Living Well with PMDD

Revelations From Hindsight

• Season 1 • Episode 106

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An unexpected phone call this morning led me to a new realization. Listen in to hear the revelation that surfaced and maybe a revelation of your own will surface for you. 

Take Aways

  • NEW support coming!! Stay tuned.
  • Trent and I found out that my medical clearance did not come through.
  • Made and received phone calls to try and get the right information to the right people.
  • In pondering and considering doctor's notes, I realized that none of the notes referred to my brother passing away or my mom passing away. 
  • These two events happened within 4 months of each other and shortly after moving here. 
  • Although a doctor noticed that I was struggling with my brother's passing and she advised me to seek counseling, his death is not in her notes. 
  • Looking back, their deaths were greatly impacting all areas of my life and I was seeking relief from grief and anger due to their passing. I did not realize those were major factors in my emotions at the time.
  • I didn't bring those up very much to doctors or health professionals. I thought my struggles were due to pmdd and other life circumstances.
  • We might miss things that are affecting our emotional state that we can see later.
  • What revelations might be waiting for you to discover from your past?

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/hEQYK35ayGc 

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 


Episode 106: Revelations from Hind Sight

[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.

 welcome to today's podcast. I'm Heidi. I am excited to talk about revelations from hindsight. If you are not familiar with my work or with me, I have five kids.

My oldest is about to go to college. My youngest just finished kindergarten, and our family is about to move overseas with the military. I offer affordable quality life coaching. It really can change your life. I'm doing something new, something I've never done. I'm gonna be opening a support [00:01:00] group.

You could think of it as a life coaching membership. I was hoping to get it started in July, but I think it might not really open until August. But if you have been thinking about getting some more support, this could be a really awesome opportunity for you. Within this group, we will meet weekly, it's a place to share wins, to receive help, to gain insight and understanding on five main topics, and they follow the whole woman framework.

Whole woman wellness is what I help people with. Our conversations on a weekly basis will be around five topics: understanding your body, stabilizing your emotions, strengthening your mind, aligning your life, and empowering your future.

 The nice thing about [00:02:00] this membership is you can come into my world. You can listen if you're, you don't wanna actually get direct help. But even in listening, you will get some help. But I also really want you to come if you want help, if you're stuck, if you wanna improve in some area, whether it's body, emotions, intellectual, whatever it is, spiritual.

I'm really happy to finally be doing this. It's been years in the making, and hopefully we're really close to it becoming a thing.

In preparation for that membership, and also just because I am not very good at asking for feedback, I would love if you could take three minutes and do a survey for me.

This is really valuable information for me, because you're an actual listener, and it will help me in what I create in the future, what I talk about in the [00:03:00] future, and also, knowing what is helpful to you, what resources you really like. Is it the guest podcast people? Is it the information? Is it a mix? Anyway, is it the stories? I am really not good at finding out what do they like? I come and share and hope that it's helpful, and people message me that it is, so I keep going. So that survey link is in the podcast notes., Please, I would really appreciate if you could take three minutes to do that survey.

For today, our topic is revelations from hindsight, and this was inspired by things that happened in my life this morning. You can tell my background is different. I am in a, a motel. In military terms we call it temporary lodging facility. Think two-bedroom motel with a kitchen.

We're in process of our move. [00:04:00] We're out of our house, hoping to sell it soon. I planned to share on a different topic today, but phone call that I received and then some subsequent phone calls and things changed that. I thought, let's just talk about this today because, um, we don't always see value in hindsight. We don't always take the time to get the value from past experiences.

And that's kind of the point of today. I think as you listen, something might come to mind that is something that you can glean from that you haven't yet.

This morning I received a phone call from my husband that all our five kids and himself were medically cleared for moving, and I was not.

And I was very surprised. They've had our, uh, information [00:05:00] and stuff for a few months, but it came back that they determined I couldn't go, and it's pretty crazy timing. As I just told you, we're in a motel. Our stuff is already on a boat, and, we're expected to leave here July 2nd. So like, okay.

Together did a, a three-way call to a contact here and listened to his suggestions. He's the one that received the determination and has some insight on what we should do next.

My husband talked to some leadership within his career field, and I made some phone calls trying to get into a doctor to sort some things out.

We have lived where we're gonna move. And I know they have resources if I did need them. But [00:06:00] I also know that all I can do is just do the things that I think of and try, and things will have to work themself out. So from this place of, okay, well, how can we fix this? What needs to be done? I started to make phone calls and talking to different people at the medical center,. I called the counseling place that I went to, asked them if I could just do a reevaluation, 'cause I have not been seen since last fall, August or September.

I've been good. I've been following, kind of our plan that we put in place. Some advice we were given is if you could get into a doctor, and they could refute some of the things that are here, that would be helpful. Now, it's a little tricky because we don't have all of the information about the concerns.

As I was thinking about timing of these different appointments and the records [00:07:00] that they have. Realized that Even if you saw all of the doctors, notes, you wouldn't even know that my brother passed away from cancer, and then my mom passed away a few months after. And I had a really hard time. I went in to visit her My personal doctor December of 2024, and i, I just cried. I was an emotional wreck, and I was really sad and was having a hard time. She recommended that I could maybe get some counseling. She thought that might help. That was all based on my brother having passed away in October. Um, he passed away from cancer. And while he's been battling it for a few years, anyway, it was pretty sudden that he left us, and, it was really hard on me.

So my doctor's recommendation is like, "Counseling might really help you." And I was like, "I, I think you're right." [00:08:00] But in the notes that had been read off to me, none of them mentioned my brother passing away, and, like, some of my grief, some of my depression could be because of that.

And then my, my mom also, she passed away in February of 2025. Four months later. I did schedule counseling, but I didn't get into counseling until April, I think was ... I think it was April.

As I was looking back at things, this surfaced that I had not put together was that I think I was having such a hard time because of my brother passing away and my mom passing away. , You would think that I would have talked about that in my counseling sessions, and I would have talked about that to the psychiatrist and to my doctors, but I [00:09:00] didn't very much.

In my head, I was dealing with a premenstrual disorder. I was dealing with, having a hard time during my luteal phase. I did not think that these two life events were probably making things even worse, and maybe that's why I was having a harder time managing my emotions.

I really appreciated someone, in this process, uh, a few hours later, calling, and his wording helped reveal that that that could be what was going on. Because he asked, "So what's the problem?" He has the information of, okay, she's been determined not eligible to go, to this destination. And so he's like, "Okay, so what's, what's the problem?" I'm like, "There's no problem. I'm good to go to Okinawa. I lived there for three years. They have anything I [00:10:00] could need, but honestly, I haven't needed counseling or psychiatry since last fall, and I'm doing well." And he, he's like, "No, no, let me clarify. What's the problem with what information they have?"

And I thought, "Oh, what's missing?" And what came to mind were two things. One that I just talked about. Even if you had all of my doctor's notes, all of the counselor's notes, all of the psychiatrist's notes, which the span of my counseling was about two to three months, and then, psychiatry overlapped the counseling kind of at the end, and then went past it.

Even if you saw all of their notes, you wouldn't even know that my brother passed away from cancer, and then my mom passed away a few months after. And I had a really hard time particularly my brother passing, but [00:11:00] also with my mom passing. It, it was a difficult time for me.

I just told him, I don't think I really expressed that. I think that link might not be there, but From where I'm sitting now, looking back, I really think that was a major factor in why I was struggling and needed more help.

The second thing is there is some note of MDD.

Now, if you follow my podcast, I talk about PMDD a lot. Well, someone at some point, I think they... It could be a typo, or they misheard me, or they link PMDD to MDD, which is major depressive disorder, which is not the same as PMDD.

And I told this gentleman. " The guy preparing our packet for our overseas clearance, he read this thing off that I have MDD, and that's not true, and I told him at the [00:12:00] time that's not true, and he said, "Well, do you wanna go to medical and try to get it fixed, or do you want to appeal if they don't approve you?"

And we were on a huge time crunch, and getting our exams and stuff had taken forever, so I just, I said, "You know what? We'll just appeal if I'm flagged." And so I let this, um, gentleman know that, too. Two things I really think are missing in the determination, that I had two significant deaths in my family that really impacted me emotionally, and this m- diagnosis that I have never been told by a doctor, by anyone, that I have.

And so I do think it's a mistake that it's in there.

I feel like my grief has lifted in the past few months. Even before that there were times where I was fine, but, I've had a lot of [00:13:00] conversations with God, and, thinking about life and purpose and, remembering my brother and my mom, and I feel so much better than I did.

But I also hadn't realized how much it impacted that year of time. I knew it was impacting it somewhat, and if you did listen to some of my podcasts, I did talk about that. But I also wasn't attributing some of my hardship to that at the time. It's just interesting how we handle things and what we don't realize is affecting us.

I guess that's the next piece, that I wanted to bring out today. Something that my husband, and even talking with Mary Beth Bone, something that's come up is that when we are experiencing PMDD, [00:14:00] we don't see things clearly.

We think our life is awful, everything is bad, nothing is working out. When in reality there is something going on, and there might be something bad, but it just seems like everything is awful. The opposite of the Lego Movie song. If you are struggling with a premenstrual disorder or mood things up and down. If you can pause in that moment and recognize, "Man, I think everything's wrong.

What can I find that is right and that is good? How are things working out?" That's helpful. But also, and what is it right now that is really bothering me?

In this moment, why am I feeling anxiety? What am I thinking about? , Or why am I feeling depressed? And there's a lot to be learned there. You might [00:15:00] remember a goal that you were working towards and then that you just stopped, and maybe that's just been sitting in you and it's like I still want that thing, and you've just not really recognized that, oh yeah, I did want that thing. And if you take a minute, it might come. It might surface for you, just like this surfaced for me.

Consider, so this is the last part. Just consider for a minute what revelations does your past hold? Is there anything useful you can draw from it?

Why were you happier? What drove you to be happier? Um, when you had moments of more success, what fueled that? What was going on? And is it something you can bring into your life now? Also, are there times where you were more sad? And looking back [00:16:00] now, being removed from it, can you see, is there something there that you realize this is what was really going on, this is what I was struggling with?

Well, that's what I have for you today. Please, if you can, do the survey. I would really appreciate it. I also look forward to seeing what you guys put in there, 'cause again, I'm not very good at asking for feedback, so I'm excited to see whatever comes in.

If you just need to talk for 20 minutes, I still am offering that free 20-minute consult call to help you figure out the best next step for where you are right now. And more on the life coaching membership in the next few weeks.

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, bradfordcoaching.com. Until next time, keep [00:17:00] hoping, keep loving, and remember that you are not alone.