Living Well with PMDD

Is Your Health Signaling That You're In a Bad Relationship?

• Season 1 • Episode 93

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Last week, I shared how a health challenge can inadvertently make you think your marriage is terrible. But what if it IS terrible? 

Today I'll address the negative effects a bad relationship can have on your health. This may be why your health is bad...it's your body's response to the relationship. We'll look at how to assess if the relationship is bad or if your perception and emotions are skewing your vision of the relationship. Also available on YouTube here.

Take Aways

  •  Physical effects of being in a bad relationship: increased stress and strain, increased cardiovascular reactivity, increased immune response, increased inflammation, and increased cortisol, higher risk of heart disease, higher risk of obesity and weight issues, and higher risk for high blood pressure. https://www.megawecare.com/wellness-we-care/chronic-diseases/the-hidden-impact-how-bad-relationships-affect-your-health
  • Psychological effects of being a bad relationship: anxiety, depression, mood swings, social isolation
  • Are you in a great relationship going through a hard time? Or is the relationship bad?
  • A "good" relationship: You feel loved, appreciated, and/or respected most of the time.
  • A "bad" relationship: You feel unwanted, disliked, and/or rejected most of the time.
  • If there is any form of physical, emotional, verbal, sexual abuse = you're in a bad relationship
  • Your perceptions affect your beliefs about your marriage. 
  • Remember to factor in YOU. Do you have underlying issues that affect your perception? Factor those in.
  • Due to pmdd, I sometimes have false perceptions which lead to false beliefs about my marriage. My marriage is GREAT though. My perception is sometimes off.
  • Are you looking through newlywed glasses? Victim glasses? 
  • Look at your spouse's actions. Then put their actions in a different setting. Are they okay there? This can help to separate possible emotional biases you may have and help look at the actions more logically.
  • If you've assigned your emotional well being to your spouse, ending the relationship won't necessarily help. 
  • There are many ways to move forward if you have a bad relationship. You may want to start by talking about what is bothering you with your spouse.
  • Communication may be the solution.
  • You don't need to suffer in silence. Take care of your mind and body. 
  • Being in a marriage built on love and respect is one of the most wonderful ongoing experiences a person can have. 
  • National Domestic Violence Hotline: 800-799-7233 or text BEGIN to 88788

Want more support? ❤️Click here to talk with me. I'm currently offering a free 20 minute consultation call to help you get clear on where you are and how to get to a better place. 

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Music 


Ep 93: Is Your Health Signaling That You're In a Bad Relationship?

[00:00:00] Hello, this is the Living Well with PMDD podcast. I'm your host, Heidi Bradford, certified life coach, mom of five and PMDD Survivor. Happy to have you here. This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered health advice.

Hello, I am so excited to be here today. Thank you for joining me on the podcast. Last week, I shared with you about health challenges and how they can affect your relationships in a marriage and other relationships you're having. Just a follow up question from that... ask yourself, "is this actually a problem?" Like "in our marriage, is it actually a relationship problem or is this my health challenge [00:01:00] manifesting itself by annoyance and irritability in this area, the area of, um, your marriage." So if you miss that one, go listen to it. Um. I love the analogy I share in it. I think it can be really helpful if you are having a health challenge and you are married and just navigating those two things together.

For today, this is more of an awareness call or, I just wasn't sure how to put this, because I'm not gonna give you specific calls to action based on, um, what I say and what you internalize. If I got to sit down with you and talk about these things together, I probably would come up with some actual calls to action, like, Hey, these are next steps.

The topic that I chose [00:02:00] is: is your health signaling that you're in a bad relationship? I know that sounds so general, right? But there are proven effects of bad relationships on your health.

So this really screams the importance of having good relationships and also the importance of looking at your health and what is it trying to tell you at this time. Some of the effects of a bad relationship, I'm just gonna share these with you. It is well documented that there are physical ones and also psychological impacts that then affect your health.

So looking at the physical: increased stress and strain, increased cardiovascular reactivity, increased immune response, increased inflammation, and increased cortisol. Either because of the increased [00:03:00] stress and strain or whatever's going on in this bad relationship, it severely weakens your immune system, or it can by the increased inflammation.

In kind of just like disease terms, you're at higher risk for heart disease. Higher risk of obesity and weight issues, and you're at a higher risk for high blood pressure and increased cortisol if you stay in a bad relationship.

We'll talk a little bit more about "bad" relationship in a minute, but there's also psychological impacts that have been shown from looking at people that stay in bad relationships for a time. It's damaging, it's harmful for your mind to stay in a bad [00:04:00] relationship.

Some of these psychological impacts, and certainly this isn't a complete list, um. Anxiety, depression and or PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, mood swings, social isolation, which can then lead to more loneliness, and loneliness can lead to more health problems.

I'm personally in a really good marriage and the ups and downs that we experience are usually event-based or, um, emotionally based on a health challenge, if that makes sense.

We are in the military.

My husband is active duty military. In his career, we move every two years. That alone creates stress in that time period of moving. The [00:05:00] before the move, the, during the move and the after move. We go through just a lot of stress and it's good for us to know that that is impacting how we feel about each other and how much we feel appreciated during that time.

It's good to recognize that you may be in a great relationship just going through something difficult. Another thing I've really noticed that affects um, relationships are work deadlines. Whether they're self-imposed or whether they are from the outside in. We have an inspection coming up and you or your spouse may be having a hard time handling just all the logistics of that thing and recognizing, oh, this is what's going on.

We do love each other. We're really good to each other. We're also [00:06:00] very tired and we are doing a lot more mentally than we normally would do. So factor that into how much we feel good in this relationship.

I like to look at a good relationship versus a bad relationship in terms of, do you feel, okay, so good relationship, you feel loved, appreciated and respected most of the time.

In a bad relationship is in very simple terms. You don't feel that way. You feel unwanted, disliked, rejected. You feel that way most of the time, and maybe you can even point to some abuse. Physical, emotional, verbal or sexual. [00:07:00] Those are bad relationships.

So you're going to assess if it's good or bad. You need to also recognize your perceptions affect your beliefs about your relationship.

Because I have premenstrual dysphoric disorder. I know to check my beliefs about my marriage and about my relationships with my children and my friends and family, all of it based on where I am in my menstrual cycle. That is not something someone else can do for you. They can't get in your head and say, oh, you have on your PMDD glasses right now.

I mean, I guess depending on who you're talking to, right? If you're one of my clients, I can, I can dig into that a little bit. But just listening to this podcast, I can't say you are putting on [00:08:00] the newlywed glasses where everything was great because your love was very heightened and very new. Or you are putting on your victim glasses. You're feeling like a victim right now and because of that, you're seeing all of these bad things and they're blown out of proportion.

You get to look at your perceptions. And decide, is this a perception thing that I'm seeing our marriage is bad, or is this an actual bad relationship?

Something that can really help with this is looking at their actions, the other person's actions, and putting their actions kind of in a different setting.

Is it okay in a different setting? If they hit you, alright, if we're at the grocery store and he does [00:09:00] this exact same thing, he hits you, let's say it's that. Is that okay? No, no it's not. No physical hitting, pulling, pushing, um, none of that is okay. Another thing, again, looking at their actions. Are they repeating them? Is it again and again and again. So lying. Are they lying? And is it happening over and over? Is it happening in more than one area? You see it because you're his wife, but is it also something that you're concerned because it's going on at work, or you think it might be going on at work.

And then what are their actions creating? Are the words that they're saying creating more connection [00:10:00] or less? What people say is a form of action. Text messages are an action. Are they hugging you? Are they holding you? Does it feel safe? And if it doesn't, is that just because of where you are emotionally? You're just kind of feeling like, I just wanna be alone right now, or is it actually really invasive?

You get to decide. We don't have to stay in relationships that don't feel good, but we also don't need to end a relationship that is good, but is just going through a hard time. I guess I feel a little bit called to talk about this because I have seen, uh, people and relationships based on really good reasons, and it's hard, but there were really compelling reasons to [00:11:00] not stay in this relationship. And then

I have judged, and I'm gonna put it that way. I have judged that people have ended relationships on what I don't consider compelling reasons to. They still get to. But they move on and their life still isn't what they think it was going to be. Or they, they've put a lot of, um, their emotional wellbeing based on this person and how this person has treated them.

They move on and they still find that they're not getting what they want emotionally. That usually is just from, they haven't learned to take care of themself emotionally. They're in what I talk about is emotional childhood instead of moving to emotional adulthood where you are the one in charge of your feelings and your emotions.

There are ways to get there. You don't have to keep [00:12:00] ending relationships. Uh, you can. That's what's considered changing the circumstance instead of looking at your thoughts and your feelings and the actions you take from it. And looking at how those are affecting your results, not just the circumstance you're in.

Let me just check my notes to see if I missed anything on this. If you come to the conclusion that it is a bad relationship. And that your health is maybe signaling to you, "this is not good; we need to move on. We need to get some help. We need to go in a different direction." Then I encourage you to do that.

There's so many ways to do that, so I don't really wanna tell you, this is what you do next. Just ponder and look for opportunities. Maybe someone says something and you're like, Ooh. That sounds intriguing. Can you tell me more about [00:13:00] that? How did that person help you? Or how did you get to this point in your life? Just being open to receive and be really cool when you are facing like a, well, I know I need to do this thing, but I don't know how to. God can send you what you need and the time that you need it. Be open to receive that .

For a lot of women, the financial side of ending a relationship can be difficult. The fear keeps us there and stuck. But ponder.

Maybe the answer is to actually just talk to your spouse. If you're experiencing like, physical abuse, that's might not be the best approach. But in some of these other things, you can talk to them and you can say, "Hey, this is really bothering me. Are you open to addressing that?" Let's say it's [00:14:00] chronic lying. " It's causing me a lot of anxiety. Can you address that? I feel like it's affecting my trust in you and how I live my life and also my health. So that might be an option for you.

There are hotlines too. Don't feel like you need to suffer in silence.

From looking at: is this a good relationship? Is my health signaling that this is a bad relationship? And if it comes down to Yes, um, then you get to decide how to approach it and what your next steps are. In this part, look at your health. Look at your wellbeing. You get to feel loved and safe and appreciated and respected most of the time. And that's where we want to go to. That's my hope and my [00:15:00] desire and my prayer for you is to get to that place.

You can work on some communication. Maybe you haven't approached it from that direction. This person really does love you. They just are stuck in some bad patterns and habits.

If you don't feel like you're experiencing abuse, you just feel like they're not prioritizing you in your marriage. You can open that up, and maybe a change will happen. Maybe your marriage will become so much better and you can both really recommit to that.

I have such a strong belief that having a marriage founded in love and kindness is just so wonderful. [00:16:00] It doesn't mean that you don't have struggles. It doesn't mean that there's not miscommunication. You will be human. They will be human. But when we come to these situations with kindness and with openness and with this, "I love this person so much, how can we work through this?" Or "I really wanna bring this up, but I also want them to know that I love them."

It works out so much better. I can say that from experience. My husband and I aren't any different in terms of being human and sometimes losing our temper, sometimes reacting emotionally. But we are understanding of one another and we have respect for each other. We let each other be human. And we come back to that place of [00:17:00] love. That place of dedication to our marriage.

Okay. Hope you're having a great springtime. We got to the spring and we'll talk to you next week.

Thanks so much for listening to the Living Well with PMDD podcast. To learn more about life coaching with me, visit my website Heidi, H-E-I-D-I, bradford coaching.com. Until next time, keep hoping, keep loving, and remember that you are not alone.