u/Automatic-Willow-582

I’ve suffered with PMDD for the last 10 years. Usually right after I ovulate I start getting increasingly anxious, insecure and more sensitive. I also get very depressed and have suffered with fixations on self harm during that time. I know pmdd can create cognitive distortions and make it hard to maintain relationships. My friend says she thinks she is also experiencing PMDD, but her symptoms were all the same as mine until sometime last year. I messaged her about a situation that was sensitive and asked her to understand and be there for me. She didn’t like what I was asking for and she escalated from a civil conversation to personal attacks, creating a motive for my request that wasn’t at all true, pathologizing me and telling me I would die alone, that I have a long list of people who would not understand me or my kids, and she’s just another villain in my story, telling me I twist situations to be what I need them to be, I could see a hundred therapists and all of us would be wrong, that I’m not raising my kids well. It was honestly a LOT of very hurtful accusations and none of them landed with me as lived experiences. I stayed as level as a person can through that kind of conversation, I think the worst thing I said was “if you think I’m so terrible why are you still asking to be friends, I told you we could just agree that we have boundaries that aren’t a good fit for each other” and asked why she was saying all of that and she came back the next day and said she wasn’t sure what she was thinking, after giving some thought she could understand why I asked what I did, and said she could work with me and we’d compromise on those things. I said “you said some really horrible things that don’t even really allow me to feel like you like me, and I never thought that was how you saw me”. And she said “I was being mean because I felt like you were mean, and I was having a bad pmdd day”. We haven’t spoken since more than superficially, but in that conversation the night prior she had used things I’d told her in confidence and vulnerability against me, and just made me into this horrible person and kind of wanted to glaze over it with an excuse of tit for tat, but I never said anything personal and I looked a long time to be accountable and DID ask my therapists for their opinions on what I said. 😳 I am wondering how often PMDD causes cognitive distortions. For me, it can create thoughts of self harm, and it magnifies irritability I already have. It may reduce self control but it doesn’t give me new and horrible beliefs about my loved ones. It can make me paranoid that my friends don’t care about me, or someone’s mad at me. It just doesn’t make me hate people I love. I’ve tried a long time to wrap my mind around that and move on and forget what happened but it hurts me all the time. I miss my friend, and everything I thought we had before this happened, but I don’t know how to ever trust again when there’s no accountability and so much time has passed it just feels off now. I grieve this though and wonder if anyone else experiences pmdd this way and that was valid, or if it was more like an exposure of the thoughts and judgements we keep to ourselves, and a loss of a charitable filter. I guess I figured regardless if she doesn’t want to seek help, I’m nervous to ever go through that again or guess when it’s an okay time to approach. This was my closest friendship, and one of the only supports in my life. I’ve grieved the loss a long time but just can’t figure out why this happened.