I have mixed feelings about the rise of so many emotional disorder labels over the years. On the one hand, I myself have had bursts of negative emotion due to hormonal changes or whatever. Many times. So it obviously exists.

I just don’t know that I agree with medicating everyone for it. If you did go in with your symptoms, they WILL medicate you; it’s automatic these days. Few people can afford therapy and clinics and HMO’s don’t offer it for the same reason.

So they’ll medicate you, and then you would start the cycle of trying to find the right meds and the right dosage, it will change you in ways you won’t see and sometimes you can never come back from that.

All three of my siblings take, or have taken, some kind of anti-depressant. My sister had a terrible experience and finally stopped but it took her a while to figure out how badly the meds were affecting her. My two brothers are not the same mentally after years of being on anti-depressants now; they are much more scattered, etc. They always say when they start a new anti-depressant that it’s so “wonderful” and they feel so much better, yatta yatta, but since anti-depressants take weeks to “kick in”, it’s just a placebo effect in the beginning. Then, when it really does kick in, it zones them out. They lose their ability to feel any emotion very strongly. Sure, it seems to zap the negative stuff but it zaps the positive too.

Then eventually it seems to stop working and they start having depression worse than ever before, far worse, so they need to take a higher dosage or a different type of drug and the whole process starts again.

I’ve watched them go through this merry-go-round now for well over 10 years, maybe 20? It makes me sad. They are not the men they were. They still rave about how much the meds are helping them, though. But I think they were better off when they had a full range of emotion and the ability to be funny and witty and less distracted all the time. It’s like they’ve lost a part of themselves. My sister says her experience changed her forever and she hasn’t been the same since and that was years ago for her.

I look at how this country has just gone overboard with offering psychotropic meds the moment we say we are having trouble emotionally and I shake my head. Even my doctor offered anti-depressants to me because I was upset about my tinnitus. I had a right to be upset, for god’s sake! They give them out to anyone these days. It’s wrong. I think there are other ways to handle this than drugs.

Human beings have been around a long, long time; how is it possible that all at once so many of us are psychically breaking down? All at the same time?

I wonder if there is a correlation between the changes in our society and the huge rise in emotional “disorders”? Could it be our food? Our lack of exercise? Loss of tribal relationships? More overall isolation than our forefathers?

I think the ideal prescription would be for you to get into therapy, at least three times a week to start. Take a critical look at the food you are eating and make changes there. Get on a regular exercise program, at least an hour a day, six days a week. Keep a journal marking your emotional ups and downs.

Then see where you are in 6 months.

I’ll bet you anything that if you were to do that, you’d see a significant decrease in your rages.

But let’s face it, few can afford private therapy these days; I certainly can’t and you said you can’t either. And the food and exercise thing takes a discipline that is very difficult, I know. I used to be very dedicated about taking care of my body and it made a huge difference in my ability to handle stress and hormonal swings but I gradually stopped and I noticed that my emotional outbursts increased after I stopped being so dedicated about working out and watching what I ate.

It’s hard, I know. I wish I had this big “fix” to give you, do “this” and it would all go away. But there isn’t anything like that; even the drugs don’t do that. Both my brothers (and friends) who take meds still struggle. It doesn’t fix them.

You know another thing that helped me was self-help books. I know they are a cliche and I know money is tight for you guys but Amazon has several books listed for PMDD; it may help you to read about it. I know everyone makes fun of self-help books but over my life I have read several such books on various topics and you know what?

They really helped me. Not all of them and not every single word written, but enough to have made a significant difference in the quality of my life and insights.

And paying $6 to $20 for a used book, plus shipping, for something that might genuinely help you out, even a little, would be worth it. My two cents. Well…more than two cents, lol! I’m long-winded. 🙂