PREMENSTRUAL SYNDROME AND YOUR RELATIONSHIPS!

Do you suffer from PMS every month? Or almost!
Literature, medical and otherwise, states that between 60 and 85 % of women suffer from a mild to severe PMS every month.

The yearly surveys I have conducted for the last 6 years show that women are going through a debilitating list of symptoms during that phase of the month, to name just a few, ranging from:
Nervous tension: · 97% go through mood swings; · 78% feel they are more irritable during their pms; · 67% feel more anxiety;
Cravings: · 60% have increased appetite or cravings for sweets;
Depression: · 70% have diffused emotions; · 57% have a lack of concentration;
Physical sensitivity: · 70% have swelling of extremities; · 62% have bloating; · 70% have breast tende
ess; · 38% have painful ovulation;
Compensatory behaviors: · 65% have the impression to look for a fight; · 76% have increase energy, increased need to clean up; · 23% feel the need for beauty care; · 22% are prone to shopping; · 15% buy compulsively.

What I find most astonishing in reading their list of sufferings, is that 40% of women consider their condition as ‘normal’ and 60% confess seeking medical assistance. Of those latter, 40% are prescribed medication of some sort and yet 37% of that 40% say medication did not help overall, or at times only in the beginning.

My own expertise finds there is no set rule as to when, how and where women will begin experiencing painful menstrual symptoms, either at age 32 or 41, while others started their first cycle plagued with the beast of PMS.

My own findings are that PMS symptoms reveal unresolved issues in life, either from last month, or from 30 years ago. We all have been wounded and we have a subconscious drive to complete our healing. Since we more or less have forgotten exactly what wounds we went through, and at times even if we remember well, we did not do all the necessary healing to be totally happy and ourselves. We need a trigger to help us reconnect. PMS symptoms serve just that, namely the result of unresolved issues we push aside and forget or forbid ourselves to revisit and heal. The minute you go through a repetition of any symptoms in your life, be they emotional, physical, and spiritual or else, it means you are not listening, and even less understanding.

That’s right - PMS has a healing message!
My whole research about PMS as a mind-body connection was instigated by my own ‘new PMS’ while I was in a specific relationship. I was realizing my partner and I were incompatible. It took me a while to figure out why I had suddenly started to be plagued with PMS, as I had never experienced any since my youth. That episode and my digging deeper proved totally enlightening. In fact, every woman in my office who did the prescribed introspection exercises never would have thought PMS and their subconscious were so well connected.

Stop blaming Men, and here is why PMS is more rampant in married women?

How can we understand what hides behind the fact that research stipulated a higher percentage of married women have PMS compared to those who are single?

As I learned many skills to practice psychotherapy and help my clients help themselves, I encountered Dr. Hartville Hendrix’s approach, namely the Imago Therapy in his book Getting the love you want! As a matter of fact, reading and meeting him proved phenomenal in helping me construct my approach in understanding the old brain in link with our PMS symptoms. The rest became history as I decided to apply a Neuro-Linguistic Programming exercise to help women understand what pleasures could hide behind their sufferings. Imago Therapy helps us understand there is no coincidence either in our choosing such a partner over another. Our psyche recognizes unresolved old wounds that we subconsciously know will be triggered by that partner. There is no coincidence when it comes to our emotional, psychological or body symptoms. Where PMS comes into play, PMS is a message, not the wound itself. The more we get stuck on the messenger (the symptom), the less we hear the message (the healing to be).

We all need a guide to help us find the path and decipher the subconscious messages

My job then is to reflect to women they are not having these symptoms for nothing. Hard to believe for every woman in my office, I know. I explain to them that their symptoms are the result of a belief, and but for one little pleasure we harvest (consciously or subconsciously) that serves us somewhere, we would never endure all those symptoms.

Ask yourself what your symptoms might be trying to convey?

As I always do after I have written all the sufferings down on the board in front of them, I ask what pleasures these pains could be hiding! Every time, I get that look as if I come from Pluto.

I assure them we will find at least one.

As our old brain is pretty darn insecure and animalistic, we do not realize why the suffering is there. Our suffering then becomes a distorted proof of something, but what? There lies the intimate answer for everyone!
Start listening from the compassionate heart in knowing you are both wounded and can heal if you allow the openness and guidance to help

If you are in a relationship that is worthwhile keeping and nurturing, I urge you both to become acquainted with active listening, active communicating between you two, taking real time to hear, understand, and help each other. For it is in those conflicts and moments of turmoil that a healing wants to emerge. Left unattended, you both will dwindle down and dig a space between yourselves and gradually become apart even if you stay together. At times, it will be necessary to connect with an outside guide or therapist. Do what you must do to help yourselves grow together and understand what hides behind those arguments and unresolved wounds.

Without becoming the other’s therapist, listen from the healer within.

We all have heard we should not play therapist with our closed ones; at times I agree, at other times I disagree. My own experience shows me that I am blind at times and I then need the objective eye to help and guide me out of the tunnel visio
I have.

Even though I am a therapist, my spouse has done his own consultation elsewhere when he needed and so did I, but I will never forget some precious moments when he helped me understand and let go of some of my own wounds. No one at that specific moment could have been a better ‘therapist’ for me. Without knowing it, I needed him to bounce that back to me. And he did with so much love and open heart, that moment could never be bought elsewhere. And if need be, I exchange the favor.

However, I truly feel as a loving spouse or companion, we should be able to become so understanding, compassionate and inspiring for the other that if we end up needing a therapist, it would not be because you have been enduring bad situations for the last 10, 20, 30 years or more as I see at times in my office.

At those moments, I really wonder how come some couples have endured for so long what they recount not liking in their relationship. I often feel bewildered and ask myself if it is possible that so many people have the ‘martyr complex’. They both have moments of being totally unfair, unloving, unpleasant, mean, derogatory and so on in their relationship.
As much as we have not necessarily learned to feel loved and been taught how to love by our parents, as much we have to explore our desires to become a better person, a better parent, a better ‘loving’ human being. Numerous studies have proven that to feel loved and on purpose in life has the greatest beneficial influence on our health and quality of life in general. May you choose the best path for you.

Let’s learn to heal why we suffer, we will heal all of our femininity as well.
Blessings:
Pauline Houle