Stop Repeating The Same Fight Every Month

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Ever feel like your relationship hits the same wall every month? We’ve been there, and we’re unpacking why PMDD can turn a tiny spark into a wildfire—and how to stop living in the loop. We break down how surface fights about chores, texts, and tone usually point to deeper beliefs about safety, value, rejection, and abandonment. When PMDD heightens emotional sensitivity in the luteal phase, every delay, sigh, or raised voice can feel like proof of the worst story in your head. The fix isn’t fewer conversations; it’s better ones.

We walk through a practical framework to move from reaction to repair. First, name the core belief driving the argument: “When voices rise, I feel unsafe.” Then take ownership of impact without blame, and invite your partner to accommodate the sensitivity—lower intensity, use clearer check-ins, and protect tone. We share the 90‑second pause to break the trigger–reaction cycle and a simple conflict plan that signals space without abandonment: specific words, timelines, and a commitment to revisit. Curiosity beats criticism every time; a question can save you from a spiral an accusation would guarantee.

You’ll also hear how past wounds resurface in present conflicts and how to map those links so you can heal instead of recycle them. Expect actionable prompts to identify your repeating fight, the primary emotion beneath it, and the earliest memory it echoes. By reframing arguments as mirrors—not battles—you’ll start releasing the monthly pain pattern and rebuilding trust, respect, and intimacy. If you’re ready to stop the PMDD argument loop and reconnect with steadier communication, hit play, save these tools, and share them with your partner. If this helped, subscribe, leave a review, and tell us the one fight you’re retiring this month.

Transcript

Naming The Cycle Of Arguments

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Today, I want to talk to you about how to stop getting stuck fighting about the same thing every single month in your PMDD relationship. And I basically call this the cycle of arguments. And I really recognize when this is happening with my private clients because I remember in my journey with PMDD relationships, I was fighting about the same issues every single month. The same things kept coming up. And that's when I realized that there was nothing new going on. There was like we could talk about the same thing. We don't come to a conclusion. We're fighting about it. We're getting upset about it. We're getting triggered about it. And I was like, just continuing to talk about the same thing again and again and again didn't solve any problems. It just made us more frustrated. And it made us feel like every single time that we did talk, that it was going to turn into an argument. It was going to turn into a fight. And it got to the point where we were trying to minimize communication just because every single time we were talking, we were arguing. So it's almost like I remember this month in PMD where we were like, oh my gosh, we did so good this month, you know, and we were like, we did great. And it was because we really stopped communicating. Like we minimally communicated. It was like, good morning, good night, good morning, how's your day? Good night. It was very repetitive. And I noticed neither one of us was happy with that level of communication, but it felt safe for us because we kind of subconsciously started to minimize communication as a way to stop arguing. But then the intimacy went down, the connection went down. I was talking more to friends and family than I was to my partner. And that didn't sit well with me. And it didn't, it didn't sit well with my partner at the time, but it was almost like I don't feel safe enough to come out of this pattern of minimal conversation because I feel like we're going to go back to fighting. So he was really at a place where he wanted to keep the minimal conversation. And I kind of saw a decline in our connection, in our intimacy, in our just feeling like I was in a relationship. It almost felt like I was just checking in with like a not even a friend. Like it had gone beneath a friend because friends you want to talk to, you want to tell about your day, you want to do this. But no level of communication was really safe. It was very robotic. It was like I was looking at my text messages and they all said the same thing. Good morning, how's your day? Good night, good morning, how's your day? Good night. It was this thing. And I said, you know what? I have to get to the bottom of this. And so I'm going to teach you the tools that I use for myself personally and then also with my private clients because I also saw that this was a pattern and specifically in PMDD relationship. So if you've been at that point where you notice that every single month during your Ludeo phase in PMDD, you and your partner end up arguing and fighting about the same things, just in different ways. It's just coming out differently. You know, like you think it's about the chores, but it's not really about the chores. You know, you think it's about feeling supported in a certain way with the finances. And it's not really about the finances. Like there's an underlying issue that you really have with your partner. And that's the root. When I got to the root of what was really going on, how I was really feeling, how my partner was really feeling, it stopped the cycle because a lot of times the things that you're arguing about, the things that you're fighting about, they're surface level things. Do they matter? Yes, they matter, but it's what is beneath. Well, they didn't text me back, right? You know, as an example, oh, they didn't text me back quick enough, or oh, they didn't text me back with the same level of emotion that I did. And it's not really about the text itself, it's about the feeling and the emotion that you had as a result of not receiving that text. It's about the story that you told yourself in your mind as a reason as to why they didn't send that text. And when you have premenstrual dysphoric disorder, a lot of times you can get stuck in your head and telling yourself a story and it's magnified in your luteal phase. And for the partners, when you're dealing with someone who has PMDD, you know, you are already feeling like you're in a deficit sometime. Like maybe you are not getting your emotional needs met. And so every single thing that they're doing or they're not doing is all of a sudden magnified. So it's not just that they didn't cook you dinner. It's, I don't really know if they care about me. I don't know if they love me. I don't know if they appreciate me. So the fact that dinner wasn't made, it now hits home in a deeper way. It now hurts even more. And you're now offended even more. You feel rejected even more, you feel unsupported even more because you're already having this deficit of not having your emotional needs met. So that surface level thing about not having dinner on the table or not cooking for you, or not just making sure the house is clean, or not doing certain things, it really aggravates you even more, it frustrates you even more, and it hurts even more. Because a lot of times when you're arguing, you're coming off, you know, aggressively with like the yelling and the name calling and all of these things, there's hurt that is beneath that. There's defensiveness is coming because there's hurt beneath that. There is fear beneath that. But if you're just addressing the surface level behavior, you're not really seeking to understand what's really going on with you. What's really going on with you? Because I remember in this particular relationship, my partner started to speak to me in a way that he never spoke to me before. Um, and that's where hurtful words started to be like my trigger. Every single time that my partner at the time would say hurtful words, it would like really trigger me in a way where it would bring up so much. And I would be hyper-focused on the tone, hyper-focused on the words that were spoken. But it wasn't really about the tone. It wasn't really about the words that were spoken. It was about how it was making me feel. I didn't feel respected because in the beginning of our relationship, he would have never spoken to me like that. And I could tell in relationships and in with my clients, when you start to lose respect for your partner, you start speaking to them differently. When you're in the beginning stages of dating and getting to know someone and getting into the relationship and everything's going great, you know that your partner can trigger you in certain ways. You know that your person can trigger you in certain ways, but you hone back on your reaction because you really, really like them. Maybe you're falling in love with them. Maybe you're magnifying all these amazing things about them. So do they trigger you in the beginning? Yes, absolutely. No one's perfect. And even if you're really compatible, your partner or your person may do things that trigger you, but you have the capability of pulling back and kind of like, okay, I didn't like that they did that. Let me let me gather my thoughts and go talk to them about it in a calm way. Like, let's have a conversation about this because you respect them, because you value them, because you want to continue the connection, because you know that it may be a situation where it's so early on that if you trigger them too much that they may say, you know what, I don't want to do this. I'm not doing this anymore. Like the commitment is not fully solid. So then you're kind of a little bit walking on eggshells a little bit. You're kind of being very careful with your words, you're being very careful with your mannerisms. You don't want to scare them off. You don't want to make them feel like maybe this is not the person for me. So you do have the ability to speak to your partner in a way that is respectful, even when you disagree, even when you've gotten triggered. Because if you think back to the beginning, you did that. But over time, when you've gotten comfortable, when you've gotten complacent, when you feel really comfortable, like we're in this relationship, like they're not going anywhere. When you get triggered, all of a sudden that's when the disrespect comes. That's when all of a sudden they do something to trigger you and you immediately react. You don't stop and you don't pause and you don't think about it and gather yourself or talk to a friend or talk to your counselor, you don't do any of that. You just immediately react because you're not removed the buffer. And that's what's causing the toxicity in all of your arguments and your fights, because you've stopped having that level of respect and value in your partner that you had in the beginning. If you really think back to the beginning, you are doing things when you're arguing that you would have never done in the beginning because who would sign up for that? In the beginning, my partner would be so sweet and so nice and so this and so careful with their words, because they they wanted to ensure that I was going to commit. And they knew that if they came and started yelling at me, cursing at me, saying, you need to do this, you need to do that, I would have been out the door. There's no way. I would have been like, you know what, I'm good. I'm not doing this. But because they had that level of respect, because that had that level of value, they were like, okay, let me gather myself. Let's talk about this. And so tone and the way that you're saying what needs to be said really does matter when it comes to the arguments and fights. And so in today's episode, we're really gonna break down the cycle of arguments and PMDD relationships and how to finally stop having the same fights month after month and getting to the root cause, not just the surface level issues. If you keep talking about the surface level issues, you're gonna get tired, you're gonna get burnt out. And then every single time you talk to your partner and say, hey, let's let's talk about this, they're not gonna want to talk about it. At some point, they're gonna get tired of talking about it because there's no resolution. There's no, okay, we talked about this and now it's not happening again. When I'm talking about the cycle of arguments, it is every single time that you're arguing, there's no resolution. There's no conclusion to it. You don't see a point. Because what you're arguing about is not just about the dishes, it's not just about the text, it's not just about the tone. It is usually an unresolved wound that is a lot of times triggered by PMDD in the luteal phase. So I remember when I kept talking to an ex about hurtful words. You need to, you know, just be mindful of how you're talking to me because you every single time that you talk to me about this, you know, it's really hurting my feelings. And I started talking about my feelings. And I think, no, no, no, I know that it began to be annoying to him. He was just like, oh, here we go again. And he was very vocal about that. Again, that was something that never would have happened early on, early on in the relationship, and I start talking about my feelings, and you're telling me, oh, here we go again. That would have never happened. But the respect level was so low from having the cycle of arguments. So, this is what happens when you have arguments again and again and again. You're you start to not respect your partner a lot because you're like, I don't even understand what you're saying. What you're saying is not logical, it's not making sense. This is stupid, this is dumb. Why are we doing this? Why am I even here? Why am I waiting? Why am I wasting my time arguing with you about something that we're just gonna argue about next month? Like they're not seeing the value in having a conversation. So the arguments are not like, okay, we need to sit down and talk about this, we get a resolution, and then we move on to something else. It's we talk about the same things again and again and again. There's no resolution. And then we end up more pissed off. We end up like the intimacy is pretty much gone. I don't even, you know, I'm not even getting along with you in the other phases of my cycle because we're always arguing about things that happened during a specific time. And so I got to this point where I realized I wasn't fighting with my partner about the tone. I was fighting with my partner about an underlying issue, about past pain, about past things that were said. And that's when everything shifted and changed for me. I stopped talking about the surface level things and I started getting to the root of what I was really feeling. Like, I'm feeling this way. Why am I feeling this way? Why am I, you know, reacting this way to a tone? Because there would have been times where partners would have been pretty much loud in the past and it never really bothered me. But for this particular time, I'm like, this really, really bothers me. So when you have premenstrual dysphoric disorder, your brain experiences heightened emotional sensitivity around perceived rejection or abandonment. Perceived. Let me break this down for you. When you have PMDD, your PMDD brain experiences heightened emotional sensitivity. So it's not that you're just sensitive to someone yelling at you or someone talking to you crazy or someone popping off. It's not just that. It is magnified. Meaning, if my partner at the time was yelling at me or raising his voice during an argument, when I was in my luteal phase, it was even louder. It was even more offensive. I felt even more offended, more rejected, more abandoned, more unsupported, more, more, more. PMDD magnifies everything that you're experiencing as far as your emotional sensitivity. And so when you come and talk to your partner about it, they may not think it's a big deal. Like, what's the big deal? Like, I'm just, I'm upset. You know, my ex at the time would say, like, I feel like I can't even have any emotions around you because you're so sensitive. And when you're when you're in your luteal phase, you are sensitive. And I remember I would get so offended because I was like, oh my God, who wants to hear that them expressing their emotions is them being too sensitive? But in reality, when you're in your luteal phase, everything is magnified. And if you don't have a partner that has the emotional intelligence to be able to recognize during this one or two weeks, this seven to 10 days, my partner is not able to handle this behavior. So I need to be able to have the emotional intelligence as their partner to speak to them in a way where I'm not triggering them, I'm not triggering that heightened emotional sensitivity. This is when I counsel a lot of partners and I tell them how to strategically customize how they're operating within the realms of their relationship so that it doesn't cause damage. And if you feel like, oh, I don't, you know, I don't feel like I should have to do that. There's a level of ego there where partners would say, I shouldn't have to filter how I talk to my partner just because they're in the Ludeo phase. Well, then you don't need to be with someone who has premenstrual dysphoric disorder. That's it. If you're not willing to accommodate someone having PMDD and the fluctuations that happen in different phases of their cycle, that's fine. Go be with someone who doesn't have premenstrual dysphoric disorder. That's what I have to really be honest with that. Because if your partner does not have the emotional intelligence or the tools to be able to shift when you're shifting, then you're always going to have an argument. You always are going to have a fight and it's going to cause a lot of damage in your PMDD relationship. So partners really need to humble themselves and recognize that the individuals who have PMDD, number one, we didn't ask to have this particular disorder. Like I'm pretty sure every one of my clients who have PMDD do not want to have this heightened emotional sensitivity every single month. It's kind of annoying because you kind of look back on it and was like, well, when you're out of it, when you're out of your luteal phase and you're out of PMDD, you really can see things clearly and like, yeah, it really wasn't that big of a deal. But when you're in the moment, it felt like it was that big of a deal. And we have to deal with the reality that we are sitting in. The reality of the situation is when you're in your luteal phase, it feels like everything is heightened. And as someone who has premenstrual dysphoric disorder, you have to really come to terms and be self-aware and say, it's me. It's that Taylor Swift song that I always talk about. It's me. I'm the problem, it's me. And what I mean by that, it's not I'm the problem, like I'm blaming you or I'm shaming you, but you need to recognize that you are the one that is experiencing this heightened emotional sensitivity. You are the one that is feeling this perceived rejection. And what I mean by that, you're perceiving that your partner is rejecting you. You're perceiving that your partner may be triggering you on purpose. You're perceiving that your partner is abandoning you. That doesn't mean that that's what your partner is actually doing. That is your perception of your partner's action based off of the level of cycle that you're in. You're in your luteal phase, you're in PMDD. So you're perceiving things differently. There's a distorted perception of what you're experiencing, and you need to understand that that is your reality. So the smallest trigger feels like a huge threat to you. When my partner used to yell, it felt like a threat to me. It felt like, oh my gosh, this person doesn't respect me, they don't value me. Like there was a whole story that I was telling myself in my mind as a result of them raising their voice. And even when I went as far as to explain that to my ex at the time, like, hey, I understand that you may not be doing this on purpose and I get that. However, when you yell and you say hurtful words, this is what's happening for me in my body, in my brain, in my emotions. And if you're a partner, you need to be able to receive that and say, oh, okay, I'm, you know, I didn't understand that that's how I was coming off. I didn't understand that you perceived me that way. Moving forward, I will adjust in this way. You need to be willing to adjust to accommodate, just like when I had exes who had PTSD, and I recognized there's certain scenarios where I couldn't do certain things without it becoming a perceived threat. I had to adjust for their disorder. I had to adjust to what it is that they were experiencing. And if your ego is so high that you feel like you shouldn't have to do that, then again, do not be with someone who has a disorder or a condition that you are not willing to accommodate. I'm gonna repeat that. Do not be with someone with who has a disorder or a condition that you're not willing to accommodate them. Then that means that it's not a good fit. It is not a good fit if you're not willing to read the room, study your partner, recognize what they need in any given moment and be willing to shift and change as long as it doesn't do harm to you or anyone else. I'm not saying harm yourself in the way that you're adjusting. I'm saying recognize it. Recognize, okay, my partner is not good in this way. If I do this, then my partner's not good. You don't want to hurt your partner. You don't want to trigger your partner, you don't want to cause them to suffer even more in a condition or disorder that they may have. So you have to be willing to adjust because that's part of being connected to the person. If there's so many other things that you value about being with that person, that's part of the package. That is part of the package. So unless you really address the core emotions that are happening underneath, you're gonna keep replaying the same argument again and again and again. Different topic, same pain point. Different situation, same pain point. And so today I'm really gonna talk to you about what that really looks like. And the first tool that I want to use that really, really helps me is identifying the core belief behind the argument, behind the fight. The core belief. What was I believing as a result of what my partner was doing? So I'm gonna use my example of hurtful words, right? Whenever my ex would say hurtful words to me, and I'm not condoning verbal abuse. I'm not saying you should get to a point where your partner is verbally abusing you and you just need to be okay with it. That's not what I'm saying. Let's just use tone, for example. Because someone could say something that is not meant to be hurtful, but the tone in which they say it can be a trigger. And so for me, tone is a trigger, is and was a trigger. The way that you speak to me will determine the perception that I have of what it is that you're saying. So after every fight, after every argument, I would always think if my partner yelled at me that I felt fear. That was the emotion that kept coming up for me. I felt fear. And for my ex at the time, they weren't trying to invoke fear on me. They felt like that was the only way that they could get their point across, is if they yelled or they didn't have the capability to express themselves without getting, you know, loud and getting like not even loud in a way of like, I'm speaking loud, but loud in an aggressive way, like, why are you doing this? And like that's what I mean. Like there was so much aggression behind it. And I felt a level of fear that had to do with my childhood trauma. Because when I was growing up in my adopted home, whenever my adopted father would yell at me, it would be followed by physical altercation. Let's just say, and I'm not saying altercation like it was back and forth. It would be, it would be followed by a physical act, whether it was like slapping me, beating me, strangling me, like all of these, these very hurtful, harmful things to me physically was followed by yelling. And so for me, when my ex used to yell, I used to have fear that that's what was gonna come next. When my ex used to yell and get in my face, I was like, I felt like the fear of, okay, he's gonna hit me. Did any of my exes ever put their hands on me? No, thank God. But that's the level of fear that I get within me every single time someone starts to yell at me in an argument. Not when they're loud. If you want to be loud, you know, all the time, and that you can be loud and happy. Loud and I just want to talk like that doesn't trigger me. It is when we are having a conflict, we are having a fight, we're having an argument, and then all of a sudden you get loud with me and you talk to me aggressively, automatically, my brain and my body, if you don't know, you know, trauma is stored in the body. My brain and my body is like physical altercation is coming next. They're gonna do something to you. You need to get the heck up out of here. You I either get into the mode of I need to leave or I need to argue back. I remember with one of my exes, I remember one time I had so much rage as a result of them just yelling and yelling and yelling and poking and poking and poking. And I'm just like, please don't talk to me lightweight. Please don't talk to me. It was almost like the more that I was asking for them not to talk to me that way, the more they did because they felt like, don't tell me what to do. Like you can't tell me how to talk. And I'm like, oh my gosh. And when I reacted and I yelled, I didn't like that version of myself. That is so the opposite of who I am that I just vowed, like I'm I cannot be connected to someone that is gonna bring that side out of me because I didn't like it. I felt horrible afterwards, and it just and you know, even my ex wasn't even affected. I think it was almost a point where they actually liked it because they weren't the only one who was doing the yelling. It was kind of like, yeah, like let's just, you know, fight it out and blah, blah, blah, like I Cantina. And I'm like, I am not doing that. Like, because I don't feel good about myself when I yell at someone. Like, I just don't, I don't do that in my home. I like a peaceful home. And when I say peaceful home, I don't mean like a quiet home. Like we have music and stuff going on all the time. But I mean I like to be able to speak to people with a level of respect that it doesn't have to get to that point. I have so many tools in my toolbox as far as communication is concerned. Like it, it shouldn't, it shouldn't get to that point where we just can't sit and have a conversation. And if you feel like in order for us to, you know, get through something that we have to fight and argue in a way that's loud, and but that's traumatic for me. It's traumatic and toxic for me. I know people that can yell back and forth and they have no issue. I'm not one of them. I'm not judging people who that's the way that they process things. They need to argue and fight and yell and scream and you know, throw things and then they feel good and they could, you know, make love and have sex and be great. I am not that person. I don't have it in me. And I recognize that, and I'm very self-aware. And it has to be a level of, okay, compatibility where if that's the only way that you know how to communicate with me, that's a problem. Like we need to, we need to talk about this. Like, are you willing to adjust in that way? And so the first tool, like I was talking about, is identifying the core belief. My core belief is when you yell at me during an argument, I don't feel safe. Once you know the belief, you can heal it and not argue about it. And what I mean by you can communicate that to your partner in a way where they're understanding the impact that they're having to you. So what I was able to do was not talk about what they were saying, not talk about their tone. I talked about myself. When you yell at me, I don't feel safe. And I took ownership of it. The reason why I didn't feel safe didn't have anything to do with them and had everything to do with me. So that's the next thing you need to do is take ownership in the way that your partner's actions are impacting you. If you've been, uh, I had a client like this. No, no, no, no, no, not a client. I'll use my um my ex, who had been cheated on in the past. And because he was cheated on in the past, every single time I would have my phone on do not disturb or didn't immediately answer their call, they had got a trigger that I was cheating on them. As for me, what was communicated to me was a level of accusation. You're doing this and you're doing that, and accusing me of cheating. Now, attacking my character is not the best way to get a positive reaction out of me. Meaning, I don't like when individuals attack my character because I'm a very, very, very loyal person. I'm a very honest person, I'm a very open person, I'm a very communicative person. If you tell me that something that I'm doing is bothering you or it's triggering you, I have no issue adjusting as long as it's not causing harm to someone else. I'm like, okay, thank you for letting me know. I'm I'll do my best not to do that again. I'll shift and change and adjust. But if you come at me and telling me that I'm cheating because I'm not answering my phone when I'm really at the spa, because I turn my phone on, do not disturb when I'm at the spa so it doesn't go off. And if I come out of the spa and I'm all relaxed and this is actually what used to happen, and I would be so relaxed and like, oh, I feel so good. And I would have all of these text messages like, what are you doing? Like all of these accusations, that didn't sit well with me. That did not sit well with me because we weren't addressing, hey, when you don't answer my phone call, I feel that you're cheating on me because of my past. Like, let's recognize where it's coming from. Let's recognize I didn't cheat on you. I've never cheated on you. I've never shown you that I have the character to do so. If so, I don't know why you would be with me, but I never showed a sign of infidelity, but yet I was being accused consistently. So we're not addressing the issue meant we're talking about what my actions, but we're not really talking about did you really heal from your past infidelity in your relationship? And sometimes you can think that you've healed and then you get in another relationship and it becomes a trigger, and you have to go back to the drawing board and you have to heal it all over again. I've had to do that so many times because in every relationship, it brings out different things out of you, things that you may have thought that you've healed in the past and things that you're over, but you get with someone and then all of a sudden it comes out. It's completely normal. It doesn't mean that you're not supposed to be with this person. It means that you're supposed to address what is coming up as a result of being with this person. When you get into a new relationship, your partner is gonna bring something out of you. They're gonna bring great things out of you, and then they're gonna bring maybe traumatic things out of you. That doesn't mean that you're not supposed to be together. It means you're supposed to recognize what is this person bringing out of me? Let me address what is coming up and let me work on that. I had to let my ex know I feel horrible that you were cheated on. I've been cheated on knowingly, like in the moment, and then I've been cheated on and found out later on that I was cheated on. Like, so in both instances, I know how traumatic being cheated on is. Sympathize and empathize with that. I feel horrible that that happened to you. And I know that it changes you, and I know that there's this level of fear that is attached to it when you get in new relationships. I understand all of that. I have the capability to be like, you know what? I tell me what I need to do to make you feel safe and to make you feel comfortable because I never want to make you feel that that's something that I would ever, ever do. Because I not just because that's not in my character, but because I know what it feels like to have that done. And I have a level of accountability to my my spiritual relationship with God that I believe you reap what you sow. I don't play about certain things. I don't play about character things. I don't play about my character. I'm not, number one, I'm not going to damage any part of my life for the sake of someone else. I'm not going to indulge in any selfish desires or selfish whatever and damage my character. I care too much about myself, my relationship with God, my relationship with my child. Like there's such an level of accountability that I have within myself that I set my own boundaries. And maybe I'll do an episode on that, on really having a moral compass and having these, these self-imposed boundaries within yourself that that you should know if you're connected to me, there are certain things that you're not going to experience as a result of being connected to a person like me. Because I have boundaries within myself outside of being with you. So you should feel safe because, okay, I know, I know Rose is not going to do this because she's this. She has the character of this. She sets the example of this, not just for herself, but for her daughter, for her clients, for all the things. So that's the level of depth that we had to really go into. We really started to, he got back into counseling for what happened in his past relationship. Because what ended up happening is he had to heal his past in order for it to stop impacting our present. So it didn't make sense to talk about what was really going on with my actions and the things that I was doing without going back to what I was triggering within him. That was getting to the root of it. And I do this with my clients so many times. You come to me for one thing, and you think that you're coming to me for, like I said, hurtful words. But what's really happening is I'm getting to the depth of what's really going on. And then I give you tools to not just heal. You know, I have a thing about hearing the word just healing because it's not just that simple. It's not just, oh, I'm just gonna heal. It's gonna come up again. I'm gonna give you access. Actionable tools as to what you can do when it comes up. I will never tell you that you will never experience another trigger as a result of working with me. I will never tell you that. Like you're gonna work with me and never experience another trigger. What's gonna happen is I'm gonna give you the tools that you can utilize when the triggers come up. And that's what you know, my partner did at the time. My ex-partner did. And so the next thing that we did was break the trigger reaction pattern, right? So what I needed my ex to do was I understand that when maybe I don't answer my phone immediately, right? That you start to feel a certain way. You start to get triggered, you start to think that I'm cheating, all of these things. You need to pause before you text. You need to pause before you call and blow up my phone. Because what used to happen is he used to immediately react and say all these horrible, horrible things, horrible accusations, horrible things. And I would immediately look at my text message and be like mortified. Like, what the heck? And then he would have to go back once he calmed down and delete all of these messages. Like, so have you ever been with someone where they're saying all these things to you and then they delete a whole bunch of text messages because they don't have the ability to pause before you text, pause before you call me and cuss me out on my voicemail. Pause before you there's a there's a power in the pause. And that's why I tell my clients there's so much power in the pause. Emotions last 90 seconds. What you do with any given emotion within that 90 seconds is going to determine your reaction. Give it just 90 seconds. Yeah, don't ignore it. Don't not re just within yourself before you do any actionable things, pause. There's power in the pause. So that was the next thing. And it's a habit. It's a habit that you have to start to do because a lot of times you have the habit of immediately reacting. I feel this way, so I'm gonna pop off and say this. I feel this way, I'm gonna grab my phone and start texting. I feel this way, and I'm gonna go and call my friends and badmouth my partner. You can't take back some things that you say. That's the problem. The problem is when you're saying all of these hurtful things, you can say, Oh, I'm sorry, my bad. I thought that you were blah, blah. Yeah, but I still remember what you said. As much as I can do the work and I can do, I can whatever, I still remember what you said. And it's the audacity of speaking to me this way. I remember when my ex used to do that. And I used to be like, who does he really think I am? Like my the version of me that was being portrayed was just like, I was just, I remember thinking to myself, I was like, if you really feel this way about me, if you really think that I'm capable of doing this, if you really think that I would do this to you, why are you with me? Why would you ever be connected to someone who you really think is gonna do this to you? Like, this is wild. If I woke up every day and felt like my partner was gonna go out and cheat on me, or if I woke up one day and thought every at any moment my partner was gonna slap the crap out of me and beat me, I'm not gonna be in that relationship. There's no way that my nervous system would be able to, you're gonna start to get sick because your nervous system is not built to be in that level of heightened hypervigilance for that long. Yes, there are moments where you could feel that level of like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, but you're not, you're not built to stay in that space for the whole time. So you're not gonna survive. You're gonna burn out from being in that level of hypervigilance for that long. You can't live like that. You can't sustain yourself. It's gonna impact your work. I've had clients that have gotten fired because they've been living in that land of hypervigilance for so long that it's like they can't function on anything else. Because they're in that cycle of argument. We're always arguing, we're always fighting, and it's like right before work or right after work. Then you're at work and you can't really focus on anything. It's gonna impact you. It's it's ruining your reputation as an employee, it's ruining your reputation as a parent because now your child does something and all of a sudden you're going off on them because you're triggered about the argument that you just had with your partner. Like you're now becoming a different version of a parent than you would have been had you not been in the cycle of arguments. So the next tool that you can use is curiosity instead of criticism. This is so powerful because instead of immediately accusing and criticizing your partner, be curious. So, in my example with my ex, if my ex really thought my phone was on do not disturb while I was at the spa because I was cheating on him, be curious. When I pick up the phone and I call you back and I'm like, hey, you know, what's going on? Blah, blah, blah. Ask me. Oh, what were you doing? Hey, I noticed I called you and the phone went went straight to voicemail. What were you doing? Were you busy? Like, what you got going on? And it's like, oh yeah, I was at the spa. I was doing this and this and this. And then allow that curiosity to disarm your defensiveness. And it brings a level of compassion back into the communication. Then internally, in his mind, he could be like, oh, she was at the spa. Okay. It's kind of like when my ex started to get in the habit of doing this because I kind of helped him develop a habit of this, he started to be like, oh my gosh, babe, thank you so much for helping me with this because I know that I would have gone off. I know that I would have said this. And now I don't have to live in this land of apologizing for a reaction because I never really had it. Like it was like you're so happy that you were able to get to a point where you weren't immediately criticizing. You were being curious instead of criticizing. So now you don't have to feel guilty about going off for something that really wasn't a thing. Did your partner do this maliciously? That's a question. If you're my private client, you know, I always ask you to say this. Ask yourself a question before you get offended. Did your partner do this maliciously? If the answer is no, then why are you being offended? If the answer is no, that your partner just did something and did it trigger you, yes. Did they do it on purpose? No. If they didn't do it on purpose, okay. Then you have a level of compassion and say, okay, well, they didn't mean to do that. And, you know, that's just on me. Like, I, you know, I probably need to take it a different way. Like you can have a level of accountability to where you're not blaming and shaming your partner. Then they start criticizing you and you get into the realm of blame, shame, criticism, defensiveness, argument, fight again and again and again. And so basically, what you need to do is what I do with my clients is create a pretty much a plan of when how you're gonna handle conflict in your PMDD relationship. What is the words that you're gonna say to be able to develop the power and the pause? I need a break. I can't talk about this right now. For me, I I literally go move my body. So I'm like, I'm gonna take a walk. And then when I get back from my walk, can we talk about this? I need to move my body to get because if I'm feeling triggered, even slightly, I just need for me, it's it goes heavily in the body very immediately. And I just need to calm down. I need to breathe, I need to calm down, I need to get outside, I need to get my thoughts together, I need a process, I need a break. And so, whatever your thing is that you need, you need to have a plan with your partner so that when they hear you say this phrase, they really can give you the space that you need. They can back off. Because if you don't have a plan and your partner's trying to talk about something and you're trying to say it in the moment, and they're like, well, I don't even talk about this right now. I don't, I don't care that you need a break. I need to talk about this right now because what you're not gonna do is walk out on me. Wa, we're blah, blah. Like if it's that level and you don't have a concrete plan, they're not gonna back off. You're gonna, it's gonna make, it's gonna trigger them even more because you're gonna leave them alone with their thoughts. And then they're gonna be like, oh, you're just gonna leave me. Like you're gonna end up escalating the fight instead of de-escalating it. So you may say, I'm just trying to walk away so that we don't fight, but you end up fighting even more because in conjunction with the problem and the fight that you have, now you're walking away, which, you know, in some cases can make you look guilty. Because they're like, oh, you don't want to talk about this. You must have done what I think you did, or it looks like you're abandoning them. It looks like you're rejecting them, it looks like you don't care about them, it looks like you don't value them, it looks like you don't respect their feelings, like you don't care about how they're feeling, like you're just gonna go off and do this and leave me alone while I'm crying. Like there's all of these stories that are told in your mind if you don't have an actual plan. Meaning, if I tell you that I need a break and I'm taking a walk, it's because I do want to talk about the conversation, but I want to do so in a way that is not gonna be damaging. I respect you too much to talk to you in the state that I am in, because I know if I say something, it might hurt your feelings or it might, I might say something that I don't mean. That's what the plan helps you do. It helps your partner be safe and secure in you taking space and pausing. And it sets a boundary about when to revisit, right? And so you have that level of emotional safety, like, okay, they're taking a break, but we are gonna talk about this and we're gonna talk about it in a way where we're gonna break ourselves out of the cycle of arguments. And then the next thing you do, you really need to rewire your PMDD brain and see it as this is not a fight. It's not a war, this is a mirror. This is something that we we need to process and we need to deal with. So ask yourself, what is this fight showing me about my own past, my own unhealed pain? When you shift it from blame to self-awareness, you can stop recycling the pain and you can start releasing it. I need to release this so this doesn't cause a problem in my relationship. And so basically, that was the thing that my ex had to do. I need to release, I need to heal my and heal and have tools to heal my um fear of infidelity so that it doesn't keep happening in my relationship. So I can release this from being an issue. And that's what gets you out of the cycle. That's what gets you out of the cycle of arguments. Because then it's like when whenever you know he felt like, oh, I think that she's cheating, or I think this because of his past unhealed pain, he could be like, oh, this is something that I need to deal with. This is something that I need to handle. So I wanted, I want you to just ask yourself right now, what is one fight that keeps repeating in your relationship? What is one thing that you keep fighting about with your partner, with your person? And then also ask yourself, what is one emotion that keeps coming up for you? Is it anger? Is it sadness? Is it fear? For me, it was fear. For my ex, it was also fear. I had fear of being, you know, the arguments turning physical and it being a place that's not safe for me, fear of no safety. That was what emotion kept coming up for me when the hurtful words came and when the loud words came. My partner at the time kept having a fear of I'm gonna get cheated on, a fear of infidelity, a fear of abandonment, a fear of rejection. And then ask yourself, what past experience could that emotion be tied to? For me, it was my childhood. For my ex, it was a past relationship. And then I want to encourage you to really share that with your partner. Let your partner understand why you're triggered by the things that you're triggered with. So let them know a lot of times it has nothing to do with them. It has everything to do with you and nothing to do with them. So this cycle of arguments and PMDD is not about fixing your partner. It's not about saying, oh, I need to patch you up and fix you so that you're never triggered and so I'm never having to be held accountable for my actions. No, it's not about fixing, it's about having the tools to heal the patterns that keep happening again and again and again every single month in your relationship. Once you start addressing what's beneath the surface, you can stop reliving the same painful fights every single month and finally start having peace in your relationship, which is what I know that you want. So if you're ready to stop arguing about the same things every single month and you want to help get to the root of what's really going on, I would love to support you with my one-on-one council private sessions. And together we're gonna identify what the triggers are, uncover where it's coming from, and then rebuild your connection with the tools that are specifically designed for what it is that is going on in your PMDD relationship. All of my tools are customized to what is going on in your PMDD relationship, not for just one cycle, not for just one phase of your cycle, not for just, you know, when you're in your luteal phase, because it drips over into all phases of your cycle. PMDD will really rip the band-aid off of every issue that you've ever had and everything that you're trying to cover up and pretend that's not there. PMDD won't let you ignore the things that are going on. So help me help you give you the tools so we can heal this so that you can stop fighting the same battle every single month and that you have the tools that you need. The link is in the show notes. Go to inlove with pmdd.com. Remember, you're not crazy. You're in PMDD, but with the right tools. You can stop reacting to every single trigger that you're having in a way that's damaging and start reconnecting. So until next time, we got this. I love you.