The Subconscious Mind: The Missing Key in PMDD Recovery
As a naturopath and trauma-informed emotional healing practitioner, I’ve come to understand that true recovery from PMDD isn’t just about balancing hormones or changing how we think — it’s about transforming the patterns buried deep within the subconscious mind.
Many women I work with understand their symptoms. They track their cycles, follow protocols, and know exactly when their emotional storms will hit. Yet despite this awareness, they often say, “I understand my triggers, but I still react the same way.” This is one of the clearest signs that the roots of PMDD reach far deeper than the conscious mind — into the subconscious, where early experiences, nervous system imprints, and survival responses are stored.
The Hidden Power of the Subconscious Mind
Our subconscious mind is continuously at work behind the scenes. It regulates our heartbeat, breathing, digestion — and just as importantly, it stores our emotional memories, beliefs, and protective patterns. Most of what drives our reactions and choices each month operates automatically, shaped by what the subconscious mind learned long before we had language or logic.
From birth to around age seven, our brains operate primarily in slower brainwave states — delta and theta — similar to those accessed in deep meditation or hypnosis. During these formative years, we absorb the emotional atmosphere around us: how safe love feels, whether our needs are met, and how emotions are expressed or suppressed. These experiences form “safety programs” that shape how we relate to ourselves and others throughout life.
For women with PMDD, these early imprints can strongly influence how the body and mind respond to hormonal shifts. The luteal phase, when progesterone rises, often heightens emotional sensitivity. When the nervous system is holding old trauma or unprocessed emotion, this phase can amplify subconscious patterns — leading to heightened anxiety, anger, grief, or shutdown.
One of my clients, for example, used to completely freeze during conflict. She’d say, “It’s like I leave my body — I can’t speak or think.” Over time, she began to recognise this as an old survival strategy: a protective response from childhood that resurfaced when her nervous system felt threatened. Once she saw it as a program rather than a flaw, she could begin to change it — and her PMDD symptoms softened in turn.
As Carl Jung wrote, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
Why Traditional Talk Therapy Isn’t Always Enough
Talk therapy can bring enormous value, but it mostly engages the conscious mind — the part of us that analyses and reflects. Yet PMDD symptoms are driven by the body’s stress response and stored emotional memories. They are encoded in sensations, feelings, and automatic reactions.
This is why understanding PMDD intellectually is rarely enough to create relief. To truly heal, we need to work through the subconscious — with modalities that reach the nervous system directly and help the body feel safe again. Two of the most powerful tools I use for this are Family Constellations and Rapid Core Healing.
Family Constellations: Revealing Hidden Patterns
Family Constellations is a therapeutic process that uncovers the invisible emotional loyalties and inherited patterns running through a family system. Many of the beliefs and burdens we carry don’t begin with us — they’re passed down unconsciously across generations.
For women with PMDD, this can look like carrying a mother’s sadness, guilt, or unexpressed anger. These inherited emotional weights can shape how we experience our cycles, relationships, and sense of self — especially when hormonal changes bring unresolved emotions closer to the surface.
In a constellation, these dynamics are brought into awareness — often through group representation or visual mapping in a one-to-one setting. This allows what has been hidden to be acknowledged, understood, and released.
I once worked with a woman who became intensely irritable and withdrawn before her period, then felt deep guilt and shame afterwards. In her constellation, we discovered an unconscious loyalty to her mother, who had suppressed anger throughout her life. Her subconscious held the message: “It’s not safe to express anger, but I must carry it for her.” Once this dynamic was seen and honoured, she began to release it. Her premenstrual phase softened, her self-compassion deepened, and her emotional patterns became far less volatile.
Rapid Core Healing: Reprogramming the Subconscious
Rapid Core Healing (RCH) is another highly effective approach that works beautifully alongside Family Constellations. It integrates Emotional Mind Integration — a trauma-resolution method — with systemic awareness, allowing us to reach the subconscious directly.
Where Family Constellations reveals what lies beneath the surface, Rapid Core Healing helps to reprogram it. It’s a structured, dialogue-based process that guides clients into a light trance state to access subconscious material safely. Rather than reliving old pain, the client is gently supported to meet their younger self with understanding, compassion, and adult awareness.
This creates what’s known as a corrective experience — one that updates the subconscious program. Over time, the brain begins to learn: I am safe now. And with that safety, the intensity of PMDD symptoms can begin to ease.
Neuroscience confirms what many women discover in this process: the brain is plastic — it can rewire itself at any age. By engaging the subconscious mind directly, we can resolve old survival responses and replace them with patterns of calm, confidence, and connection.
The Path Back to Wholeness
Healing PMDD is not about fixing what’s broken — because you are not broken. It’s about recognising that many of the emotional patterns that surface during your cycle are protective programs formed in times of stress or uncertainty. Once these are brought into awareness and met with compassion, they begin to lose their grip.
The subconscious mind is not your enemy; it’s a loyal protector working with outdated information. Through trauma-informed approaches like Family Constellations and Rapid Core Healing, we can update this inner script — teaching the body and mind that safety is available in the present.
When we include subconscious work in PMDD recovery, we move beyond simply managing symptoms. We begin to reclaim choice, emotional stability, and a sense of harmony with our natural rhythms. Healing then becomes less about surviving the premenstrual phase and more about returning home to yourself — living with calm, connection, and conscious awareness.
About the Author
Camilla Brinkworth is the founder of Camilla Clare Holistic Health and a leading PMDD naturopath, nutritionist, and trauma-informed emotional healing practitioner. Drawing on her expertise in Family Constellations, Rapid Core Healing, and evidence-based naturopathic medicine, Camilla helps women navigate PMDD through an integrative, compassionate approach that supports both hormonal balance and emotional wellbeing.
Having personally experienced PMDD, Camilla understands how isolating and overwhelming the condition can feel. Her work combines scientific insight with trauma-informed care to address the root causes of PMDD — from inflammation and hormonal sensitivity to unresolved emotional patterns.
Through one-to-one consultations, online programmes, and retreats, Camilla guides women toward nervous system repair, stable mood, and a renewed sense of calm and self-connection throughout the menstrual cycle.