someone else, someone evil, later confessed he thought our marriage was doomed to end in divorce. The person he’d fallen in love with had become, in his words, unrecognizable. I was no longer just dealing with anger and emotional volatility – I was caught in a spiral of dark thoughts I couldn’t control.

The Out-of-Body Experience

Perhaps the most terrifying aspect of this period was the awareness. I could see myself, hear myself being what I can only describe as “a complete bitch.” It was like watching a movie where you know the protagonist is making terrible choices and saying terrible things; but you’re powerless to stop it. I could recognize my behavior was harmful, but I couldn’t seem to hit the brake.

This disconnect between awareness and control was very real, and very devastating. I found myself doing the very things I knew would damage my relationships, watching myself say hurtful things, yet feeling unable to stop. The shame that followed these episodes was almost as bad as the episodes themselves.

The Way Back

The difference between this experience and my first battle with PMDD was the support system I had in place. My husband, despite his fears about our marriage, approached the situation with kindness and understanding. When I finally reached out to my doctor to restart medication, I wasn’t doing it alone.

This time, I also had the wisdom of experience. I knew what PMDD felt like, I understood that this wasn’t “just stress” or “just marriage adjustment.” I recognized the symptoms for what they were, even if some – like the rumination – were new to me.

Lessons Learned

The decision to stop taking medication when everything seems fine is a common one, but as I learned, it can have serious consequences. PMDD isn’t like a cold that you can “get over” – it’s more like diabetes or thyroid disease, a condition that requires ongoing management.

I’m lucky to have a partner now who understands this. Together, we’ve learned to recognize the signs, to communicate openly about what’s happening, and to face this challenge as a team rather than as adversaries.

Coming next in “My PMDD Journey” – Breaking the Thought Spiral: A deep dive into rumination and its grip on the mind.