My DR put me on fluoextine almost 5 weeks ago. Since I turned 20, I seemed to change a lot. I became more insecure, had a lower self-esteem, increased anxiety, over analysing my feelings all the time and experiencing mood swings. Once I realised that it was happening during certain times of the month and was better at other times, I discovered I had something called PMDD, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, where depending on your menstrual cycle your mood could greatly fluctuate. My DR put me on 20mg of fluoextine a day. At first I felt great, heaps of energy and wanted to go running a lot, then I went through a period of headaches, not long after that I realised I needed to go to the toilet a lot more often, then after that I was waking up alot throughout the night and not sleeping well. For a week or so I was really socially removed and didn't want to mix with anyone, my boyfriend got the brunt of it, I became frustrated and wanted to make changes to my appearance and do uncharacteristic things. Recently I've been experiencing fatigue too. I've been feeling really anxious this week again too and worry that its not working for me. I've had so much stress in my life over the last 3 years, with 2 very ill parents, a family death, completing a degree and having to move away for a while too as part of my studies. It's been tough but even between those stressful times I was still the same anxious me. I'm feeling a bit hopeless as it's been putting so much strain on my longterm relationship and instead of being excited about the future, I feel stressed and worried about making poor decisions. At the beginning of our relationship I was how I'd describe as my old happy self very confident about the future, then after a while the PMDD kicked in and it changed me and knocked my confidence and caused me to put a question mark over the best thing to ever happen to me, it's only during certain times of the month do I get to experience that joy and happiness again. Sorry this is long but was wondering if anyone else had similar symptoms or thought this seemed "normal?"

Thanks for reading this,

Kerry