Intense fear in menopause
I've been asked about fear and feelings of intense fear recently, so I thought I would share a little throwback extract from one of my scary symptoms blogs, which covers key things you need to know about fear in perimenopause and menopause.
Different types of fear you can experience
This is a horrible one because it can come on suddenly. It can be a deep-seated fear about life and death, and about bad things happening in the world. You can start to be fearful about the safety of your family and your friends. It can become all-consuming. And it can, over time, lead to things like depression.
You can feel this intense fear all the time. It can be an all-day situation causing you to be in this state of fear continually the whole day. It can also be something short-term, so it could be sudden loud noises. You might find that you just can't cope with crowds. You have this intense fear of being squeezed in. It might be an intense fear of going shopping to the supermarket or even things like driving.
What causes these feelings of intense fear?
So, what causes this? Falling oestrogen levels affect the balance of your brain chemicals, so this is a physical issue. It's not a mental issue. It's not the fact that this is all going on in your head or that you are going mad. So many of you say that when you try to explain to other people, you're just told, "Oh, don't be silly. It's all in your head or you're just imagining it." This is real. It's a real physical change that's going on, and you need to treat it as such, rather than worrying about whether you're going mad, because you're not. This is a physical thing.
What can help?
You need to look at ways in which you can help to control and overcome the fear, so that would be therapies like Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), Neuro-Linguistic Programming Therapy (NLP), or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). These are all therapies that allow you to learn certain techniques that can help you cope better. This makes you stronger emotionally. And it makes you more in control of your emotions rather than the other way around. You can Google these. In most areas, you will find a practitioner who teaches one of these. And a lot of you who've done this kind of thing tell me that you do find it really, really helpful.
Another thing that can be helpful for this symptom is deep breathing. This is good for so many different things during menopause and perimenopause. And I do recommend that you all learn how to do the deep breathing exercises, so if anything happens that's out with your control or where you just feel out of your depth, you can jump into the deep breathing and feel that bit more in control.
You can look at herbs such as Ashwagandha. This one seems to be particularly helpful for the fearful side of things. Remember to drink plenty of water, because dehydration can be an issue, as can low blood sugar levels. So, dehydration and low blood sugar levels can really rev up your nervous system, and that can cause problems as well. Acupuncture can often be really helpful too, so it's worth checking out.
If, however, intense fear is affecting your daily life, if you're really getting scared, if you're not wanting to go out, if you're not wanting to go to work or communicate with other people, then you need to speak to your doctor about this. It may well be that you just need something extra to help you through this particular phase.
