AI Won’t Cure PMDD, But It Might Help You Keep Your Job
One of the hardest parts of PMDD is how much it can make us doubt ourselves. When our baseline changes, our confidence often follows. During luteal, we might feel less articulate, less resilient, more emotionally reactive, and less able to hold the complexity of our work. Tasks that usually feel manageable suddenly feel huge. Conversations get harder. Prioritising turns into a minefield. We can know exactly what needs doing and still feel unable to start.
And this is where work can make things worse, often without meaning to. Most organisations still run on an unspoken assumption that output should be consistent, energy should be stable, and performance shouldn’t be affected by what’s happening in our bodies. When that’s the standard, we end up trying to bridge a biological gap using willpower. We push harder, stay later, overcompensate, and punish ourselves when we can’t keep up.
But willpower isn’t a sustainable strategy when our nervous system is under strain. We wouldn’t tell someone with a broken leg to just walk normally. We’d offer support, a crutch, physiotherapy, adjustments. PMDD deserves that same level of seriousness and practical thinking.
So here’s a more useful question. Instead of asking, how do I force myself through this, what if we asked, how do I reduce the load while my capacity is lower?
From Try Harder to Reduce the Load
AI can help because so much of what becomes overwhelming during PMDD isn’t actually the deep, meaningful part of our jobs. It’s the mental admin around it. The translating, structuring, summarising, prioritising, writing, rewriting, planning, and polishing. When we feel foggy, emotionally raw, or exhausted, those tasks become disproportionately hard. That’s often where we get stuck, not because we don’t know what to do, but because we can’t organise our thoughts or energy enough to do it.
Used well, AI can take on some of that invisible cognitive labour. We’re still the thinkers. We’re still responsible for the work. But we’re not doing every single step alone inside an overwhelmed brain.
Here are a few grounded, practical ways to use AI during luteal or PMDD days.
Practical Ways to Use AI on PMDD PMDD Days
1. When the thoughts are there, but they’re messy
Sometimes we’ve got the content in our heads, but turning it into anything coherent feels impossible. It’s especially frustrating because it’s the kind of task we usually do quickly, and now it’s taking twenty minutes to write three lines.
Instead of staring at a blank screen, try dumping rough, imperfect notes and using AI to shape them into something clear and professional.
Prompt idea:
“Here are my messy bullet points. Turn this into a clear, professional email with a calm, friendly tone. Keep it concise and include a clear ask.”
This isn’t about hiding PMDD. It’s about removing friction and conserving energy.
2. When everything feels urgent and we can’t prioritise
A classic PMDD experience is that our brains can’t sort tasks properly. Everything feels critical. Everything feels heavy. Decision fatigue kicks in, and we end up spinning, not because we’re not capable, but because our nervous system is working harder just to stay steady.
AI can help us create a first pass at a plan.
Prompt idea
“Here is my task list. Help me prioritise based on impact and urgency. Assume I have limited energy today. What are the top three tasks to focus on, and what can wait?”
We still make the final decision, but we’re giving our brains a starting point. That matters when we’re depleted.
3. When we’ve been in a meeting and retained very little
Brain fog and meetings are a brutal combination. We might have been present, we might even have contributed, but afterwards it can feel like the details just disappeared. That can create anxiety, especially if we’re senior or expected to lead.
This is a place where AI can be genuinely brilliant, because it takes the pressure off our memory. If we have notes, a transcript, or even a few messy lines, we can turn that into something clear and usable in minutes.
Even better, we can take the “did I miss something?” stress off the table by using a tool like Granola to record the meeting and generate a summary afterwards. It means we’re not relying on perfect recall, and we don’t have to spend the rest of the day trying to reconstruct what was agreed.
Prompt idea
“Summarise this meeting into key decisions, action points, deadlines, and owners. Put it in a format I can paste into an email.”
This can protect us from that spiral of feeling behind and ashamed, which is often where stress builds.
4. When emotions are high but we still need to communicate well
PMDD can amplify emotional intensity. We might feel more sensitive, more reactive, more anxious or more angry, and at work that can be hard to manage in real time. The goal isn’t to suppress emotion or pretend we’re fine. It’s to create a buffer between what we feel and what we send.
AI can help rewrite a message so it’s calm, clear and firm, especially when we know the first draft is too charged.
Prompt idea
“Rewrite this message to sound calm, assertive, and professional while keeping the main points. Remove anything that could be interpreted as overly emotional, and keep it respectful and direct.”
That’s not cheating. It’s support for emotional regulation and professional communication.
This Isn’t Laziness, It’s Adaptation
We need to challenge the idea that using tools equals weakness. We already use tools to support our bodies and brains all the time. Glasses for vision, calendars and reminders for memory, templates for efficiency, spellcheck for writing, calculators for maths. AI can be part of that toolkit, particularly for those of us whose capacity fluctuates across the month.
And for many of us, this isn’t about optimising ourselves to squeeze out more productivity. It’s about reducing suffering. It’s about protecting our self esteem and easing the self blame that so often comes with PMDD. It’s about staying in work without having to perform at one hundred and fifty percent just to appear “normal.”
Because the alternative is what too many of us end up doing. Pushing until we burn out. Quietly stepping back from roles we were absolutely capable of doing. Or leaving workplaces that never created space for cyclical health realities in the first place.
We’re Not Inconsistent, Our Capacity Is Cyclical
One of the most damaging stories we carry with PMDD is that we’re unreliable, unstable, too emotional, or not cut out for pressure. That story gets reinforced by workplaces that treat cyclical capacity as a personal failing rather than a health reality.
PMDD deserves better than “push through.”
So if AI helps us write the email, plan the day, summarise the meeting, or set a boundary without spiralling, it might not be a cure, but it can be a meaningful adjustment. A modern form of support. A way of staying in work without hating ourselves in the process.
And that matters.
About us
This is the work we care about at See Her Thrive. Not just helping women cope, but helping us stay in work, lead, and succeed in ways that actually respect how our bodies and brains function. PMDD and hormonal health are not fringe issues. They are workplace realities, and we deserve systems, tools, and cultures that reflect that.
AI is just one small piece of the puzzle. Real support also includes better conversations with managers, reasonable adjustments, nervous system support, and workplaces that understand cyclical health. Tools help, but culture and understanding matter just as much.
If this resonated, you’re not alone. We share practical, evidence-informed support for navigating PMDD, menopause, and hormonal health at work - for individuals, managers, and organisations who want to do better. Get in touch today at hello@seeherthrive.com.