Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is a Triple J podcast.
Being that like actually I was in a good bubbly mood most of the month was actually so surprising because it feels so overwhelming.
Hi, Dee with you for the Hookup Podcast. And if you're new and if you've never heard of us before, welcome. And this is where we talk about all things love, sex, dating, and relationships. We have two episodes a week, one on Tuesdays with Poop and I, where we hear from you.
And then on Thursdays, I like to delve a bit deeper into a topic, either with an expert or chat to someone about their story. And a couple of years ago, I did an episode on PMDD. which is premenstrual dysphoric disorder with Dr. Theresa Larkin, who is a professor from the University of Wollongong. And we basically did a everything you need to know about PMDD.
So just quickly, PMDD is something that impacts people who menstruate. It's similar to PMS, but a lot worse and an actual diagnosable medical condition. Some of the symptoms are depression, anxiety, anger, crying, paranoia, sleep problems, headaches, breasts, tenderness, acne, nausea, muscle pain, food cravings.
And to be properly diagnosed with PMDD, you have to have at least five symptoms that start seven to 10 days before you get your period. And then those symptoms have to go away after you start bleeding. And for a lot of people, it can be one of the most debilitating conditions and fully fuck with your relationships, your work and your everyday life.
And for some, you know, they can even become suicidal. So this is a bit of a heads up that we are going to be talking about that in this episode. And like I said, in that ep with Teresa, we basically looked at it through like a medical lens, right? But we have never actually heard from someone on the hookup who actually experiences PMDD.
So in this episode, you're going to hear from a new author called Emma Hardy. She's just released her debut book, Periodic Bitch. I love the title, which is all about her journey of experiencing PMDD, getting diagnosed, and the impact that it's had on her life, her career, and her relationships. It's such an incredible book. It's so well written. And, you know, it's not even just her story.
She explores a lot of the myths and taboos that surround menstruation, as well as a lot of the history of quote unquote hysterical illnesses and the stories that we tell about women with conditions like PMDD. So let's get into it. Emma, thank you so much for coming into the studio.
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Chapter 2: What is PMDD and how does it differ from PMS?
affects like quite a few people it's very under it's very under diagnosed so like I when I was researching the book I found that's between like three and ten percent of people which is like who menstruate which is a big gap of people but it's like extreme irritability before your period in like the seven to ten days before your period before menstruation extreme irritability you have suicidal ideation often and you're unable to work and
interpersonal conflicts with friends, families, partners. That's kind of like the big DSM criteria for it. For me, I just felt like I was crazy. It felt like I was out of control. It feels like I can't trust myself. And it feels like I might do something insane at any moment and to be unable to stop myself. So like the feelings that I have before PMDD is this like kind of building of tension.
And then afterwards, I like, I'm almost fearful of what I could have done to myself or other people.
And so when did you realize that this was something that was related to your menstrual cycle? Because, you know, for a lot of people and even just like, you know, people who experience PMS might just be like, oh, I just assume I'm like a moody person. Like it's, it's so to be able to link it to a particular part of your month. I think takes a lot of time, right?
Like when did you realize that this was not just who you were?
It took me a really long time. Um, like I went in and out of different psychologists being like, I absolutely in tears devastated one week, I'd come back three weeks later and I'd be like, I don't know what I was upset about.
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Chapter 3: What are the debilitating symptoms of PMDD?
I'm feeling totally fine. And the psychologist would be like, that's amazing. Smart goals are really effective. Um, and I just didn't know what was wrong. And then I went to. one GP to get another mental health care plan and another kind of luteal phase. This is this old man at a bulk billing clinic who just kind of wants me out in like 15 minutes.
And he's like looking through the list of things that he can diagnose me with because it's not quite depression, it's not quite anxiety. And he's like, oh, maybe it's this thing, PMDD. And I just think this is the most sexist thing ever that he's diagnosed me with this. He hasn't asked me any questions. He hasn't really diagnosed me. He just said it's probably related.
If it's like cyclical coming back, it's probably related to this. So I kind of got that diagnosis. It felt kind of true, but I didn't really believe it just because it seemed so unlikely that he could be right by diagnosing me so flippantly.
And so it wasn't until 2020 when things got really bad and obviously the kind of pressure cooker of COVID made my symptoms completely unbearable that I started going through a proper diagnostic process, which the book kind of traces. So that was probably five years later that I realized, yeah, this is actually definitely it.
Bizarrely, he was right, like ridiculous to think that, but he was right.
We'll talk about your, you know, your journey of trying to deal with that and treat it. But can you talk us a little bit about that pressure cooker of COVID and what you were experiencing and how you said it just got so bad? Because I think the thing that I love so much about your book was how raw and honest it was.
But how, I guess, you really captured what that experience of being in lockdown could really have impacted people's mental health. And you were experiencing a new relationship. You moved in together, which happened to so many people during that time. What were you experiencing and how were you feeling when you were like, actually, this has gotten really bad?
Well, I think obviously COVID impacted everyone's mental health. Like I didn't have a friend who was doing their best or thriving during that time. But for me, it made that cycle even clearer. And also because you're so pressure cooked in with other people, you're surrounded by other people, your housemates are always home, your partner's always home. That they're seeing you nonstop.
There's no time for you to kind of step away and maybe self-regulate or even just like put on a different mask. Like I actually thought about the fact that going to work, leaving the house, doing all these different or taking all these different roles throughout my day actually allows me to put on a different mask and pretend differently. to cope.
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Chapter 4: How did Emma Hardy get diagnosed with PMDD?
I don't think it's necessarily wrong to be angry, but this kind of anger was becoming destructive. I did kind of fear at times that, like, not a violent person, but I did fear that because the anger was so strong in me that I could – had that potential to be a violent person. And I think that was also a really confronting thought as well. It's that, like –
I don't know, we all want to think of ourselves as good people, but we all do contain these multitudes within us. And when we're unwell and that's brought to the forefront and we're feeling angry, it's not the face that we want to see in the mirror.
Absolutely, absolutely. And you actually, a huge part of the book was you intertwining your experience, right, of this anger and sitting with that and realizing that about your cycle and yourself. Also with like feminist horrors and the history of other women who have experienced
quote unquote this is how it was historically called like hysteria hysteria right what did you discover looking into that kind of history and researching all these myths and taboos around women that maybe in hindsight actually probably just had pmdd yeah they might have just had pmdd or they might have just been righteously angry as well like when we look um at a whole bunch of female monsters which i became obsessed with because obviously i'm looking at myself with the mirror i'm thinking you're so angry could you be violent that feels like this monstrous feeling this impossibility
And it just feels too big to be true as well. And I looked at like a whole bunch of different female monsters. And the things that kept coming back was that like they... or the things that they had in common tended to be that they either ate too much, they were devouring people or things or meat, they were too angry.
So if you look at Carrie, she couldn't control her emotions on prom night when something horrible happened to her. She'd been bullied, she'd been picked on, and she got angry, and that is the moment where she becomes a monster. Before that, she's just a bullied woman, but when she shows that anger and it turns violent, she's crossed that threshold. She's no longer...
She can no longer go back to being normal after that. She's a monster. Or, yeah, they are angry or they have too much pain. So like Medusa, the myth of Medusa, told a different way. She's a woman who was raped and people could no longer look at her because the amount of pain that she experienced was felt like it was turning them to stone.
So all of these myths of monsters that we have are really just like emotional women. And so I started to look at these myths and I was thinking about the ways that I was feeling like I was an emotional woman and how I kind of felt like society hates emotional women. We want to see them as monsters.
We want it to be something to be feared, like feeling too much, becoming too angry, devouring too much, consuming too much. We want that to be like a parable of tragedy. We want that to be a monstrous thing that we avoid. And I started to wonder if my own anger might feel more manageable If I wasn't so scared of it.
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