Being Dysmorphia

a window into living with PMDD, body dysmorphia, and C-PTSD

Blood Bath ~Cycles

The resistance is thick this week.

I’m out three days now from the blood bath. Meaning, my cycle.

There is fly in my house humming, and the sound makes me want to rip my skin off.

Part of me loves to romanticize my moon cycle. How wild and wise she is, and how it’s always teaching me something like “slowing down.”

In reality, living through the modern world with PMDD is more like swiming through cement. My life becomes a Nine Inch Nails song, and everything feels impossible.

This article is mostly written for women, but I do believe men also go through ups and downs in their own ways, and maybe perhaps have their own version of “being dysmorphia.” If you are a man and have suffered from mental health conditions or trauma, I assume outside of the physical symptoms you can relate to this.

I decided to go off of my progesterone prescription after my last cycle. The risk for blood clots, cancer, and the physical period symptoms getting worse was the deciding factor in the decision.

Subsequently, I have been hit with a avalanche of fatigue and depression.

That has felt like moving through my life in any which way feels like wading in tar.

Doing the dishes, making my breakfast, responding to messages, seeing clients, running errands, doing laundry. ALL TAR. Further more, continuing my exercise regimen, starting a new painting- why, and completing my weekly writing.

It feels important to keep myself moving.. towards something. Avoiding the ever forming pit of quick sand that says if you stop, you’ll sink.

Maybe I am running, or maybe I can keeping my promises to myself?

San Deigo 2021...

What is PMDD?

Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder. Categorized as a cluster of symptoms included but not limited to my inner critic is loud, I look like shit and I hate my body, everything I write is annoying and repetitive, everything I paint could just be better, everything I do to improve isn’t going anywhere, and everything I am is shit.

AND

My body hurts, my joints hurt, I am bloated, my boobs hurt, I have chronic fatigue, brain fog that feels like early onset dementia, moment by moment amnesia, I am hypersensitive to everything, noise, smells, textures, foods. I am moody as fuck, irritable, super sad, or completely apathetic.

The body dysmorphia becomes exponential, as I am healing from an eating disorder that I’ve struggled with for over a decade. I’ve “restored” my weight I think, or my metabolism is just shot. So even though I still eat what would make an average person very lean, whole organic foods, and small window of foods my stomach can actually tolerate. I am a “normal” BMI, and I definitely don’t look sick. The BMI is BS I know, but it still somehow gives me a sense of myself when I truly have a deep distorted view.

But that’s the thing, it’s not even just my body, it’s everything I am, everything I say, everything I do, just feels like a mistake that needs to be corrected.

Even as I write, I hear, you’re writing is bad, no one wants to read this.

The deep shame of my existence permeates everything. This goes on, every month for about two weeks getting progressively worse as my cycle nears.

Correlation with C-PTSD

When I first discovered I had PMDD it explained everything, I felt relief that there was a definition for this horrific experience. Studies show that about 4% of women suffering from C-PTSD correlate with the up to 6% that have PMDD.

C-PTSD is metal health condition connected to long term repeated trauma or abuse, more often in childhood but can also occur in adulthood. Resulting in emotional flashbacks, hyper-vigilance, emotional dysregulation, negetive self view, guilt, shame, and relational difficulties.

I have experienced both symptoms of CPTSD and PMDD often in tandem with each other.

Progesterone’s role in emotional balance has to do with sleep, calming anxiety, and regulating mood.

That explains why when I lay down to “rest” It feels like a freight train of anxiety and the weight of everything painful I have ever experienced moves through my body like a hurricane.

I don’t like to limit myself to diagnoses but I do like biological explanations because i then can learn ways in which to manage it.

It explains why when I am more easily triggered into a term called toxic shame coined by Traumatologist John Bradsha. Pete Walker Refers to this term in his book Tao of Fully Feeling, Harvesting Forgiveness out of Blame.

Toxic Shame is the Being Dysmorphia. The feeling of having something fundamentally wrong with you, that you are inherently flawed and unlovable. That you are nothing but a problem to be solved or fixed. Rarely are you able to be in a moment of true self acceptance.

On the bright side it creates the appearance of being very high functioning.

Yet when I am in this spiral rest is for me is not restful, it’s a cyclone of existential terror. Ironically completing my to-do’s one by one at least keeps me in the safety of momentum, as if I am working at lifting the heavy shackles off my shoulders.

The wisdom from this is I learn very directly the power of self compassion.

Yesterday I said out loud to myself, you are doing enough you are enough. And I burst into tears.

The Biological Roots

So where did my body learn this ?

That rest isn’t safe, that if I stop I’ll sink, that forward is the only direction allowed, that I am inherently flawed and I must outrun this.

A believe a part of me froze in this mechanical behavior of moving forward towards my goals in my last relationship. It was so toxic, and I was shamed by him constantly for being “too productive, too motivated, too driven.” Yet that relentless drive is what got me out of there, it’s what saved my life. As it saved my life many times before in my adolescence. So there is a role that this part of me played as a protector.

Deeper, the conditioning of being an American, we thrive on push harder, no pain no gain, rest when you dead, #grind. This is the domination of our bodies owned by Capitalism. It is the way in which I learned to inhabit my body.

My cells listened to this story, my biology organized it’s self around this behavior, my neuro-pathways formed accordingly, and thus became this adaptation.

Obviously though, there is a cost, the pendulum swings the other way. In frenetic fatigue of PMDD, my body does show me an opportunity to test my own theory, as a somatic practitioner, to practice what I preach, to break free from the chains of conditioning that my worth is directly related to my output. To stop trying to dominate it and pump it forward like a machine. To open to this terror I’m feeling.

I feel one level of the terror is my own disconnect, my own ways in which I chose to force my body into compliance rather than honor it. My endless rejecting of myself.

Or maybe it’s truly feeling the complete breakdown and collective hysteria of the world coupled with ancestral wounding in my cellular memory, maybe it’s the unwinding of it we face in our current cultural climate.

Maybe it’s all of these things, the question is how to I build capacity to face it? Without letting it overtake me?

Overcoming Patterns

In Craniosacral Therepy if a bone is imbalanced or out of sync with the Cranioscaral rhythm, we are taught to first nudge it in the direction of ease, eventually, creating a mirror to it’s energy, after this, the bone and fascia self corrects and is brought back to balance naturally.

One perspective I have of this state of being dysmorphia is that my body’s wisdom and ways in which it’s pulling me down is guiding me towards the opportunity of merging with it. If I get into the practice of feeling and following the fear, the paralysis, and letting my wise body cry it out, scream it out, or sleep it out, It will resolve on it’s own.

I have learned this experience to be true, especially in sessions I have given and received.

However,

I have another perspective. Maybe it isn’t the only paralysis I need to merge with, Because part of me asks myself.

When am I going to put the cycle down? Maybe part of me is resisting going into it again because it wants to find another way to move the energy. Maybe these cycles or depressions are something to reimagine.

Maybe the direction of ease is actually leaning into the part that is busying and protecting? Finding out what it needs, maybe not through more busying. But becoming really conscious within the flight response.

Having a curious conversation with it too. Realizing it’s role in protecting me, not forcing it to lay down if it’s not ready and seeing it’s strengths.

Maybe part of the resilience is pushing through my cycles. Could it be that the grip of me continuing to push is actually just a part of me asking me to acknowledge it?

Could the message be, I am too full, I can’t lay down and take in more emotion? I need to move, put my feet on the earth.

More so, giving it the chance to speak about it’s resilience. Saying to it you are enough, weather you pause or not, I see you, and you are doing enough.

My goal is to find fluency, space to act and be in the light, and space to rest and be in the dark.

I wonder if I am learning to stretch my capacity for what I can hold in these polarities and these are just growing pains.

It doesn’t mean never lay down and cry, I have had many times doing just this, I will have many more I am sure. Allowing the earth to absorb my tears and letting the trees or ocean pull it out of me.

I am realizing that it could mean that fatigue can sometimes be transmuted another way.

For example; I had so much resistance to writing, and now I am feeling clear. I did lay down and rest for about twenty minutes, dipped my toe in the fatigue and existential dread, but then I got up and pushed through that resistance.

I wrote something the other week along the lines of healing isn’t ridding yourself of pain, it’s not letting it be the only one dominating the room.

That is the only problem I have with PMDD, it feels like it takes over everything.

So naturally I desire to cultivate a practice that doesn’t allow it to.

As the wind and erosion of times shapes me through different experiences, maybe my body is just learning a new way to balance.

I desire to create the space to have a conversation with it, not dominate it, or let it dominate me.

Writing this was quiet cathartic for me. I hope you also enjoyed.

Feel free to leave comments with your perspectives, and to my ladies that also experience these heavy metal periods, my heart goes out to you!

-Olivia