6 Ways to Cope with PMS Anxiety and Mood Swings

Do you notice your anxiety, mood, or motivation shifting with your cycle? In this episode, I’m diving into how hormone changes, especially during the premenstrual phase, can impact women with high functioning anxiety and anxiety in general, and how you can start working with your cycle rather than pushing against it.

I’ll be sharing practical, compassionate strategies that you can start using today.

Welcome to Calmly Coping. I’m Tati Garcia, a licensed therapist and coach here to help high achievers stop overthinking and finally feel calm and confident. If that’s what you need, then hit subscribe. Let’s dive in. This has been an often requested topic, and it’s finally time for me to dive into it. If you’re someone who deals with high functioning anxiety, you might already spend a lot of energy managing your thoughts, staying organized.

And holding it all together on the outside, even when things feel overwhelming on the inside. But during the premenstrual phase of your cycle, otherwise known as PMS, uh, premenstrual syndrome, everything can feel amplified. I often hear clients describe this time as when their anxiety gets louder, you might notice things such as more catastrophic thinking.

So thinking of the worst case scenario. Maybe more physical symptoms of anxiety, self-doubt, sleep disturbances, overwhelm and irritability, and maybe feelings of low motivation paired with guilt about not being productive. So this can also look like depressive symptoms as well. So there might be this tension between what you expect from yourself and what your body and brain actually need and can actually do during this time.

You might feel pressure to keep pushing through, to keep performing, keep showing up and delivering, but instead, you might feel more tired, more sensitive, or more emotionally raw. And this is going to look and feel different for everybody, and maybe it can sneak up on you. So you don’t always know that it’s your cycle causing this shift until it starts to feel too much or maybe even someone else points it out to you.

That can leave you feeling helpless, frustrated, or even ashamed for struggling, especially since there’s so much shame around the menstrual cycle. Talking about periods and although that’s starting to turn around. It’s still deeply ingrained that this is something we’re not supposed to talk about. But here’s the truth, this is not a failure.

It’s actually your body communicating with you. This increase in anxiety and sensitivity is linked to the natural drop in estrogen that happens during the luteal phase or hormonal shift. That can make your nervous system more reactive and your tolerance for stress a bit lower. Before we get into coping strategies, I wanna say this.

If your symptoms feel intense, persistent, or maybe they’re significantly impacting your daily functioning, then it’s important to get the support of a healthcare professional. This can look like going to see your gynecologist who can help to rule out medical or hormonal causes, and a therapist or a psychiatrist can support you in understanding whether what you’re experiencing may be something like PMDD, which is premenstrual dysphoric disorder.

Or PME, which is premenstrual exacerbation, and help you to explore treatment options. You don’t have to go through this alone and support is available. I’m not gonna go into those disorders specifically in this episode, but you can certainly find a ton of resources online. There’s also ia, PMD, which is the International Association for Premenstrual Disorders, which is a great resource, and I will link in the description.

Let’s take a moment to understand your cycle. Your menstrual cycle is more than just your period. It’s a series of hormonal shifts that affect how you feel, think, and show up in your life. So first, there’s the follicular phase. This begins right after your period, so you might feel more energetic, focused, and motivated during this phase.

Then there is the ovulatory phase. This is often your peak social and energetic window in the few days around ovulation. Then there’s the luteal phase, which is after ovulation. This is when hormones drop, and this is where many experience increased anxiety. Moodiness, fatigue and sensitivity. And then of course there is the menstrual phase.

So this is your period itself. You might experience lower energy potential for physical discomfort and a natural inward pull. Once you understand these phases, then you can start to work with your cycle and not against it. And here’s how first you could start to track your cycle. And you might have heard this a million times before, but it’s not just about tracking your cycle physically, but also emotionally and mentally noticing not just during your period, but during the entire cycle, any emotional patterns that you experience.

So pay attention to when you feel energized, social focused, foggy, anxious. Unmotivated or overly self-critical, or any other signs and symptoms that show up for you, because this awareness gives you the power to plan, to honor your needs and work with your natural rhythms instead of pushing against them.

And it can also help you to just know what to expect and know why certain. Emotions or behaviors are coming up, and research suggests that the way that you care for yourself during the follicular and ovulatory phases when mood and energy tend to be higher can actually influence how intense your PMS.

Symptoms are in the luteal phase. Practicing good self-care in the earlier phases when you’re doing well can really help you when it comes to potential PMS symptoms. And this approach of living according to your cycle phases is called cycle sinking. So this is the practice of adjusting your nutrition movement, work habits, and self-care routines.

Don’t necessarily need to do all of these, but it could just be what feels best for you in alignment with your cycle’s, hormonal shifts. So, for example, engaging in regular exercise, managing stress and prioritizing rest before PMS hits may help reduce the severity of anxiety, mood swings, and fatigue later on.

So this is about working with your body’s biology not against it, and it can be incredibly empowering. And because much of the information out there is geared towards men who have a 24 hour hormone cycle. We often don’t get the education that we need in order to work with our cycles. That doesn’t mean that we’re broken or that something’s wrong, but educating ourselves and understanding more can help us to realize all of the strengths that we do have and how we can work with those strengths and then take care of us during the times when we need more support and compassion.

This brings me to the next tip, which is to practice extra self-compassion. During the luteal phase, the luteal phase is the PMS period. And so this can be when you are more sensitive to triggers. If you find that things just roll off your back during other times of the month and during this time of the month, you’re more sensitive to things and you can’t just let them go, that’s not a flaw.

That’s a result of your hormone shifting, and you don’t have to fight this. So when you approach yourself with compassion. Rather than judgment, it can become easier to cope, and this can just look like understanding that this is going to happen and being kind to yourself in spite of the fact that you may not want to feel this way, because obviously who wants to feel this way.

My next tip is to make supportive adjustments to your routines. So especially for you high achievers out there, this might be one that is hard to do, but this can look like giving yourself permission to ease up on the to do list. Maybe you need more rest during this time, or maybe just a quiet evening reading on the couch rather than going out to a networking event.

I personally plan for a lower motivation by getting a meal delivery service that I only use during this phase because it helps me to stick to healthy habits without the added pressure because I know I have less motivation to cook and go food shopping during this period of time. So I’d rather just do a lower foot way to.

Still eat healthy and get the nutrition I need in a more low lift way. My next tip is to ask for help. It’s okay to ask for help and can actually be very important to ask for help, especially during a period of time when you’re experiencing lower energy, lower motivation, increased anxiety, et cetera.

Especially during a period of time when you’re experiencing lower mood motivation or increased anxiety. And this can be small things. It might mean asking for your partner to handle a dinner cleanup. Or a coworker to assist with a deadline or maybe a neighbor to help with school drop-offs. You don’t have to do it all, all the time, especially when your body is asking for rest.

And my next tip is to use cognitive diffusion to manage anxious thoughts. This might sound like a big word, but it just means creating space between your thoughts. And your actions because during this phase, thoughts can feel louder, more urgent, and more intense, and that’s okay. That doesn’t make them true.

So remind yourself things such as, this is a thought, I don’t have to follow it. I can pause, observe, and choose my response, especially when thoughts feel loud and super negative, creating this space. Can help you to distance yourself from these thoughts and see them for what they are, which is just thoughts.

They don’t have to control your behaviors. They don’t have to control the way that you move throughout the world. My next tip is to use the rain technique for mood swings, emotional ups and downs, or any intense emotions you might be feeling because some emotions don’t have clear thought patterns. You might not have thoughts.

It might just be physical. They might just show up, or maybe you have a wave of dread, irritability or sadness and can’t explain why. And that’s where the rain technique, which is developed by psychologist and meditation teacher, Tara Brock, can be a really powerful tool. So rain helps you stay present with your feelings rather than getting caught up in them and allows you to acknowledge and recognize what’s happening.

Which brings us to the first letter in the acronym reign, which is recognize what’s happening. So this is to acknowledge the emotion without judgment. Saying something like, this is anxiety, this is sadness, or anxiety is here, overwhelm is here without judging it or criticizing what’s happening. The A in rain stands for, allow it to be there.

So give yourself permission to feel the emotion to allow it. Without pushing it away. Oftentimes our immediate reaction is to push it away to say, I don’t wanna feel this, and that can actually leave the emotion sticking around longer. So just allow yourself to say, this emotion is okay. To be here I is to investigate with kindness.

This isn’t about overthinking, but just asking yourself to gently investigate. What is this feeling trying to tell me? Or what is it that I need right now? And finally, the N in RAIN stands for Nurture with Compassion, and this connects to compassion that I was talking about earlier, kind of emphasizing that this can be an impactful approach during this time of the month.

This can look like offering war. To yourself. A phrase like This is hard and I’m doing the best that I can, can be really validating and soothing. But this can look like whatever nurturing looks like. It can look like a kind statement to yourself. It can look like an act of kindness and self-care, asking for help or any of the tips I talked about.

And ultimately, this practice helps to create space between your emotions and your reactions, which can help you to respond with more space, more clarity. More care. So these are just some suggestions for how you can cope with the increased anxiety or changes in mood that come with your cycle. And remember that your cycle does not have to control you.

When you can understand it, then you can work with it. And there’s nothing wrong with needing more rest. I. More care or more kindness at certain points in the month, you’re human and you deserve the support and kindness towards yourself. If this episode resonated with you, I’d love for you to subscribe wherever you are tuning in so you don’t miss future episodes.

And. Feel free to share this episode with a friend, sister, partner, or colleague who might also struggle with premenstrual anxiety or hormone related moon swings, because it might be exactly what they need to hear. And as always, I’d love to hear your thoughts. You can leave a comment if you are watching on YouTube or on Spotify.

You can also send me a message by clicking on the link in the description. And let me know your thoughts on this question. What part of your cycle do you struggle with the most and what helps you cope? Especially leaving this in the comments will help other viewers and listeners find different ways of coping that could be helpful for them while you wait for a next.

Week’s episode. I have other episodes about calming your mind, improving work-life balance, and feeling more confident from within. So be sure to check out these episodes here. Thank you so much for tuning in today, and until next time, be.