Menopause Matters Forum
Menopause Discussion => All things menopause => Topic started by: KarineT on December 04, 2020, 10:57:29 AM
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Hello Everyone,
Do you find that the menopause has affected the way you think? Do you have recurrent hypothetical negative thoughts? does this cause anxiety and low mood? I can't work out if's psychological and due to the menopause because it used to happen during or around my monthly cycle. If you are in the same situation, I'd like to hear about your experience.
Thanks
Karine
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Absolutely! Huge anxiety, I was put on Sertraline for three years (should probably have been given HRT ) and then came off this April, went on HRT this June. Bit of a learning curve getting dosage right but the anxiety is gone! There have been threads before I think on women being given antidepressants when really they needed HRT. Have a look at menopause doctor website, there are really useful podcasts on there, under 'resources' which I think you will find very helpful.
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Gnatty, thanks for your reply. What stage of the menopause are you at?
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I'm still peri, unfortunately!
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I turned 50 in October last but I haven't had a period since January this year. I don't know where I'm at.
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Hi KarineT, I had extreme episodes of negative thoughts during my last perimenopause months, but they have stopped once I've reached menopause. Not that I don't have them any more (I'm a half empty glass type) but they're just normal negative thoughts, nothing like the ones that could totally blur my rationality.
Fingers crossed you won't have any more periods. We can have a menoparty next Jan :)
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Thanks Upstick. It's so complicated this thing. I can tell you that I never thought the menopause could cause all this. I always thought it was just hot flushes and no periods. How wrong I was! We don't realise what it does until we get there.
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It's a recent trend to talk openly about menopause and female ageing. Women's 'issues' have always been treated with some degree of aversion, even by women.
It's not all doom and gloom though. Despite all troubles I had/have due to 'The Change', I feel more empowered and in control of my body and mind now that I know what's going on. I don't think about my 'older me' any more, I like who I am now. It's quite liberating.
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Yes it has.
At age 44 I had a hysterectomy but still kept my ovaries. But 4 months later started the virginal atrophy, back pain etc. just about to start my third year.
I found myself last year being negative about my childhood. And getting angry and more angry and blaming my parents (I didn’t say anything to them, I did try to talk to them but the didn’t seem to hear me?) for being molested as a child. I blame them for not being there, maybe if they weren’t so busy drinking. It made me super angry and I stop seeing them to often and running away if I saw them at the shops.
This went on for about a year, I’ve finally moved on. So I found I don’t get mood swings but peri menopause did bring this out of me. Plus my sister telling me my menopausal symptoms were cancer (even though she menopausal herself) made me get depressed (January this year). After crying when my doctor as me how I was she put me on antidepressants for 6 months. I now take Remifemin a menopausal herbal tablets and it keeps me happy.
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I'm sorry to hear that, we don't choose our family... I have lots of family issues as well.
I think this is definitely a positive side of peri/menopause. It's a turning point and it makes us rethink (not in the rational sense, unfortunately) our lives. I don't miss my 'old me', I might miss my young body, but that's just being in denial, ageing is inevitable. You can change diet, physical activity, hobbies, and you must definitely change old concepts. Embrace the whole mess, that's my motto.
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Well, Lyncola, I too had a terrible childhood. I wasn't molested but I was brought up in an alcohol environment, I don't know who my father is and my mother couldn't care less about us . I'm not too sure if the menopause has the capacity to bring things out from the past but it can cause emotional issues, even in some ladies who never had any problems with low mood and anxiety before.
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Uptick, are you on HRT?
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Nope.
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Have you ever been on it before. I've never been on it and I'm hoping that I won't have to resort to it.
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Only for 3 months, had nasty side effects (migraines, progesterone intolerance) and decided to wait for menopause. Not HRT fault, I had the most horrendous peri with extreme fluctuations, no standard HRT would have fixed that. Feeling much better now. Hopefully you will have a smooth transition and won't need it. What are your main symptoms?
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My main symptoms are dizziness, chilling sensations, anxiety, low mood & negative thinking, blocked nose, joint, muscle and bone pain, slight digestive issues (heartburn & nausea), and sometimes a slight sensation of crawling insects on the skin. The strange thing is that I don't really have any hot flushes or night sweats but from time to time I might feel a bit warm in the face and upper body and it can happen either at night or during the day. I would never have thought that the menopause could csuse all of this. And I will never be able to understand how two hormones such as oestrogen and progesterone, which purpose is mainly for our reproductive cycle, could affect the body so much once they are no longer being produced. Before puberty the body didn't have these hormones and it wasn't a problem. Let's hope that things will improve for me and that these horrible symptoms will go away.
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Well, I had all of those and and a lot of other symptoms, so you can consider yourself lucky. The warm feeling you describe is probably a mild hot flush.
Although oestrogen, progesterone and testosterone are mainly reproductive hormones they are far from being just that. The thing is reproduction is the main evolutionary driving force and our bodies are basically reproductive machines. It's not just about producing eggs and spermatozoids, getting pregnant and conceiving another human, it's about a lot of intertwined biological mechanisms necessary to get you fit for reproduction and remember that humans take a long time to reach this, compared to other organisms. The fact that you don't need them until puberty and don't have any of the nasty side effects of menopause is because you have never been exposed to them in high amounts and menopause (or more specifically perimenopause) symptoms are basically a withdrawal syndrome, instead of purely low oestrogen levels.
I really hope you can throw a meno-party next Jan, hang in there.
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Thanks Uptick for the detailed reply. Now I understand why the menopause is problematic to most women. This 'withdrawal' is probably because the body got used to having these hormones and depended on them for, say, 35 years. Apparently, we and the whale are the only mammals who go through the menopause. Men probably experience a decline in testosterone as they get older but they don't have to go through what we go through. Anyway, I really hope that January will mark the end of my periods because I don't want them back.
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🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻
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Hi Karine, i had about a year of negative thoughts, thinking about the same things over and over again, also mood swings and low mood, that's what led me to see the gp about trying hrt. Now only been taking it for around three months, but my mind and thoughts seem a lot more settled, the low mood has lifted, and the mood swings/tears have all but stopped. Wish i'd started it sooner!
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Hi Befuddled, do you know if you've reached the menopause yet? Because with HRT it's probably impossible to tell.
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Really not sure, either post meno or very late pre meno. i hadn't had a proper period for around 18 months (a bit of spotting early this year) when i started hrt. I think it's because of the uncertainty that my gp put me on this regime (estradot patches with utrogestan 25 days out of 28), so my body can have a bleed if it feels the need to.
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So you hadn't had a period for 18 months but what symptoms did you have apart from the negative thinkkng? Is the negative thinking what drove you to go on HRT mainly?
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Yes it was the emotional stuff that made me try hrt. The physical stuff, mainly fatigue and hot flushes, had been around for a couple of years, and i could cope with them ok. But then the psychological stuff started up, sudden mood changes and tears for no good reason. So dramatic and unpredictable and started to affect my relationship. And that phrase you used "recurrent hypothetical negative thoughts" really rang a bell with me. So much time wasted thinking about things that were not relevant to me/my life, or things that were just not going to happen in reality, but my mind kept going back to "but what if, what if, what if...."