Can HRT help emotional numbness?

[AmIimagining]

Sorry if this is a bit long. It helps just to write it all down.

I'm 51, no period since August last year (and one before that was six months previously). I'm having hot flushes, but it's the emotional side I'm really struggling with.

Last year my DH sat me down and asked if I was off with him as he'd noticed I was being less affectionate and caring.

We talked it through, and I tried to do better. But without the loving feeling that's the precursor to spontaneous affection it felt forced. TBH I had so much going on with caring for elderly parents and a full-time job, I'd often just forget to do it.

He's now sat me down for another tough conversation and basically said nothing's changed after a year and he can't live in a loveless marriage. He thinks I don't love him because I never show it, and feels lonely. He's noticed I'm less affectionate and caring with the kids, too.

The me of two years ago would have been devastated to hear that my family don't feel loved by me. But I feel... literally nothing! It's like I'm surrounded by an invisible box, and nothing can get in or out.

Intellectually, I know I love my husband and kids. I definitely like them a lot. And I can remember that I used to love them. But the FEELING of love that makes you want to care for people has been switched off. I'm also less bothered about my personal appearance so it's extending to the care I show myself.

It's the same with all emotions - I don't feel sad or happy or angry, either! I was pretty anxious before, and part of me wonders if the 'invisible box' feeling is a self-preservation mechanism to stop me from getting totally overwhelmed.

Thanks for reading if you made it that far. Does it sound like I need to ask the GP for anti-depressants? Or HRT? My worry with anti-depressants is that they may numb my emotions even more!

Also, would they even prescribe HRT for 'just' emotional symptoms? It seems trivial to say to a GP 'I can't feel emotions'. But it's not trivial to me. I could lose my previously happy marriage and my kids are suffering.

It sounds like you have enough going on your life that neither hrt or ad’s are going to work on their own.
Your husband needs to understand that you’re not his mother, you’re not there to provide him with affection and security and unconditional love.
There are two of you in it. I think you should think about what you need from him and whether you’re actually getting it. Then talk to him.
Women are not bottomless wells of love and affection everyone else can just expect to keep draining whenever they want.
Kids are different but your husband needs to look after your needs too, and as pp said, to recognise when those needs have changed and adapt.
I think it was a low blow to say that to you about the kids tbh and the fact that he’s criticising you instead of being concerned is really not good.
I know you say he’s nice but you should be able to say what you’ve said here to him and I think there’s a reason you haven’t.
Your instinct was to go look for ways to “fix” yourself so that you can go back to the way you were. That says a lot.
Your husband is treating you like a machine that has stopped running properly (ie. the way he wants it to). But you’re a human being.
It sounds like you actually enjoy your job. Do you? Because there’s nothing wrong with getting satisfaction from doing something you are good at.
Does your husband do nice things for you, like things you actually really like and enjoy ? Does he compliment you? Show interest in your life? How much effort does he actually make?

yes me too everyone - like the poster who had the twee alert i am focusing on the sky and trees and the little bit of beauty i see when i see it.
I’m on HRT and that is helping but hasn’t solved it. i think it is burnout and the stage of life when we are told by Nature that we should re-center ourselves and our own pleasure and personhood not in relation to how valuable we are to others , but how we want to enjoy life as ourself. i think it is fundamentally a process for our own good. for me i have a toddler and she is my main source of pleasure but i feel a disconnection with
my lovely husband -in that i feel like he is not doing enough to connect with me and i feel even though i don’t feel pleasure from being with him in the same way , it’s because he isn’t punching through and grabbing me out of it with passion. i am trying to do things to connect more . I want someone / something to consume me enough that I am forced to feel emotional again. so it is complicated all this !

I can't relate exactly to your situation but when I hit peri, my get up and go, got up and went. I am a different person and I hate it. All my personal drive left me. I was a regular gym goer, haven't been regularly in years now which I hate. It takes me so much energy to do anything basic.

I have suspected for the last few years I have ADHD. They say peri makes the symptoms worse, and I think that is why I am struggling. I just need the courage to get diagnosed.

Anyway stop blabbing on about me, I'm glad you posted here as I feel you seem to be starting on your journey out of the quick sand.

I think I am on my journey out of the quicksand - acknowledging I was in there was the first step. I've done lots of soul-searching over the weekend. Thinking about it, I have felt this invisible box descend on me on about three other occasions and always in times of high-stress - a couple of close bereavements and once when I had a health scare.

I really don't deal with stress well - it feels so overwhelming that it's more akin to sheer terror. So the box of zero emotion descends to shield me and stop me from crumbling completely - but it also cuts me off from other people (it's hard to be empathetic when you can't access the same emotion yourself).

But because I've thought of that 'disconnected feeling' as more of a personality flaw or something that's inherently wrong with me, I've felt too ashamed to admit I'm struggling. And that brings its own pressure to 'perform' an emotion I'm not really feeling.

Part of my soul-searching made me realise that things that I thought hadn't affected me in the slightest, actually affected me really deeply. My dad was an alcoholic prone to violent outbursts - but when he was sober we all had to pretend to be happy and loving towards him. It's no wonder my emotions are the first to go in any high stress situation - I've been well-trained!

You're right, it's all so complicated! But to me it seems huge to actually feel a modicum of compassion for myself. That 'feeling disconnected' might be something I could get support with never actually occurred to me.

My dad was also an abusive alcoholic, OP.
My parents also forced us to pretend everything was fine especially in public.
I was never allowed to express myself properly because it went against the whole charade of being a normal family. My parents wouldn’t countenance that they were bad parents or their behaviour was damaging to us. If I tried to talk about how it made me feel, they hit the roof. Even once I had been diagnosed with depression as a teenager, they insisted on me keeping up this narrative that it had come out of nowhere, that there was just something wrong in my brain or else they each blamed each other. My dad wouldn’t accept my diagnosis to start with and told me my mother was putting the idea in my head and there was nothing wrong with me.
I recently got access to my psychiatric medical records from that time and my doctor had written that a big part of my problems came from the fact that I was unable to identify, articulate or express emotions properly because my parents had never allowed me to. It was a massive eye opener for me.
This does sound like in part at least, it comes from a coping mechanism for you too.
I am thinking about going back into therapy for it. My doctor suggested Dialectical behavioural therapy. Could you consider something like that?

Oh Plastic! That's it exactly - but I'm so sorry you've experienced the same thing too. It's clearly a coping mechanism gone awry for both of us, but one we've spent so many years perfecting it's become second nature.

I didn't just practice the emotional shut down at home, I also practised at school where I was so 'fine' there was no way anyone would have known what was going on at home (and I certainly didn't tell anyone!). It's like being about to split yourself in two (one who's suffering, one who's fine), with literally no effort at all. A massive head fuck, and one that I did from primary school right up until I left home.

There is a part of me that feels some resistance to letting it go. Shutting down emotionally is the only way I know to cope with anything too stressful. I had a quick google for Dialectical behavioural therapy but it seemed to be directed at 'big emotions' rather than a lack of them. Do you think it could help?

It might help. I think my doctor recommended DBT for me personality disorders run in my family and she was concerned that I was at risk for developing it too, (I haven’t), plus I was just so bad at coping with my emotions.
For you maybe CBT might help. You can explain what you need help with and the therapist can recommend the type of therapy that will work best.
Do you still have regular contact with your parents/ family of origin?
In the last few years I have had to really minimise contact with mine. Literally every time I see them it negatively affects my mh.
It can make it very difficult or impossible not to fall back on old coping strategies that are unhelpful and unhealthy.

I'm caring for both of them. Hence the huge amounts of stress that have probably brought on this latest bout of emotional numbness. DF gave up drinking in his 70s and is now late 80s - how he was while we were growing up is never talked about, of course.

Oh yes, I know you mentioned that up thread, so sorry.
That is ordinarily very stressful but given the other circumstances, that must be very very difficult.
That is something you have to take into account and try to be open with your husband about how you feel and how that affects you.
If I had to do that for my parents, I’d end up on a psych ward, no exaggeration. Thankfully I have two sisters who are willing to help my parents who are still relatively young and I have taken a massive step back to avoid falling into an obligation of caring for them.
That is certainly something you should seek emotional and if possible practical help in coping with x

Thanks so much, Plastic, for all your help. Although I'm so sorry to hear about your experiences, just knowing that someone with a similar life experience to mine has had the same emotional reaction to it has been incredibly helpful when trying to make sense of it all.

Just to say that I've taken your advice and have booked a call with a DBT therapist. She'll explain more about it and see if I want to do the initial assessment. I also have the GP appointment booked so it might be something I do in conjunction with HRT or even ADs (as I think it's menopause that has really brought it all to a head).

It really helped me in that regard.

I’m glad to hear that.
I really hope that you get the right help and things improve for you x