See your next hard week before it arrives.
For a fortnight each month you stop being yourself. Then you’re fine, and then it comes back.
Nothing you do here leaves your device.
Part one
Why
Because the hardest fortnight of your month is the one nobody else can see.
The pattern
You are not imagining it.
The fuse that’s suddenly an inch long. The fog that makes you read the same sentence four times. Crying at something that wouldn’t have touched you a week ago — then watching it all lift the day you start bleeding, and wondering whether you invented the whole thing.
You didn’t. It has a shape, the shape repeats, and it has a name.
The wait
Twelve years.
That is the average wait for an accurate PMDD diagnosis in IAPMD’s global survey. Twelve years is not a story about careless doctors. It is a story about timing: you get the appointment for the week you can face making a phone call, which is the week you feel fine.
There is nothing in the room to look at except you, saying it.
The waiting is not harmless. In a 2022 study of 599 people with prospectively confirmed PMDD, 34% reported having attempted suicide. We’re stating that plainly and once, because it is the reason the wait matters. If that is where you are right now, there are numbers here.
Part two
What
What is actually happening across a month, and what it is called.
Your cycle
A month, told as a single day.
Your cycle isn’t one weather system, it’s five. Most people are never taught which one they’re standing in, which is why the hard days feel like they arrive out of nowhere. They don’t — they arrive on a schedule, and a schedule is something you can plan around.
01 · Days 1–5
Permission to rest
Bleeding starts, and for a lot of people with PMDD the fog lifts within a day or two — sometimes almost the hour it begins. That relief is real, and it is also the clearest evidence you have. Symptoms that stop when bleeding starts are the pattern a doctor is listening for.
Menstrual. Permission to rest.
The self-check
The questions a doctor would ask.
Four minutes, without having to get the appointment first. It won’t diagnose you — nothing can, in four minutes. It will tell you whether what you live through each month is the kind of thing this instrument was built to catch, and give you language for it.
Nothing you answer here leaves your device.
A few quiet questions, just for you.
Answer these for a typical bad week — the week or two before your period — not for today. The scoring rule is printed at the bottom, so you can read your own answers without anyone’s help.
How to read your own answers
This is the whole PSST rule, exactly as published. Nothing is weighted and there is no total score.
Your answers point toward PMDD if all three are true:
- At least one of questions 1–4 is Severe.
- At least four of questions 1–14 are Moderate or Severe.
- At least one of A–E is Severe.
They point toward moderate to severe PMS if all three are true:
- At least one of questions 1–4 is Moderate or Severe.
- At least four of questions 1–14 are Moderate or Severe.
- At least one of A–E is Moderate or Severe.
Either way it is a screening result, not a diagnosis — and the timing question at the top matters as much as the rest. If your symptoms never clear up after your period starts, say exactly that to a doctor.
Steiner M, Macdougall M, Brown E. The premenstrual symptoms screening tool (PSST) for clinicians. Archives of Women's Mental Health. 2003;6(3):203–209. View the paper. If you’re struggling right now, the crisis numbers are here.
Part three
How
How you walk in with something to show them, instead of something to say.
The record
Bring evidence, not a memory.
A DSM-5 diagnosis of PMDD needs two cycles of daily ratings — made on the day, not remembered afterwards. The standard form is the DRSP. It looks like this.
Daily Record of Severity of Problems
Two consecutive cycles · prospective daily ratings · severity 1–6
Oriyali
Cycle 2 of 2
- Cycle length
- 28 days
- Menses onset
- Day 27
- Days recorded
- 28 of 28
- Ratings missed
- None
Daily symptom severity across one 28-day cycle. Each of six symptoms is rated 1–6 every day. Severity stays near 1 through the follicular phase, climbs steadily from about day 15, peaks at 5–6 across days 21–26, and drops back to 1 on day 27, when bleeding starts. That shape is the diagnosis.
Follicular mean (days 4–10)
1.1
Late luteal mean (days 21–26)
5.0
Change, luteal vs follicular
+355%
Prepared from the patient’s own prospective daily ratings. Educational summary only — not a diagnostic instrument and not a medical device. Diagnosis of PMDD per DSM-5 requires clinician assessment alongside a minimum of two cycles of prospective daily ratings.
Scroll sideways to read the whole cycle
Lead with the timing.
“These symptoms start about ten days before my period and are gone within two days of bleeding” is a clinical observation. “I’ve been really struggling” is a feeling. Both are true; only one is diagnostic.
Hand the record over.
Two cycles of daily ratings, on paper or on a phone. Put it in their hands rather than describing it. It moves you from someone reporting a mood to someone presenting data.
Book while you still feel bad.
By the follicular phase you will feel fine and quietly decide you were exaggerating. Make the appointment before that happens.
The check-in
Thirty seconds a day.
That is the whole ritual. Three sliders, and the day gets drawn. Two cycles of them is the record above.
This is what a hard day looks like here.
A printed circle of hand-drawn marks: round seeds, printed in deep blue on cool grey, turned at broad angles with a restless, undulating edge.
Move these
Energy changes what the marks are — rain, seeds, shoots, leaves, flowers. Mood changes the colour they’re printed in. Irritability changes the rhythm they fall into.
A bad day still gets a beautiful drawing. That’s deliberate.
Nothing here is submitted, saved or counted.
The app
Oriyali does the record-keeping part.
An iPhone app, built by one person. Thirty seconds a day becomes a warning before your next hard week, something to hold onto during it, and two cycles of DRSP a doctor will accept. That is the whole product.
01
Never sold
Not to advertisers, brokers or insurers. No acquisition offer changes that.
02
No trackers
There isn’t one in the app, and there won’t be. No third-party analytics near a symptom.
03
No account
It works with none at all. Sign in with Apple exists only if you want sync.
04
Nothing to lose
Your entries live on your phone. One tap deletes everything, and it actually deletes.
It isn’t finished yet. If you want to know when it is, leave an email — that is the one thing on this whole site that gets sent anywhere, and it is used for exactly one message.
Read the whole promiseEverything on this page is educational — not a medical device, and not a diagnosis.