Sudden Anxiety In Your 40’s – Is it Perimenopause?

It’s 3am in the morning, your phone’s brightness is turned right down so you don’t wake anyone, typing “sudden anxiety in my 40s” into Google.

Your period still comes on time, your bloods came back fine, and nobody can find anything wrong with you on paper. And yet your brain has turned into something you don’t recognise – thoughts spinning for no reason you can point to, a low hum of dread sat in your chest, and the word you were about to say vanishing mid-sentence. So you go back to Google and type “unexplained brain fog” instead, hoping this search gives you a different answer to the last ten.

You aren’t losing your mind, but maybe you are losing oestrogen, and it’s taking your calm and your focus with it.

When your hormones are playing up

Oestrogen doesn’t just deal with periods and hot flushes. It also keeps your stress hormone, cortisol, in check. Oestrogen works like a volume dial on your nervous system. When your hormones were steady for years, that dial stayed low. Now those levels rise and fall like a rollercoaster ride, and every time oestrogen drops, cortisol climbs right up after it.

That’s why the ridiculously small stuff starts to feel like too much. An empty cereal box back in the cupboard. A ringing phone. Being asked “what’s for tea” – or someone breathing too loud, too close. None of it is actually dangerous, but your body reacts like it is, because the hormone that used to keep you calm appears to have packed its bags and gone on holiday.

Brain fog – a wiring problem, not a memory problem

The word on the tip of your tongue, the reason you walked into the kitchen – even the name of someone you’ve known for ten years – gone, right when you need it. No wonder women feel they are losing their edge or worry that dementia has come to call.

Oestrogen feeds the parts of your brain that handle memory and focus, so when it dips, thinking clearly gets harder. Then lets bring in Progesterone – it breaks down into a chemical that boosts GABA, this switches your brain from ‘alert’ to ‘calm. When progesterone drops, that calming effect drops off too, and your brain struggles to switch the noise off, so it can’t file away information properly or remember it when you need it.

Oestrogen feeds the parts of your brain that handle memory and focus, so when it dips, thinking clearly gets harder. Progesterone’s the other piece of this – it breaks down into a chemical that boosts GABA, the thing that switches your brain from ‘alert’ to ‘calm.’ When progesterone drops, that calming effect drops with it, and your brain struggles to switch the noise off, so it can’t file away information properly or remember it when you need it.

Add in broken sleep, because dropping progesterone makes it harder to drop off and stay asleep, and dropping oestrogen brings night sweats into the mix too, and you’ve got a brain running on half the fuel it used to have, at the exact moment life is asking more of it.

And a foggy, exhausted brain doesn’t do your anxiety and favours, instead it feeds it. The less sleep and focus you’ve got, the more on edge you feel, and round it goes.

When you’re feeling anxiety and overwhelm rise and you need a distraction, try this:

Find the centre of your palm – this is the solar plexus point in reflexology. Place your thumb on to the centre point, inhale through your nose and as you breathe out press your thumb firmly into this point, making the exhale slightly longer than the inhale, then ease off as you breathe in through your nose. Repeat for as long as you need.

You can do this anywhere – at your desk, in the car, mid-conversation… even laying in bed. Nobody needs to know you’re doing it.

And if you need something a bit more

I offer massage, facials, reflexology, aromatherapy and lymphatic drainage at The Pause Room. All treatments are energy led and intuitive – I look at what your body’s telling me and work from there. Some sessions that’s facial work to quiet a racing head. Other sessions it might be your feet, because your sleep is out of whack. Or it could be a combination of methods. Either way, you get time where nobody needs anything from you, and you get to switch off.

Message me or book through the online booking system on my website when you’re ready. Turn up just as you are, nothing else is expected 🤍

Skin | Soul | Sanity

Sherry x