Perimenopause & Anxiety

Perimenopause refers to the time before a woman enters menopause and starts for most women in their early 40s and for some even earlier.  When estrogen starts to decline it can impact your mood and you may experience symptoms like heightened irritability, anxiety and depression; some women report feeling overwhelmed in situations that they used to handle with ease.

Other unpleasant symptoms include night sweats and hot flashes which often lead to interruptions in sleep and increased insomnia. Exercise is an important outlet for stress and one of the suggested tools for insomnia, however, reduced sleep and sleep interruptions increase women’s stress levels and make it difficult to exercise due to lack of energy.  You can see this becomes a vicious cycle for women who are going through the significant hormonal changes that accompany perimenopause and menopause.

In 2006 The Harvard study of moods and cycles found that women in perimenopause were twice as likely to experience symptoms of anxiety and depression than women who had not yet entered perimenopause.  ahttps://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16585467/

If you are experiencing these changes, the first step is to contact your physician. Somatic psychotherapy can help; I teach my clients how to track sensations in their bodies and regulate their nervous systems. Learning how to stay connected to pleasant and unpleasant sensations in the body helps clients process their emotions as opposed to “depressing” them; leading to more capacity to tolerate the hormonal swings that accompany perimenopause and menopause.