Sea change- perimenopause and me

I’m Tammy, mid 40s, married mum of two and Clinical Psychology is my background. Now I look back, I believe that I started Perimenopause in my 40th year. I became aware that I was becoming more forgetful, and my word finding was terrible and this was embarrassing to say the least, especially at work. I actually thought that I was in the early stages of dementia or something. I was working for myself after leaving a 20 year career in the NHS. I had my own clinics and this was working well but, all of a sudden, any additional demands seemed to become a massive deal. Then one frantically busy day I made a mistake and confused two new clients resulting in one of them understandably being very cross and upset with me. I was absolutely mortified and this really knocked my confidence at the time. I started to reduce my hours and focus more carefully on just a few clients. At the same time I was running the household, as many of us do, and sometimes it felt like it was too much. I’ve always been an emotional person, especially around pre-menstruation, however I got to the point where I could well up at the tiniest thing and would often cry several times a day, sometimes it seemed for no reason at all. I managed to keep this out of the clinic room but this meant a huge amount of emotional suppression whilst at work. Then there were the extremely heavy periods with barely a break between them which was exhausting. I thought I was losing the plot at times. Was I depressed? Was I having a mid life crisis? Then a good friend told me about the term perimenopause and as I read around it, it seemed that maybe there was an explanation, that didn’t involve me being weak, not able to juggle or spin the plates anymore, but that my physiology was changing. It has still taken years to finally do something about it. My journey has been emotional, exhausting and strangely liberating! Here I share my meanderings, ponderings and psychology wisdom in the hope that it might help you if you’re at the same stage of life and facing similar changes.

I’ve just spent the past half hour googling synonyms and nicknames for the perimenopause because it’s such a mouthful! The “change” makes me cringe as I think of people whispering it discreetly so as not to upset anyone by having the audacity to mention a common life stage that effects half of the population. The title is correct though. We go through a massive time of change, hormonally, physiologically, emotionally and psychologically. My goal here is to write about the whole combo and to highlight the massive psychological changes that women (and transgender women) may go through, often for many years and sometimes silently. Mercifully, there’s a revolution happening around the perimenopause and I definitely want to be a part of it. It’s breaking down barriers to communicating about the perimenopause and menopause, it’s educating individuals, their partners, their employers, their sons and daughters, so that we can create a new infrastructure of support in society, so that women can continue to work, can work flexibly, can live healthily and access the support they need when the change starts. Are you with me?