Are you still in peri or post menopause? Some of us in peri (like me) and I think also some early post menopausal women that still experience many fluctuations, need their cycle suppressed to feel more balanced.
I’m sharing my journey, because it might be helpful if you recognize things (I’m not sure if your issues are the same, so it might not he helpful at all. Just ignore it then ;-)).
Are you taking your progesterone continuously or sequentially? I’ve tried both for prolonged periods, but I wasn’t able to get to a point where I could tolerate progesterone (utrogestan), it gave me both mood and physical issues. I did notice when doing estrogen only during the sequential parts, estrogen works really well for me. I’ve tried mirena (I had one before that I tolerated, although I had some issues), but it gave me mood issues and very sharp pains on the 4 month mark and I had it removed. I tried a bunch of other things too, but besides not tolerating most progestins, my cycle clouded a lot, where I didn’t knowwhat was a side effect and what was just my own progesterone (that I also don’t tolerate). Last progestin I’ve tried was drospirenone and after the first very difficult 6 weeks, my own cycle was clearly suppressed and I started feeling way more level mood wise. Drospirenone wasn’t a good fit physically, because the diuretic effect was too strong (also the estrogen was too low in what I was taking) and I had an eczema flare up (most people don’t have this side effect). I now switched to oestrogel as my estrogen and dienogest as my progestin (dienogest is a 4th generation progestin like drospirenone, so I’m hoping I’ll tolerate it mood wise too). I’m only 4 days in (on dienogest, I started with the oestrogel almost 2 weeks ago), so too early to say, but so far I’m only having physical side effect (heavy fatigue, headache, some cramping and slight nausea after taking it), these are pretty typical for me when trialing anything new, so I’m expecting those to subside in a couple of weeks. I’m not noticing any effect on my mood yet, so my hopes are up that this will be the right fit. Transdermal estrogen works well for me (oral not so much), I do know that for sure.
