The Journey to Emotional Sobriety: How PMDD is Affecting my Relationship with God

Hey Y’all! I am actually so excited to be back to my blog. It’s honestly more fun for me than writing my book, and I love the journey that I am on with College is Not Godly. It just comes with so much pressure and expectations that I put on myself. But, here, especially on ‘triggers’ I just feel more free to write however I want without going over and second-guessing everything all the time. That’s also probably due to the fact that I only really write for my blog when I am inspired. With the book, I’ve created a routine that I am meant to uphold. I honestly hate routine, but I am such a procrastinator and I only move with the pressure of a deadline, so I had to do that or the book would never come out. Anywho, I’ve been wanting to just write for ‘free’ again (in a literal and spiritual sense), but I didn’t really have anything to say. But as always, God has a unique way of giving you what you want in forms that you don’t always expect. 

So today, we’re going to talk about my journey to emotional sobriety. I know I tend to be pretty vulnerable up here, but what I am about to share is probably the most ‘naked’ you will ever see me publicly. The other things I talk about I have a certain freedom of expression because I don’t feel bound to those conditions, but this is something I actively struggle with. It’s something that I am coming to terms with the fact that I might have to deal with for the rest of my life. It’s something that I honestly hate about myself, and something that I have become so insecure about because it makes me feel so hard to love. And as much as I love inspiring and helping people, I won’t pretend that freeing people from something I am still bound to feels good and fills my cup, because it really doesn’t. I just have enough understanding of the call on my life to do it anyway. It’s never just about me. 

Now before we start I feel like a trigger warning is in order. If topics like depression, mental health, relational issues and suicidal thoughts are something that you can’t handle, you probably want to skip this post. Nothing about this blog is for the super sensitive or immature. 

Okay great, now that that is out of the way, let’s get into it! So, I have this thing called PMDD. I honestly was so apprehensive to talk about this because I’ve had people call me crazy. To my face.. To others. It stings, bad, and the last thing I want to do is give anyone else anymore ammo to use against me. But honestly, I refuse to give anybody that type of power over me, to limit my authenticity for fear of being judged. This is what God gave me to do and I’ll do it until He says do something else. There’s a purpose for my pain beyond feeding into generalizations about myself. And to be honest, people are going to believe what they want about me, and it’s not my job to manage anyone’s opinions and expectations of me, anyway.

Now, I am not a doctor, so I will explain it to the best of my abilities, but if you think you may have it or want a more clear understanding of it, I implore you to do your own research. PMDD is short for Premenstrual dysphoric disorder. Here is how Google describes it: “A severe, sometimes disabling extension of premenstrual syndrome. Premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) is a severe form of premenstrual syndrome that includes physical and behavioral symptoms that usually resolve with the onset of menstruation. PMDD causes extreme mood shifts that can disrupt work and damage relationships. Symptoms include extreme sadness, hopelessness, irritability, or anger, plus common premenstrual syndrome symptoms such as breast tenderness and bloating.”

So imagine PMS x1000. I wish I was exaggerating. 

I didn’t realize I had it until I was arguing with an old friend of mine and they said, “Are you bipolar?!” and it really stopped me right in my tracks. Like they weren’t even trying to be funny, it was genuine confusion, mixed with concern. At the moment, I’m pretty sure I kept fussing, but the words never left my mind. And after I calmed down, I knew it was time to do an audit of my behavior to see if there was any truth to the idea. Up until a few months ago, I thought I was just bipolar. I was coming to terms with the idea and I was happy to just have a name to the feelings I have dealt with for so long. It felt good to know that I wasn’t just crazy for no reason, but there was a name for what I was dealing with. PMDD and Bipolar Depression have some overlapping qualities, so I wasn’t sure until I started tracking my symptoms. Coincidentally, they always started a week and a half before my period. 

Before I knew it was PMDD, I remember meeting up with my aunt and some other family members to celebrate a family milestone. I remember excitedly looking at her and saying, “Oh by the way, I found out something new about myself. I’m bipolar.” I honestly don’t know what type of reaction I was expecting as I look back on that day, maybe for her to validate what I was saying, I’m still really not sure. I just know that her reaction wasn’t quite what I was looking for and I was reminded that black people, especially Christians love to demonize things they don’t understand, especially mental health. Her eyes got huge and she so definitively said, 

What?! No, you don’t.” 

So, I’m looking at her shocked like what you mean, no I don’t?! This is my body. This is my brain. How are you going to tell me what I don’t have? I know the rollercoaster that I ride on every month. 

It’s not even occurring to me that all she is hearing is that something is wrong with me. And in her head she just doesn’t want something to be wrong with me. So, I tell her again that I do, in fact think I am bipolar. 

She says, “Well, I rebuke that”. 

Right there, I internally recognized that she wouldn’t be a safe space regarding mental health and I made the decision that I would no longer have conversations about it with her. Dinner went on and everything was fine. Maybe a week or two later, my sister and I met up with her and while we were out, it came up. 

And she said to me, “And yea, I don’t think you are bipolar, I think you’re spoiled’ and that basically I am used to not having to be accountable for my behavior. 

She looked her niece right in the face and said that. I can’t even lie, it crushed me. Still to this day when I think about her looking me in my eyes and saying it with the most assured and settled tone I have ever heard her have, it hurts so bad. To have your mental health struggles reduced to you just being a brat, sucks. And while I am spoiled in the sense that I have lived a great life full of getting things that I want, that does not mean that I just operate as a person not conscious of who they are. I have always been mindful of the space that I take up, especially with her. I have always been the first to say thank you, always been appreciative of everything people do for me. And while I definitely can have an attitude problem, especially when I am first waking up, I have never lived a life where my family hasn’t told me about myself and the adjustments that I need to make. I am spoiled, but I am not spoiled in the way that she was saying it. What hurt worse was that I could tell that it was a thought she ruminated over in her spare time because it bothered her that much and the conclusion she came to after all that thinking was that, I am just spoiled.

She doesn’t understand the mental turmoil that I go through. She didn’t understand the processing I had to go through to be okay with even saying that out loud. And instead of being met with empathy and understanding, my diagnosis was demonized and rebuked. Mental illness and mental health is not demonic, it is a part of humanity. Stuff like this is partially why the black church is so far behind. There is no real safe space for the human parts of us that are not pretty. We demonize what we don’t understand and our egos are too big to call things what they are. Laying at the altar, praying against the “spirit” and doing all that running, jumping and shouting is not the solution to real mental health struggles. Some things require medicine or therapy. We really need more education, tools and resources, if we want to effectively save souls. 

I didn’t really have anything to say to her when she said it, I was so shocked. But, as I looked at her I saw fear. She was scared of what being bipolar meant for me. She was scared of what it meant for her. If I confront my demons, it would force her to look at hers. I knew it was projection. I also knew she was indoctrinated, I knew that her growing up and having mental health issues reduced to “spirits’ affected how she would be able to receive what I was saying. I also knew that she had shown signs of religious psychosis. So, I did my best to not take it personally because she really wasn’t even speaking to me at all, she was speaking to her own demons.  And honestly as I look back I feel bad. For her. For the people who aren’t as strong-minded as me that went to people like her aching for a safe space to be met with a brick wall. I felt bad for all the souls she missed out not being able to see outside of herself and her own trauma. 

But, this is the reality of mental health in black families. It just isn’t talked about enough. And half of our family members aren’t even emotionally intelligent enough to have a productive conversation about it. 

But God also had to show me in that moment that some stuff He reveals to you, is just for you. It isn’t for everyone to understand or validate. Some things people won’t get, even family and that is okay. It doesn’t make her a bad person, I knew her intentions were pure. We all can only understand through the lens in which we see life and God. I felt bad hers was so limited, but it also made me so grateful to have parents that truly understand mental health. And not just parents, but pastors too. It’s one thing to have your parents validate your emotions, but for them as your pastors, people who study the Word, who know the Bible front to back to validate how you feel, you begin to feel safe again. You feel free. Not like a walking demon. 

My PMDD isn’t horrible every month. I notice the symptoms are magnified by triggers for me, so some months I forget I even have it. This past week and a half, I have unfortunately, in incredibly poor timing, been triggered back to back. This time around, it was the worst it had been for awhile. What did all the triggers have in common? They were all brought on by men. 

Lol before I even get into it, this is not a man-shaming post. Two of the people who triggered me are my family and I love them dearly, so this is no hate. But, I have noticed that due to men not really having a safe space to properly express and deal with their emotions they sometimes don’t know how to handle mine or they irritate me because their lack of expressiveness shows up in ways that affect the people around them, without them doing it intentionally. Last week, I cussed my cousin out. He did something that he knew we wouldn’t like and his explanation to prove that he cared about our feelings was that he hid it. It honestly wasn’t even my situation to be mad at, but because it was something that I had personally dealt with him before, it triggered me beyond belief. One of my triggers is feeling like I am not being heard or understood. If I already expressed to you before how something you do makes me feel a certain way and you continue to do that thing, I assume you don’t care and I will lash out until I feel like I got my point across. Now here is where the conviction comes in. The Bible talks about the importance of being slow to anger. In my own personal devotion, I have been convicted about how I live out the fruits of the spirit, the main ones I struggle with being self-control and gentleness. You would think me being a virgin would mean that I have great self-control and while in some ways I do, in many I still don’t.

This summer has been so transformative for me. I have done so much work internally to grow and show up in the world as someone that I am proud of. I have gotten so much better at calming down and not allowing things to get me out of character. I felt like I was fully healing and that nothing could really get me to lose my cool like it used to. Now I am somebody who can go from 0-1000 very quickly. It takes very little to set me off, but as quick as I go up is as quick as I come down. As soon as I finished cussing him out, I felt so bad. I immediately apologized. I knew I said things to intentionally hurt him, I was just trying to make sure he got the point, but it wasn’t effective. Definitely not Godly. And when I cussed my cousin out and called him all types of ungodly things, I was brought back to a space where I so freely was sharp with my tongue regardless of how it impacted others, if it made me feel good. A place where I thought I was free from. And I felt like I completely reset my progress. 

This was just the first trigger, but just keep in mind that after that argument, I was kind of just getting disgusted by the lack of male emotional maturity present in the world, so my tolerance and patience was thin.

My second trigger was my dad. I won’t tell the story because honestly I would be crushed if my dad got online after being upset with me and told all our business. It’s also doesn’t need to be explained to get my point across, all it would do is magnify the instance and not bring light to what I am actually talking about. Just know that this week, my dad hurt my feelings when he was frustrated with me. And the problem isn’t that my feelings aren’t valid, because they absolutely are, the problem is that my reactions based on my feelings are not okay or productive. Unfortunately with having PMDD, my main symptom is pure rage. I am not talking about your regular anger. I am talking about genuine, red-hot, blinding anger. It’s anger that I feel deep in my bones all the way to my core. Like I physically feel it. I get so angry and when I can’t act on the anger how I would like, I default to crying, which makes it even worse for people trying to calm me down. Just imagine a snotty, bubbling mess that is yelling and screaming and crying. It feels like I am manic. It’s terrifying for all parties involved. You know the peace that surpasses all understanding that the Bible mentions? Imagine that, but rage beyond your comprehension. I know people like to laugh and joke like, “I like crazy”, but this rage that I have isn’t cute. It’s debilitating. It ruins relationships, especially when I don’t feel safe enough to articulate the feelings behind the anger. I was so angry with my dad and really my feelings were just hurt. And while I knew deep down, it didn’t deserve all of this energy, it’s like I couldn’t talk myself down from the ledge. The thing with PMDD that people don’t get is that it can’t just be contained. Once that fire is lit, it burns until it can’t anymore. I try to regulate myself, or just calm down, but it doesn’t work. It would seem like it would be best to leave me alone when it gets really bad and while I do want that in the moment, leaving me to my thoughts is even worse. I can’t turn my brain off, so it goes and goes with no bounds and creates false conclusions for the security I wanted, but didn’t get. Sometimes, if it gets really bad and I allow myself to lean too far into the emotions, I get suicidal. It’s rare, but it happens. It did this last time. Here's something I wrote right in the middle of it (in regards to killing myself): “I'm sure everyone will be sad initially, but they will be okay and they will eventually move on. The only reason I don’t kill myself is because I don’t have the guts to and I don’t want to try to take that power from God, that is His choice.” And it’s weird because even as I wrote it, it didn’t feel like I truly meant it. I’m not a suicidal person at all. I knew I was just upset, I knew my emotions were amplified by my PMDD, but I couldn’t stop myself. I know it’s not an issue I can deal with alone which is why I am taking the steps to get the proper help as I don’t want to bleed on the people I love and push them away. 

When I went to Baltimore to get the last of my things, I carried all of these things with me. I even cried on the way there. So of course, when I get there and I go to grab some food, something else sets me off. I took my great grandma’s luxury car to Baltimore because my other grandma wouldn’t let me use hers. My baby, Kendall the Kia is unfortunately out of commission. I knew that my dad was wary of me taking the car because my driving isn’t the best. I’ve already had a reckless driving ticket, I already tore the bumper off my car a month into getting it and the reason I don’t have a car now is because I ran over a huge boulder in the middle of the road and it shifted the entire inside of the car back. The bottom line is letting me cross state lines with her car was a risk, an expensive one. One that if something went wrong, he would be responsible for. There was already a lot of back and forth about me going being that my dad felt like I didn’t need the stuff that I left anyway, so it would've been too perfect for something to go wrong, so he could say, “see this is why you didn’t even need to go.” I was determined to not let him be right about me. I cared for that car like I was driving Jesus himself around. So, imagine my feelings once I park in the grocery lot and a beat-up car next to me pulls in and as he is getting out, I hear him hit my door. Immediately I say, “I know this fat a** didn’t just hit my grandma’s car!” I start going in. Immediately at 1000. The man knocks on the window and is like, “Ma’am, I didn’t hit the car”

“Yes, you did, I heard it!” 

I’m still going in, as he heads inside the Sunny’s nearby. I got out of the car to check the damage, mentally preparing myself to have to piss my dad off and it was no damage. The man didn’t leave as much as a scratch on the car. Of course, I felt bad, but at this point, this is a common theme with me. Lash out, feel bad, apologize after the damage is done, repeat. It’s not okay. And even if he did hit the car, it wasn’t intentional and it was not that serious. And yes, I was fighting with many other emotions, but that didn’t justify my behavior to a total stranger. And it probably hurt that man’s feelings to be called that unprovoked. I was sick to my stomach. Just asking myself what happened to all that growth? What happened to living by the fruits of the spirit? What happened to people meeting God when they meet you? 

One night, I was crying to God about the weight of it all. The PMDD, the new life I’m building, my daddy hurting my feelings. I pleaded with God to not allow these emotions to harden my heart and make me bitter. I just asked him to please have mercy on me and forgive me for improperly processing. I was so upset that it felt like every time I take three steps forward, I take ten steps back. But God spoke to me so clearly, I don’t think I’ve ever heard him as clearly as I did that night. 

He said; “I will give you grace for your humanity. This is your condition, it’s not a reflection of your heart. I will hold space for your emotions. Feel them, because you are allowed to (& can’t control it), then give them to Me.” 

He set me free that night. I am not defined by my bad moments. In fact, they are just that. Moments. Not meant to fully define a season of growing. It doesn’t mean I am regressing, it just means that God is showing me the areas that I still have work to do. And while I absolutely do need to learn how to better manage my own triggers and increase my emotional capacity, there is grace for the areas I am still growing in. I am learning to feel the waves without letting them crash down. I am always reminding myself that growth and healing isn’t linear and progress isn’t measured by perfection. God still loves me, He still wants to use me. I have to get help, not out of fear of punishment, but so I can be an effective vessel everywhere I go. God can’t do nothing with bitterness and who am I to live in unforgiveness anyway? 

THE END.

Whew, okay, I know that was a heavy one lol. Before you guys ask or worry, yes I am okay. Like, genuinely. I’m not just saying that, so you don’t freak out. I genuinely am okay, I’m actually happy. The scary thing about PMDD is that as soon as your period starts the symptoms go away, almost like magic. Like I can literally feel the weight lifted off my shoulders as soon as the egg releases. It’s very weird, but I’m just grateful to be out of it. I never thought I would actually look forward to my period coming, but here we are lol. I have a lot more symptoms of my PMDD, maybe I could do another post on it if that is something that you all may want. I know it is not talked about as much as it should be. 

But yes, I am okay which is why I feel comfortable enough to talk about it because it’s not “active” right now. But yes, you should also check on your strong friends who seem like they have it all together! They might just be suffering silently. Anyways, I love y’all. If you read this far, thank you sooo much. I hope this helped somebody. Hopefully me telling the whole world my business isn’t in vain lollll. Stay blessed, stay prayed up. The enemy knows our triggers. 

TH