To think perimenopause is making me feel like I am vanishing from my own life

[Campingcarryon]

I am 48 and in perimenopause (hence the nearly 5am post as I can’t sleep )

I feel SO strange with it all. Like the person I used to be doesnt exist and like I could disappear. Really flat and sometimes like I don’t have the energy or interest in anything at all. Like even the simple things that used to bring me joy don’t anymore. A lot of people in my life really get on my nerves and I just can’t be arsed with anything.

Obviously my kids bring me meaning & I keep going because of them but without them I feel like I could become a hermit! I even found myself thinking that being a nun might be quite nice as I could retreat from life completely 🤣

I mean- what the fuck? I am normally a confident, life loving person who is sociable! Good at my job etc but even that I have totally lost interest in.
I do have HRT to try on my next cycle so I am hoping it will help with this a bit but I feel really strange. I have lots of physical symptoms too- can’t lose weight, itchy, some atrophy, a few mild hot flushes, horrible periods. But it’s the mood symptoms that are the strangest to be honest.

Aibu to find it all so odd? I feel like I have lost interest in everything and everyone.

I'm going through this op ...mind you i wanted to be a hermit long before the peri.
My hair has always been superfine...now it seems finer.

I’m the same. 46 and have been suffering anxiety for about a year. I don’t feel ‘sad’, but rather an absence of happiness if that makes sense? Definitely “flat” as someone else described. I miss that warm feeling of contentment and joy.
I’ve cut out alcohol (8 days so far) and just started oestrogel this week. Luckily my GP was happy for me to try that first.

@FortunesFave

I don't feel like this and I'm perimenopausal. It sounds more like you've got depression to be honest.

Just because you don't feel like this doesn't mean millions of other women don't. The OP's symptoms are classic perimenopausal symptoms and posting shit like this can actually be very damaging. OP HRT helped amazingly for my moods. Sleep improved more or less immediately which helped massively. I realised I hadn't had a full night's sleep in a very long time and it was bliss. I'm a few months in and the 'rage' and mood swings are almost gone, feel much more myself again so hopefully it will work as well for you.

@StarcourtMall I’ve cut out booze pretty much completely too as even a tiny glass of Prosecco started to give me a hangover! And yes, completely relate to absence of happiness- just kind of nothing. It’s cyclical too which is how I know it’s hormones as some months are ok whereas some are totally dark

I felt exactly the same as you when mine started, really detached from life and a couple of times I even felt as though I was watching my own life from somewhere else!
Health anxiety started at the same time, my libido vanished a I had a whole raft of symptoms although no hot flushes..

I have now been on hrt for 6 months and feel amazing!
I can laugh again and join in with life generally. I feel lighter in mood and more at peace.
Dh constantly tells me how lovely it is to see the change in me and my sil commented last week that it was great when she heard me laughing and realised that she hadn’t heard that for a long time!

I could have written that a month ago. I am 49 and have been having very heavy periods and just couldn’t be bothered to do the things I have been looking forward to all year.
I haven’t got as far as thinking about hrt yet but it turned out I was anaemic and have been prescribed massive doses of iron and it is making a big difference. Suddenly I have the energy to care about things again.
Is there any chance you might be anaemic, if you have been having horrible periods?

Oh yes, I now sleep straight through the night now, no more waking at 4am for me!!

I have even started having a few drinks in an evening and can seem to tolerate it now as well as more than 1 cup of tea a day which I had given up in an attempt to help me sleep.

I am on oestrogel and utrogestan tablets. The oestrogel was easy from the beginning but it took me a couple of months to get used to the utrogestan due to side effects but it’s fine now.

@HelloDaisy ooh yes, I have massive health anxiety too 😬

@FortunesFave

I don't feel like this and I'm perimenopausal. It sounds more like you've got depression to be honest.

People have different symptoms, but what the OP is describing is normal as can be seen from this thread.

Too often women’s issues aren’t investigated and are passed off as depression with ADs just thrown at us. It’s doing women a massive injustice to give perimenopause so little understanding that many women just get quickly labelled as depressed.

I cried on the phone to my GP a few months back, telling him I just didn't feel like myself anymore. I don't know how my family have managed to live with me. I was veering from tears to anger to apathy.

There's physical symptoms too, but it was the mental ones that really got to me.

Just at the end of my 3rd month on HRT and there's already been a big difference in my mood. We're still tweaking my dose, but there's been an immediate improvement.

@TheCountessofFitzdotterel

I could have written that a month ago. I am 49 and have been having very heavy periods and just couldn’t be bothered to do the things I have been looking forward to all year. I haven’t got as far as thinking about hrt yet but it turned out I was anaemic and have been prescribed massive doses of iron and it is making a big difference. Suddenly I have the energy to care about things again. Is there any chance you might be anaemic, if you have been having horrible periods?

This was me at Xmas. I’ve just had a coil put in to, hopefully, reduce the periods.

I do think it's a unique situation for any peri woman as we come out of lockdown. While we've been forced to not be social for 18 months, it was quite difficult to see that how I felt wasn't right. Difficult to tell the difference between post lockdown issues and menopause symptoms.

I feel like I've written that quite clumsily, but brain fog doesn't seem to have improved yet.

My advice to any woman would be to get it checked out and get HRT, there is no reason anymore that we should be putting up with feeling like this.

I feel exactly the same OP. In fact I have a phone consultation booked with the GP for later this month to discuss HRT.

It's a very different feeling to depression - I'm on citalopram for anxiety/depression, have been for years. It's nothing like that at all. I filled out an econsult form to request my consultation and had to complete the mood score questionnaire. Many of the questions/answers didn't really fit with how I'm feeling. I've had to complete the questionnaire several times over the years when my depression and anxiety have taken a dip.

I have gone the other way socially. I seem to want to meet everybody and do everything. I esp find comfort in the company of other women my age and with similar problems. Also conscious of time running out and I want to do everything before I no longer can.

Yup - that is why my late 40s were a bloody miserable time for me. Now I'm in my 50s and I feel like a different person. It will get better, but for me that took about 5 years. It doesn't help that society has zero sympathy for women going through this. In the end it took leaving my job to find myself. I was lucky to be able to afford to do this, but bloody hell what a difference it has made to my well being.

I am the same! But can’t take HRT as I have terrible fibroids & don’t want any more oestrogen (oestrogen is what ‘feeds’ them apparently - so I have been told they will shrink in menopause…I can’t cope with them getting any bigger as they are already terrible & cause all sorts of problems)
Can anyone recommend anything other than HRT? But op I could have written your post exactly. You’re not alone! (I know that doesn’t really help much but may be some comfort every now & again!)

Hi, OP, just offering a hand hold, a metaphorical cup of tea and a view from the other side. I’m almost 3 years post-meno’. It gets better. I’m regaining some of who I was before but I am also accepting I’m not really that person anymore either. For me the most challenging part was the emotional changes. Maybe it is just the absence of my pre-meno’ oestrogen levels, but I seem to have a sharper gaze on life, maybe more cynicism but also a sense of not wasting time. If men had to go through this, there’d be bloody retreats for them to go on whilst they went through the transition. I definitely went through a long phase of wanting to sack it all off and move to a remote Scottish island. I’m beginning to feel that life might have some meaning again, and the physical symptoms sorted themselves out, too. They don’t call it ‘the change’ for nothing - it is a proper existential crisis at times.

@GoodnightGrandma

You sound just like me. I’ve even googled islands for sale. I think I’ll have to try HRT eventually.

I do this! I go on rightmove A LOT looking for isolated properties where I can live on my own. My husband doesn't know about this particular fantasy

I'm there too... 57 and periods just stopping.

Don't know about others, but it is making quieter ... because if I said the words in my head, people would think I was having a breakdown... usually "FFS sort it out yourself", "FFS the keys are there on the side, you do not need me to go over, pick them up and hand them to you" that sort of thing

Chemo stopped my periods dead, not they they were ever a problem but you know how it is. I was absolutely thrilled, I had no idea what the next decade had in store for me. Family members walked away, no great loss as they were cunts anyway. I wanted to kill people. I’m almost back to as normal as I’ll ever be now, but the meno’s brutal.

Same here, OP. I've had depression and this is very very different. With depression I felt despairing and sad. But with this, I don't feel that at all. It's more that I just want to stare out of the window for hours. I can't be arsed with anything - working, talking to people, etc - everything just feels like it takes a massive effort. My husband is getting on every last nerve. And I suddenly find him really boring - when he talks, I can't even be arsed looking him in the eyes

Literally the only times I feel good is when I'm running, so I'm becoming obsessed with that and running more and more, because it's the only thing that 'lifts' me.

My GP has offered antidepressants I'm on a waiting list now for a private menopause clinic because I can't be bothered battling with my GP.

Your description is spot on OP.
Like you I felt I just didn’t recognise the person I was anymore.
I’ve been on HRT for a while, I’m definitely better but not back to who I was before. I probably need a prescription review but trying to get an appointment with my GP is impossible

@DotDotDotDot

Same here, OP. I've had depression and this is very very different. With depression I felt despairing and sad. But with this, I don't feel that at all. It's more that I just want to stare out of the window for hours. I can't be arsed with anything - working, talking to people, etc - everything just feels like it takes a massive effort. My husband is getting on every last nerve. And I suddenly find him really boring - when he talks, I can't even be arsed looking him in the eyes

Literally the only times I feel good is when I'm running, so I'm becoming obsessed with that and running more and more, because it's the only thing that 'lifts' me.

My GP has offered antidepressants I'm on a waiting list now for a private menopause clinic because I can't be bothered battling with my GP.

Running, yoga and recently paddle boarding are keeping me ‘ interested’ in life

It's not just you, the worst of it hit me from the start of last year. I lost all my confidence, particularly at work. I've fallen out with one friend I'd had for a long time. I cried so many times every day. It has been the single most isolating experience of my life and we are still shielding as I'm extremely vulnerable.

What I can tell you is I'm just 2 years since my last period and I have turned a corner. I don't think I'll revert to my previous self but I'm doing better. I'm the oldest of all my friends so didn't know anyone else going through this.

You will get through this, I just wish I'd known more about this before it happened. I wish people talked about it more.

I'm mid 40s, have started to join the dots and am booking a GP appt to discuss options around peri-menopause.
I have regular occasions when I have no energy, no appetite, no interest in anyone or anything, furious rages, tearful (including for the first time ever, at work, which was a turning point for me in realising things aren't right) I sought counselling through work as felt I was going absolutely mad, but she's helped me realise it could be more to do with peri-menopause than anything else (though work can be quite stressful and full-on.)
I've always been a hot person, but the night sweats are getting worse and more frequent, as are the nightly wakings.
Brain fog, the feeling like I'm watching my life happen from a distance, brain whizzing, forgetful, feeling like I'm going mad.
On the positive side, it's not every day, and when I feel good I'm energetic, exercise loads, can get loads done and feel super productive - just want that feeling all the time rather than this hideous up and down.