Hello, I am a 22 year old and have had periods since I was 10. During the first few years, until I was 15 or 16 I would often experience mild PMS symptoms such as irritability and increased susceptability to feeling sad and crying. But since then to my memory I have not experienced these symptoms, the only pre-menstrual symptom which is consistent is about a week before my period I get a few spots, when usually I have quite a clear complexion.
However these last 2 months I have had extreme PMS symptoms of anxiety and sadness. I have suffered from panic disorder for just over a year now and I have had bouts of depression and anxiety for 8 years, but these have not usually affected my periods. However last month I suddenly felt VERY anxious and melancholy for seemingly no reason (I often have very depressing thoughts but I am not usually sad or melancholy), I put it down to PMS as it lasted maybe 2 days shortly before my period.
I am now due any day now, and yesterday I started to feel very sad again for no apparent reason. This morning, after a bad night of nightmares and sleep paralysis I woke up feeling very sad once more, and I was crying on and off a little before I went to my lecture.
I had a presentation about a project I was working on in front of my class and 3 professors. During the feedback my topic was heavily criticised by all 3 professors and I was told that I got a piece of information wrong. I burst into tears, and tried to laugh it off, saying I was premenstrual which got a laugh from the (all female) class and (all male) proffessors. I couldn't calm myself down, and tried to explain it wasn't that I was upset overly about the criticism but I had been on the verge of tears all day and it was going to happen anyway.
I couldn't stop my body from making weird noises, like hiccups from my mouth but not...like sharp untakes of breath, so I left the room, but it took over an hour to stop my body from making these unpleasent sounds. Then for the remaining 2 hours I kept crying while the other people were doing their presentations, even though their critcism was at least mostly valid and I'm sure under other circumstances I may have got teary but I'm sure I wouldn't have cried much.
I then cried all the way home...I just had such an urge to cry and felt like if I didn't cry my body wouldn't feel purged of these emotions.
I don;t know if I should be concerned about this very sudden onset (the last 2 months) of symptoms, and now I feel really embarassed to have cried so violently in front of my whole class and 3 lecturers and I feel like they will see it as me being a bad student and not being able to take critcism. I still feel like crying so much, I don't know what is wrong with me!
Has anybody else experienced anything like this and to this extreme.I just feel like I have humiliated myself, and I was quite concerned because it took me so long to calm down and my body wouldn't stop making those weird gaspy noises for over an hour. I don't know if there is some kind of chemical inbalance which has caused this.
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