Therapy for Peri-Menopause and Menopause
Menopause is a difficult time for many. Hot flashes, vaginal dryness, poor libido and relentless brain fog
While physical symptoms abound, it is often the psychological symptoms that cause the most distress. Many women report intense mood swings and an unfamiliar rage. One client described it such: “Its like I woke up and was a different person. All the things that I cared about before just drained me, and I couldn’t understand why I was both exhausted and irritated all the time.”
For many women like her, ssychological therapy provides essential support during peri-menopause and menopause, addressing the emotional turbulence that often accompanies hormonal shifts.
As a clinical psychologist with 15 years of experience, I’ve seen how therapy can help make sense of the shifting moods, reduce anxiety, manage mind fog and restore a sense of control amid the hormonal shifts.
What Are The Psychological Impacts Of Menopause?
Peri-menopause (typically ages 40-50) and menopause bring estrogen fluctuations that disrupt serotonin, sleep, and stress responses. These changes typically fuel high levels of anxiety (up to 50% prevalence), depression, brain fog, irritability, and low mood.
While these symptoms are often dismissed as “just aging,” they have profound impact on quality of life. Anxiety can be intense during menopause, with some women also reporting that they feel “out of control”, or like “I’m constantly PMS-ing”.
Another common side effect of menopause is the changing sense of identity in women because of the the declining estrogen levels common in this phase. Women who spent their lives nurturing husbands, raising children, and looking after colleagues suddenly find themselves asking, “What about me?” Research indicates that dropping estrogen levels change the way women see their role, and it reduces the urge to nurture that characterized their child-bearing years.
This shift can be a shock – both to the women themselves, and to the people around them. The mother with young adult children recounted that in this phase, she found herself craving alone time, and stopped wanting to be there for her daughter’s every need. While the mother took more time for herself, her daughter was left wondering “What happened to mum? She just doesn’t seem that interested in hearing my problems any more”. Therapy was helpful to both the mother and the daughter as they navigated this new reality.
How Can Women Benefit From Therapy At Peri-Menopause And Menopause?
Women in my practice describe it vividly.
Said Janet, 47 (not her real name), “I was snapping at my family, forgetting appointments, feeling like I’d lost myself overnight. While hormone therapy helped immensely, therapy helped me reframe these experiences as a neurobiological phase, not personal failure, and gave me tools to manage my despair and frustration until my hormones stabilized.”
Another client, Maria, 48, struggled with her corporate job on entering peri-menopause. While she took stress in her stride before, at peri-menopause suddenly she felt under constant threat and feared job loss despite many assurances that she was safe. We worked to unpack her catastrophic thoughts and track patterns, and found that shifting period cycles were causing rapid-cycling PMS symptoms that were causing her anxiety levels to spike. We used somatic therapy for her to help understand the physical feelings prompting thoughts that she was in danger. I also advocated for her to see an endocrinologist, and she was given birth control pills which eliminated the cycle and eased her symptoms.
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