To feel like mid life and perimenopause is really changing me

[Edenspirits]

I am about to try HRT to try and help with some of the symptoms of perimenopause as I am cross and grumpy a lot of the time (I am 48) but in a bigger sense, I can really feel and understand why it was always known as ‘the change’ as for me I feel like I am becoming a different person and it’s so strange.

• I gave zero tolerance for bullshit and thus worries me as I feel like I will end up living on my own with cats as people just annoy the fuck out of me 😬

• I just want peace & quiet! Sometimes i can’t even be bothered to think about stuff anymore - it’s like I feel tired of trying to work life out & just want to sit on a beach with books quietly forever (I still have relatively young kids at 10 & 13 so not really possible)

• all my drive for everything has gone. I feel like my old ambitions have changed and i no longer have ‘the chase’ in me for career etc. I just feel tired!!

• I fell out with a friend of over 20 years as she lied to me. I have no time for that kind of shite anymore and yet it’s something I might have let go in my younger years.

I am hoping HRT might help- I feel hardened by the world and I think it might be loss of nurturing hormones making me so much less tolerant!

Anyone else experienced this? It’s all so strange!!!

Oh I so feel your pain!
The irritation and rage. I also feel like no more BS for me.
Can’t comment on HRT yet, it’s too early. Only first week.
Just a thought though do you wonder if some changes... not taking BS anymore is for the best or an emerging selfishness?

I also feel a ‘change’.
I have a desire to live alone so that everything is where it was when I left it. No more tidying up after others.
Rage - yes.
Not tolerating BS - yes.
I don’t really want to take HRT just so that I can continue to tolerate others though.

Yes to everything you've written. I'm the same age too. I just want to live in a hut in the woods.

HRT really helped me, I was angry and anxious before and those feeling have subsided.

For me taking less bullshit has been a huge positive. I’m less worried about what people think and find ‘no’ much easier. That’s been liberating.

I’ve gained very hard to shift weight and am having to work hard at that.

I sleep badly, worse than ever, but wake early and do stuff I enjoy.

I hope the HRT works for you. It took me a couple of goes to find one that did for me. Agnus Castus helped my mood.

Drinking half a high ball glass of cherry juice, no alcohol and a good bedtime routine helps my sleep.

I don’t feel anxious but, if I’m having stress at work, I tend to wake in the middle of the night for a couple of hours having conversations in my head about the situation. I wish I could switch it off because I no longer give a sh*t.

@DinosaurDiana I know what you mean about not taking HRT to tolerate others! I honestly feel like I have to do something for my family life and my kids though as I feel like my general bad mood is affecting them and they deserve a nicer mummy!! Not a grumpy old bag who can’t bear to be around anyone 🤣

[quote Edenspirits]@DinosaurDiana I know what you mean about not taking HRT to tolerate others! I honestly feel like I have to do something for my family life and my kids though as I feel like my general bad mood is affecting them and they deserve a nicer mummy!! Not a grumpy old bag who can’t bear to be around anyone 🤣[/quote]
Please come back after taking it for a while and let me know how it has helped you.

It really makes me think about people having kids later actually. I had my last child at 38 but know someone about to have their first at 47- I genuinely don’t think I could cope with a baby going through this 😱

I'm glad for any dampening down of maternal hormones. It was too difficult to be so easily upset by so many things, I was crying at drop of a hat for years. Delighted to rediscover the kind of indifference (again) that I had as a youth & before my babies were born.

My tolerance has only increased as I get older. TBH, reading so many intolerant MN posts has made me extra resolved to be tolerant of other views and not think in black & white like I tended to as a youngster.

If being age 50+ doesn't make me feel tired then I don't understand what would; older men feel more tired than they did as youngsters, too (regarding Husband conked out on sofa many afternoons).

I think this will resonate with about 95% of the middle aged women I know! I’m so done with so much stuff I really used to worry about before but now I’m past 50 I don’t care

I’ve been on HRT for nearly 3 years. I don’t take it to tolerate others, I take it to benefit my own health. I take it so I don’t have insomnia, itchy & hot hands, leg pains & constant mood swings. I take localised oestrogen so the skin on my fanjita isnt so thin & dry it itches constantly & tears. Bring on ALL the hormones as far as I’m concerned!

I felt exactly like you describe until I went on HRT. It was fucking horrible and I was in serious danger of losing friends. I was just so angry and irritable the whole time. I got pulled over by the police for aggressive driving FFS! So, for me, HRT saved my sanity, my driving licence and probably several friendships. I cannot recommend it enough.

I see other women aged about 47-55 who are clearly not on HRT in a new light though. So many of them are grumpy and irritable and I want to whisper in their ears 'Try HRT - you need it!'

Yep I can relate to this.

I am 40 but stopped producing oestrogen at 37 (medically confirmed) due to autoimmune diseases. Since then I’ve gradually become a more and more “don’t have time for your crap” type. Even with my own family. I just have no patience anymore, I enjoy my own company to the point of just wanting to be completely on my own and I have no interest in other people the way I used to or in trying to get along with others. I basically think I’ve developed some sort of selfish switch. It’s very weird. And previously I was never like this. Oddly enough I went on to HRT for about 6 months and it did reverse it….! But I stopped taking it for medical reasons (I have complex and rare autoimmune issues and it was interfering with a pituitary tumour I have, very complex) so now I’m back to being a menopausal arsehole. And I actually don’t even care about it anymore, I quite like the new “me”. I do wonder if all the time we’re younger women and doing all kinds of shit for people and taking on the whole wife work thing if that’s due to oestrogen making us want to be nurturers / mothers / whatever. And then when we get older and lose that we become more interested in thinking of ourselves first - more like men…?! (Sexist yep I know). It interests me. I definitely feel very different.

Why do you think it’s peri menopause that is doing this?

I’m the same age as you and I definitely like my own company more than I used to (although I NEVER get it because my children are 2, 4 and 6) I’m less tolerant of people than I used to be and i like fewer people now 😀 but I put ALL of that down to getting older, life experiences and being wiser.

Don’t dwell on old ideas like it being ‘the change’. That has such a negative connotation.

I felt exactly like you describe until I went on HRT. It was fucking horrible and I was in serious danger of losing friends. I was just so angry and irritable the whole time

Oh god @zafferana that’s exactly how I feel! I find I don’t actually like quite a few of the people in my life 😬

@Icantrememberthenameoftheartis it’s definitely perimenopause because my mood swings fit with my hormonal cycle! It’s said that you lose your ‘nurturing’ hormone whey you start to go through menopause as oestrogen is the hormone that makes you all warm and cuddly and nurturing! As someone has said, once that leaves, you do essentially become a different person!

@Edenspirits

I felt exactly like you describe until I went on HRT. It was fucking horrible and I was in serious danger of losing friends. I was just so angry and irritable the whole time

Oh god @zafferana that’s exactly how I feel! I find I don’t actually like quite a few of the people in my life 😬

Yes, that's how I felt too. Friends I'd had for years, whose company I really enjoyed, suddenly irritated the hell out of me! The thing is, that I went on HRT and many of them have clearly not. People talk about friendships drifting in midlife and I now think a lot of that is down to peri/menopause, because a lot of women I know have become distant, angry and antisocial. I think the isolation of the past 18 months hasn't helped.

I think h r t might help but I have also found a fundamental change in that I don’t care what people think, my career drive has gone, I have lost interest in other people’s children and actually my own maternal instinct has lessened. This last bit makes sense given that I am no longer fertile but it does make parenting hard!

I also agree that lockdown has exacerbated a lot of the above

@Stopsnowing yes that’s exactly how I feel too! My maternal instinct has definitely lessened a lot recently!

Edenspirits Oh I didn’t know that. I’m going to need to go through the menopause at about 70 then with my children being so young! 😀

I know my sister had a really hard time and developed lots of allergies that she’d never had before. She became gluten, dairy and caffeine intolerant and is now vegan as it’s the only way she can manage the allergies and that was attributed to the menopause.

I read an interview with Davina McCall recently and she spoke of feeling like she was going insane, her emotions were all over the place during the menopause.

Yes to all of the above. I hadnot connected the nurturing hormone bit. Makes sense. Am due to see doctors next week re HRT.

The roller coaster is incredible - yesterday morning I was feeling like I wanted to die, by the afternoon I was fine and happy planning holidays.

Never had HRT, luckily I live on my own, menopause happened at 45, sons at 26 and 29.
The 40something mothers never know when these changes might hit

I do have a bit less energy but I feel the opposite. Want to squeeze out the fun with more dancing and drinking. This week I got promoted, stayed up until 4am and still made work the next day and spent yesterday doing five hours of volunteering with kids before getting the chainsaw out on my hedge. Am grateful for lots of things and can usually find the fun in something. I feel like each month is a blessing. I do nurture myself first though and I recommend this. I wonder how many people are discovering the selfishness I have always had but are knackered not having found it earlier!

The roller coaster is incredible - yesterday morning I was feeling like I wanted to die, by the afternoon I was fine and happy planning holidays.
So true. I started seeing a therapist as I could not cope with it. I kust wanted to feel like I am on an even keel. The problem is that both the ups and downs feel completely convincing. It makes planning anything impossible.