Making Work Work Again: How Women with PMDD Can Thrive in Ambitious Careers

For years, I thought my struggle to cope at work was a personal failing. Why couldn’t I just “push through” the exhaustion, the brain fog, the sudden swings between clarity and overwhelm? It wasn’t until I was diagnosed with Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD) that the pieces began to fit together.

PMDD is more than “bad PMS.” It’s a severe, cyclical condition that can disrupt careers, relationships, and confidence. Yet it often goes unrecognised in workplaces — leaving many women battling silently, trying to hold ambitious careers together while managing unpredictable symptoms.

The truth is: thriving at work with PMDD is possible. But it doesn’t come from grit alone — it comes from knowing how to work with your body, not against it.

Step 1: Understand Your Cycle as Data

One of the most empowering shifts for me was moving from “dreading” my cycle to tracking it as useful information. Knowing when symptoms are likely to appear means you can plan proactively — scheduling more demanding work during higher-energy phases and allowing extra margin for recovery when needed.

This isn’t about lowering your standards. It’s about aligning your workload with your biology, so you’re setting yourself up for success rather than constant firefighting.

Step 2: Build Micro-Resilience Practices

When symptoms hit, it’s easy to feel derailed. But even in difficult days, small practices make a big difference:

• Two minutes of heart-focused breathing to regulate your nervous system before a meeting.

• Short breaks outdoors to reset your energy and mood.

• Writing down priorities so your brain isn’t overloaded with “must do’s.”

Micro-practices may feel small in the moment, but over time they train your system to recover more quickly — shifting you from “barely coping” to building genuine resilience.

Step 3: Create Psychological Safety at Work

Workplaces play a critical role. The difference between surviving and thriving often comes down to whether your environment supports you. Psychological safety means being able to speak openly about your needs without fear of judgement.

This doesn’t always require dramatic changes. Sometimes it’s about flexible scheduling, compassionate line management, or a culture where women’s health isn’t treated as a taboo subject.

Step 4: Redefine Success on Your Terms

For ambitious women with PMDD, success isn’t about pretending symptoms don’t exist — it’s about creating sustainable ways of working that allow you to show up with clarity and confidence. Thriving doesn’t mean being symptom-free. It means building a career that’s resilient enough to flex with you.

Final Thoughts

If you live with PMDD, you’re not “bad at coping.” Your body has unique needs, and learning to work with those rhythms can unlock not only resilience, but also a deeper sense of clarity and purpose.

✨ This is exactly the kind of work I do with clients — helping ambitious professionals navigate stress, health, and performance in a way that feels sustainable.

👉 Explore The Resilience Reset or connect with me on LinkedIn if this resonates and you’d like to start making work work again.

Why Stress Hits Women Differently — And What We Can Do About It at Work

We all experience stress — but how we carry it, respond to it, and recover from it can look very different depending on our biology, responsibilities, and work culture.

For women, especially those navigating midlife, caregiving, or leadership roles, the weight of stress can feel both invisible and overwhelming. You're the one who holds everything — the calendar, the kids, the deadlines, the emotional labour — and you’re expected to do it all with a smile and a colour-coded spreadsheet.

But underneath the performance, the body is keeping score.

The Female Body Under Pressure

Stress isn’t just “in your head.” It’s a full-body experience — impacting your:

• sleep

• digestion

• immunity

• hormonal balance

• emotional regulation

For women, there are additional physiological and cyclical factors that influence how we process and recover from stress.

Cortisol, our main stress hormone, interacts directly with oestrogen and progesterone. When stress is ongoing, it can disrupt everything from our moods to our cycle. You might feel more anxious, irritable, tearful, or foggy-headed than usual — even if nothing dramatic has changed externally.

You keep going. Until you can’t.

Why Workplaces Need to Do Better

The modern workplace wasn’t designed with women’s nervous systems in mind.

The pace is constant. Productivity is prized. And very few spaces allow for rest, recovery, or real conversations about how stress is impacting health — especially hormonal and mental health.

We’re still expected to show up in the same way every day, even when our bodies are asking for something different.

But resilience isn’t about pushing harder.
It’s about learning to shift, to respond, and to restore — not just after hours, but in the moment, during your working day.

What Real Resilience Looks Like

I believe resilience isn’t about being tougher.
It’s about being more attuned — to your:

• body

• boundaries

• emotional landscape

• capacity

• and the environment around you

In my work with professional women through The Resilience Reset and Flow State, I teach practical tools rooted in:

• nervous system regulation

• emotional awareness

• HeartMath® techniques

• and stress recovery science

These aren't fluffy tips or one-size-fits-all hacks. They’re evidence-based techniques that help women feel calmer, clearer, and more in control — even in high-stress settings.

Ready to Change the Way You Work?

Whether you’re dealing with a demanding job, cyclical symptoms, or simply the pressure to be everything to everyone — you deserve better tools, and a better baseline.

Let’s stop normalising burnout.
Let’s start building resilience that actually fits the lives women live.

Work With Me

🔸 The Resilience Reset — emotional regulation & stress recovery for ambitious professionals
🔹 Flow State — resilience coaching for women navigating hormonal or cyclical stress patterns

Not sure which is right for you?
👉 Book a free 20-minute clarity call

3 Signs Your Nervous System Is in Overdrive (And What to Do About It)

Have you ever felt wired but exhausted?

Like you’re rushing through the day on autopilot, constantly reacting but never quite catching up — and then collapsing into bed, only to lie there wide awake?

That’s your nervous system in overdrive — and for many high-functioning women, it becomes the norm. Especially if you’re navigating hormone-related conditions like PMDD, working in high-pressure environments, or trying to be everything to everyone.

Let’s explore what this looks like — and how you can gently shift back into balance.

What Does “Overdrive” Mean?

Your autonomic nervous system has two primary modes:

• Rev (sympathetic): fight, flight, urgency, action

• Restore (parasympathetic): rest, digest, reflect, repair

You need both. But when you spend too long in “Rev mode”, your body and mind start to pay the price.

3 Signs Your Nervous System Is in Overdrive

1. You feel snappy or overstimulated — even by small things

You might find yourself irritated by background noise, snappy with your partner or kids, or unable to handle one more request in your inbox.

Your system is hyper-alert. It’s perceiving everything as a potential stressor.

2. You’re always “on” — but not necessarily effective

You might be jumping from task to task, struggling to focus, or working long hours but feeling strangely unproductive.

Your system is stuck in urgency. It’s hard to prioritise or access creative thinking from here.

3. Your body is tense, tight, and tired — but rest doesn’t feel restorative

Even when you do rest, your body might still feel heavy, twitchy, or anxious.

This is a sign your nervous system hasn’t fully shifted into Restore mode.

Why This Matters — Especially for Women with PMDD

If you’re someone who experiences cyclical hormone shifts, your nervous system may be more sensitive to stress throughout different phases of your cycle.

Over time, chronic stress can amplify PMDD symptoms, deplete resilience, and lead to misdiagnosis (e.g. as burnout or depression).

Understanding and regulating your nervous system is not a luxury — it’s a foundation for mental clarity, emotional steadiness, and sustainable success.

3 Gentle Ways to Shift Out of Overdrive

1. Heart-Focused Breathing

One of the simplest, most science-backed tools.

Focus on your heart. Breathe in for 5, out for 5. Imagine the breath flowing in and out of the heart space. This helps restore coherence — the optimal state for your body to heal and recalibrate.

2. Name It to Tame It

Start to track your nervous system state. Are you in Rev or Restore?

Bringing awareness to your current state helps activate the prefrontal cortex — the part of your brain that can make intentional choices rather than reactive ones.

3. Micro-regulation throughout the day

Instead of waiting for burnout, sprinkle in 1-minute resets:

Step outside and feel your feet on the ground

• Do a slow exhale while softening your shoulders

• Place your hand on your heart and simply pause

Small cues of safety can have a profound impact on how your system functions.

You Don’t Have to Live in Overdrive

You are not lazy. You are not overreacting.

Your body is wise — and it’s telling you something.

When you learn to listen and respond with compassion and strategy, you begin to reclaim your calm, your clarity, and your capacity.

That’s what I help women do inside The Resilience Reset and my Flow State programme for PMDD.

Ready to Reset?

If you recognise yourself in this post, I invite you to:

• Book a free Clarity Call to explore personalised support

• Or send me a message on Instagram and tell me what this brought up for you

You’re not alone. And there is another way to feel and function — one that works with your nervous system, not against it.

I Thought I Was Just Bad at Coping”: What PMDD Taught Me About Resilience at Work

For years, I told myself I just wasn’t very good at coping.

I’d go through periods of showing up powerfully — leading teams, speaking in rooms full of people, delivering under pressure — and then, almost like clockwork, I’d crash. It wasn’t just tiredness. It was a sense of falling apart. Suddenly everything felt overwhelming: the noise, the pressure, the emails, even the people I loved.

And so I did what so many women do. I blamed myself.

Maybe I wasn’t cut out for the roles I was in. Maybe I needed to work harder, be more organised, or “fix” my mindset.

But what I was actually dealing with was PMDD — Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder — a condition that affects up to 1 in 20 women and people assigned female at birth.

And it was showing up right in the heart of my career.

PMDD, Not Personal Failure

PMDD is not just “bad PMS.” It’s a severe hormone sensitivity that can disrupt mood, concentration, energy, and self-perception in the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle. It often goes undiagnosed — and misunderstood — for years.

When I finally received my diagnosis, it was like someone had handed me the missing piece of the puzzle. The cyclical nature of my burnout, the sudden mood shifts, the physical exhaustion… they weren’t signs of personal weakness. They were symptoms.

And yet, PMDD wasn’t the full story either. Because beyond the biology was another question:

How do we build resilience when the system we’re working in isn’t built with our nervous systems and menstrual cycles in mind?

Resilience Beyond Grit

Resilience isn’t just about pushing through — especially for those of us whose cycles include extreme highs and lows.

True resilience is about capacity. Regulation. Boundaries.

It’s knowing when to act and when to rest. When to speak up and when to step back.

Through my training as a coach and HeartMath facilitator, I started learning how to work with my nervous system — not against it. One of the turning points was understanding coherence — the optimal state where the heart, mind, and body are in sync. In coherence, I could access clarity and confidence again, even on the hard days.

The Tools That Changed My Relationship With Work

Some of the most effective tools were surprisingly simple:

• Heart-Focused Breathing to reset in the moment

• Tracking my cycle alongside my calendar to plan around high and low energy phases

• Boundary setting and self-advocacy at work — without apology

• Naming what was happening and sharing selectively with those who could support, not shame

These weren’t quick fixes — they were recalibrations. And over time, they allowed me to start showing up with more self-trust and less self-blame.

You Are Not Failing — the System Is Missing You

If this resonates, please know: you’re not bad at coping. You’re navigating something real and often invisible. And while the workplace might not be set up for hormone sensitivity, your resilience strategy can be.

You don’t have to push harder to prove yourself.

You can learn to work with your body and your brilliance.

And that’s exactly what I support women with through The Resilience Reset and my Flow State programme for PMDD.

 Let’s Talk

If you’re wondering how PMDD might be showing up in your work life — or you’re ready to explore a new way of navigating your cycle and career — I’d love to hear from you.

DM me on Instagram or book a clarity call here