If you were always anxious, did menopause make you worse?

[FayeGovan]

I feel im going mad. No actual reason, just anxiety and worried about everything.

Does hrt help

Yes much worse especially in the mornings. I notice I now have terrible anxiety the week before my period. I would say I'm peri-menopausal. I haven't tried HRT yet as I'm taking supplements and they are working well. They are vitamin b complex, vogel menopause support, evening promise oil and a good multi vitamin.

Yes - although I wasn’t especially anxious before. The anxiety and depression symptoms were the trigger fur me to get HRT rather than any physical symptoms. It’s been an absolute life changer!!

Its mainly health anxiety. Ive had it since mum was older and infirm, i looked after her. Ive seen too much and had no one to share it with. And since she died its so much worse. Ive had cbt, counselling, talking therapy. I still feel a mess. Over anxious, churned up, over thinking, totally distracted by worries of what might happen. Ive taken propanolol but the thoughts are there and have been there so long they are my reality. And getting a routine smear soon and my mind is going off a cliff of what might be wrong. Ive no one to tell. Dh i think, thinks im mad. My friends dont really know.

I just want all this worry and anxiety to stop. I have a good life and im ruining it by my stupid thoughts. Im not unwell. Just in my mind. I want someone elses head on, someone who doesn't worry and fret about life.
Please can anyone help.

Yep. Much much worse. Can’t take HRT though.

Im scared to try hrt as i know it can cause bleeding. And to me bleeding just means one thing. I tried setraline last year, it caused abnormal bleeding within a day. I had to wait 7 months for a gynecology application, i was literally terrified to what they would find. The consultant was very blunt and scared me more but the results was ok. I dont want to go through that again. Thats why im scared of hrt. But basically im scared of everything.

At least knowing its hormone related anxiety helps. It means im not going mad.

I take multivitamins, vitamin d, magnesium and iron. I try to cover all the bases.

Bump

Oh God YES. I was always prone to depression but anxiety crept up on me. In my 40s I thought I was actually going insane. I would wake with a full blown panic attack most mornings. The sight of emails or post would make my stomach lurch. I had this terrible sense of impending doom. There was random stressful stuff going on so I put it down to that until I realised my anxiety was way waaaay disproportionate and other people could be feeling like this all the time. I actually googled 'I am going insane' and somehow all these menopause sites popped up. HRT. saved me within a week

A week

i dont know what to do

I'm the other side of the menopause now, thank god, but the feeling of anxiety was one of the worse aspects. I'd wake up in the night or in the morning with the most overwhelming feeling of panic. It was terrible.

My friend is a mental health professional and she told me that serotonin and hormones are at their lowest during the night and early morning.
I couldn't take HRT due to previous breast cancer. When I felt the anxiety coming on I would try to remain calm and kept saying "it will pass, it will pass". Knowing that it was a chemical situation helped. You do have my sympathies.

I am generally an anxious person, always on high alert but not diagnosed and do not take any medication. I had a really horrible time peri-menopause and started with auditory hallucinations, not voices but sounds which would trigger me. These seemed to be due by lack of sleep which I suffered with at the time and it was awful and quite frightening. I was prescribed anti-depressants as I declined HRT due to previous breast lumps. I took myself off the medication after a few months as I hated taking it and the auditory hallucinations had stopped. I am generally more anxious than previously but make a real effort to get as much sleep as possible at night

Yes. I’m thinking about HRT for those reasons (plus other things) but the doctor today put me off by talking about breast cancer.

I have just started HRT for exactly this reason. I am prone to worry about things a bit more than other people, but over a lifetime I have built up a toolkit of approaches to handle this and usually chug along quite nicely, but all of a sudden my anxiety started spiralling out of control, and I was having sleepless nights over things I would normally take in my stride. I was also very irritable, and short-tempered, and felt like I had PMS all month long. Absolutely horrible.

My GP explained that it was probably hormonal, and that your body makes more cortisol during perimenopause which can cause these symptoms. I started HRT about three weeks ago, and yesterday, all of a sudden, the simmering anxiety disappeared and I feel like my old self again. Such a relief!