1. Feeling bored or restless
This can be focused on a number of things, so you may suddenly get really bored with your job, which maybe before you found quite challenging and satisfying. You can get bored and fed up with people that you are around all the time. It can be friends. It can even be your relationships. You might suddenly think, "What am I doing here with this person? I'm bored with all of this. I'm bored with my life in general."
You might find that you can't finish tasks. You get excited about something you started, and then halfway through, you think, "I've had enough. I'm bored. I'm going to give up."
You might find that you get just restless with life in general. You want to know what's out there, and although this is very often due to the hormones, it can also just be the time of our lives. Here we are, we've got to what's considered midlife, and suddenly, we're like, "Is this all there is? You know, I've been working, I've been having a family, I've been doing things for everybody else. Where am I in my life?" It can be a big quandary because what on earth do you do at this point?
I used to sometimes just want to walk out the back door and fly off into the sunset, never to be seen again. But it's not as if we can suddenly give up our lives and turn our back on everything; but it can be a really disconcerting, unsatisfying feeling that we get.
Very often, it can be due to falling oestrogen affecting the level of a hormone called oxytocin. And oxytocin is our ‘love’ hormone. And if we are used to enjoying things and people and situations, and suddenly that hormone starts to decrease, we may find that the joy and excitement in our life just suddenly disappears, and we're left feeling flat, and kind of restless.
So, with this one, it can be a really difficult situation. You can look at the Flower Essences. These are really uplifting. They're easy to take. Just whenever you feel kind of low or bored and you've got to do something, the Flower Essences are just a few drops on the tongue, very simple to take.
The other thing is that we spend most of our lives putting other people and other situations first. And the one thing I do say in menopause is that we need to put ourselves first. Otherwise, it will be really difficult to get through it. So, in this situation as well, when you're bored and restless, ‘me-time’ is really important - giving yourself time and opportunity to focus on yourself for a change.
And again, I know for me, I need a lot of stimulus in my life anyway; but I suddenly thought I need to do different things. So, I had to look at things I could do that would give me that bit of extra excitement and a little bit of an uplift.
So, there are loads of things you can look at. Maybe look at a new hobby, take a night class, learn a new language. Do something for yourself, and that can often really help this bored and restless phase.
2. Feeling pessimistic
It may well be that you've always been a really upbeat, happy person. Your glass has always been half full, and suddenly, you just feel low. All you can see is the kind of bleakness. Everything you think about, every outcome is going to be negative. You think, "Oh, I'm not going to be able to do that. I just don't want to do that. I can't see anything nice happening out of this one."
When you're in menopause and perimenopause, you sometimes feel like you're in a tunnel, and you can't see the end. It's like you're churning away every single day, being the same, and no relief at the end of it. And that can be quite hard to put up with as well, because feeling low and bleak is not a good place to be in, and it can lead to further deterioration and maybe even depression, which is somewhere we really don't want to go.
So, with this particular one, if your periods are tailing off, if your periods have stopped, you can look at a phytoestrogen supplement. You can also look at the herb Hypericum. This is a lovely one for low mood. It's a lovely, uplifting herb, but you can't take this if you're on any other prescribed medication, and that includes things like the pill, contraceptives, and HRT.
Again, you can look at Flower Essences just to give yourself that bit of a lift. Emotional Essence is a really nice one to try. Remember, this one tends to be one of the phases. And very often, it is just due to the fact that your hormone oestrogen is taking a big dip and you will ease out of it at some point.
3. Feeling guilty
This is a big one. It's feeling guilty about everything. And I think, as women, we tend to feel guilty about a lot of things anyway. But when the menopause hits, lots of other things come in. There's a lot of pressure on us. By the time we get to menopausal age, very often, there can still be children at home. You might have to work. You may be looking after elderly parents or relatives. So, there's a huge amount of pressure on us to be able to cope with absolutely everything.
We may have the responsibility of running a family. We are the organisers making sure that everybody else's life is as easy as possible, whilst ours isn't. It can be the same at work. You may have climbed up the corporate ladder, and there's a lot more responsibility.
So, there's a lot more pressure on us generally. And then when we have the physical pressure of menopause as well, you might find you've got fatigue. You might find your memory is not as good as it was, so you're forgetting things, and other people start getting annoyed because you're forgetting to organise them and make sure that they're okay. You might find that with memory issues you can't do all the things that you used to be able to do.
If you have joint aches and pains and you have a physical job, again, you may find that you can't do everything. So instead of us taking care of ourselves and just maybe taking a step back, we put more pressure on ourselves by feeling guilty because we can't do all the things that we did before.
It can also be a really hard one for relationships. And a lot of women do tell me that, for whatever reason, they've gone off sex. They've gone off having an intimate relationship with their partner. And then, they feel guilty because they're not pleasing their partners. So, this feeling guilty can encroach on every single area of our lives.
The thing with this one is it's obviously a hormonal shift, but it's also us putting more pressure on ourselves. So, it's about letting go of some of the responsibility and realising that most people delegate.
In family situations, get other people to help. And also, talk to them. You know, explain why you might have forgotten to remind them that they have to go to the dentist or put the car in for the MOT. And do that little bit of delegation so that you can have a rest and take that added pressure off yourself.
With me, I'm busy. I work full-time and have lots of things to do; but I have a little magnet on my fridge that says, "Housework is a waste of a beautiful mind." So, it reminds me that if I've had a really busy day and I go home and think, "Oh, I haven't hoovered," it doesn't matter. My mind is more important. And I also have a lovely little saying which works really well for me and that is, "Don't do today what you can do tomorrow."
So, I hope you found this helpful. There are so many emotional issues that come up during menopause, and this is the one thing that I think surprises everybody because we're all geared up for the physical symptoms of menopause.
And these emotional ones are the ones that can sometimes hit us when we're really not expecting them. So, if you've had any issues with any of these situations, how did you cope with them? Please let us know. Share your thoughts with us because we love to read about all your experiences.
And until next time, take care.
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Emotional Menopause Symptoms: Why they can worsen or come back
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