Will turtle I think you coming to post your concerns here, likely to be after you googled to seek info shoes your willingness to help and that you care.
I think, understandably, that many menopausal women forget that it's not just them dealing with the misery of this transition but that our partners do to.
All I can say OP is that your bewildement with her new personality will be the same that she herself is facing. She too won't understand what is happening and will feel as helpless as you trying to not feel and act as she is. She too will hate the person she's become and that will make her feel frustrated as you are. The thing is, she will look up at you to help and that help is to respect that, that's its not her making, that it's not that she doesn't want to be back to the person she was, but that she really feels out of control.
Before it hit me, I was an extremely confident woman, in control, and scared of very little. Then anxiety came like a bolt of thunder. Suddenly I felt anxious about things I would have welcome as a challenge before. As the quality of my sleep deteriorated, I found my ability to cope with anything diminishing on front of my eyes.
Like you my husband didn't like what I became and as he felt helpless and then annoyed, he withdrew from me. When I tried to explain how I felt, he would just tell me what I should do to make things better, all suggestions that I had thought of and tried already, but when I would say this probably on frustration, he would imply that I wasn't trying hard enough and all this did was send me even further down the self loathing path. He said one day that he was withdrawing from me because I wasn't pleasant to be around as I was always miserable. That day, I though our marriage was over.
It was actually me collapsing one day in front of his eyes which frightened him that made him realise I wasn't just feeling sorry for myself. Since then he has been more supportive in that he finally accepts that the menopause is truly a very difficult time to go through. He now knows that when I say I can't sleep nights after nights that it really makes me feel like he does after one bad night over and over again.
The best thing you can do to help your wife is just to be patient and trust that it will get better again. She will get better it just might take some time. Show understanding without telling what she should/could do. Listen and try to imagine what it must be like. Continue to tell her you live her no matter what and do read as much as you can about it so that you gain reassurance that what your wife is experiencing is all but common and normal and is really her hormones making her feel and act as she is not a total change in her personality.