Why Sensations and Emotions Matter With PMDD

PMDD isn't just a hormonal condition, it's a sensory and emotional experience that lives in the body. Before thoughts spiral or behaviours emerge, your system speaks through sensation.

This blog post explores:

• What emotions actually are

• How sensations carry emotional information

• Why emotions intensify in the luteal phase

• How to stay present without becoming flooded (overwhelmed by emotions)

What Are Emotions?

Emotions originate in the limbic system, a brain network handling survival, memory, and emotional processing. Key structures like the amygdala, hippocampus, hypothalamus, and limbic cortex evaluate safety, threat, and meaning. This connection is central to understanding PMDD and the nervous system.

Emotions are fast, automatic, and adaptive, they signal information about the internal and external world. But they can turn unreliable when influenced by unresolved trauma, relational wounds, chronic stress, or nervous system dysregulation.

For those with PMDD or PME, hormonal shifts lower the activation threshold of these emotional circuits, making emotions feel sudden, intense, or disproportionate. PMDD has severe emotional symptoms, where heightened sensitivity in the limbic system (particularly the amygdala and hippocampus) amplifies emotional reactivity. Research suggests that progesterone and it's metabolite allopregnanolone can intensify mood responses in women with PMDD. This doesn’t invalidate the emotion itself, it simply means the intensity may not fully match the present day context.

Sensations Are the Language of Emotion

Sensations are how emotions speak through the body. Every emotion has a physiological sensation:

• Tightness

• Heat

• Heaviness

• Pressure

• Buzzing

• Constriction

• Collapse and more

These sensations often arise before we consciously name an emotion. This is linked to something called interoception. Interoception is your ability to sense what's happening inside your body, (your physiological sensation).

These body signals usually appear before the mind names an emotion. In PMDD, the nervous system is more sensitive, so these internal signals can be stronger and faster, making emotions feel intense before you've had time to make sense of them.

Research on interoception suggests that heightened bodily sensitivity in PMDD is linked to greater symptom severity. Stronger awareness of internal sensations often correlates with more intense emotional reactions.

Anxiety sensitivity can amplify this process, many people with PMDD interpret bodily sensations (such as a rapid heartbeat) as signs of danger, which can trigger fear and escalation rather than calm.

This creates a feedback loop where sensation, emotion, and distress reinforce one another. Studies suggest this pattern is associated with increased amygdala activation and reduced capacity for emotional regulation.

Emotional Awareness Without Overwhelm

Many people with PMDD fear emotions because intensity has previously led to loss of control, regret, or shame. But suppressing emotions doesn’t create safety, it builds internal pressure, increases overwhelm, and reinforces fear.

The goal is to slowly build the capacity to feel sensations, allow them to move through and learn how to trust and accept them. This is how we begin to navigate emotions rather than being overtaken by them.

You can think of it like sailing through a storm. You can’t resist the storm itself, first, you have to accept that you’re in it. Then, with skill and support, you learn how to navigate your way through.

A Simple Practise, Being With Your Feelings

Rather than pushing sensations away, practise staying present with them while gently regulating your nervous system:

• Sit comfortably.

• Breathe slowly and deeply.

• Ask, “How do I feel right now?” — it’s okay if you don’t have an answer.

• Notice where the emotion is felt in your body.

• Stay with the sensation, breathing through it, without trying to fix or judge it.

• Allow your breath to soften the area.

Practices rooted in presence, including mindfulness and interoceptive awareness, can support PMDD symptom severity by building tolerance within the nervous system.

Presence builds tolerance and tolerance builds trust.

Emotional Echoes in the Luteal Phase

In the luteal phase, emotions often amplify, whether you live with PMDD or another condition that flares cyclically (known as Premenstrual Exacerbation).

You might notice:

• Reactions that feel disproportionate

• Urgency to act or withdraw

• Distrust in your judgement

• A sense of internal threat

Research shows that during this phase there can be a negativity bias, increased sensitivity to emotional cues, and reactivation of unresolved stress or trauma patterns.

Often, this isn’t really about what’s happening now. It’s an emotional echo from earlier experiences, sometimes from childhood or adolescence. Hormonal shifts lower nervous system tolerance, allowing old patterns to resurface.

For those with PMDD or PME, heightened anxiety sensitivity can mean bodily sensations are quickly interpreted as danger, which fuels resistance and escalation.

The work isn’t to dismissal or suppression the sensation, it's learning to hold sensations with context and compassion, and allowing them to move through. This takes time, practice, and somatic (body) healing because sensations are often signals of unmet or unresolved needs.

The Investigation Process

As a cyclical person, your emotional and sensory experiences shift across phases. Instead of fighting this begin to observe patterns:

• What sensations arise in each phase?

• Which emotions repeat?

• Where do beliefs surface?

• What wants attention over suppression?

The luteal phase naturally draws attention inward, making it easier for subconscious material to surface. When we allow these “shadows,” as Carl Jung described them, to come into awareness, we create the conditions for healing and integration.

It’s important to note that this does not take away from the importance of hormonal health, nutrition, supplementation, or exercise. These elements still matter. Healing is not an either/or process, caring for the physical body and tending to the emotional body coexist.

Supporting the body through nutrition and movement while learning to navigate the language of

sensation and emotion allows for a more integrated and sustainable approach to healing.

Closing Reflection

Learning to slow down, listen, and stay present with what arises without reacting builds trust over time. This trust doesn’t come from forcing calm or overriding your experience, but from meeting your body with curiosity, compassion, and the right support. Each time you notice a sensation without judgement, running or reacting you widen your capacity to stay with yourself, even during the intensity of the luteal phase.

If you’d like gentle support to begin this process, I’ve created a free guide, Start the Year with Self-Compassion, which shares six simple, body-based practices drawn from my somatic work with PMDD. These tools are designed to help you build safety, awareness, and regulation.

For those ready to go deeper, my Somatic Course for PMDD offers a structured, trauma-informed approach to understanding your nervous system, working with emotions and sensations, and building resilience across each phase of your cycle learning to investigation your emotions throughout your cycle. It’s designed to help you move from feeling at the mercy of your experience to feeling more grounded, supported, and self-trusting.

Wherever you are on your journey, this work is an invitation to come back into relationship with your body, not to control it, but to understand it.