By: Louise Coyle
May 13, 2019

  • Menopause can be a challenging time for many women
  • Caused by a reduction in the hormone oestrogen, the symptoms of the menopause are both physical and emotional 
  • If you are struggling and need support, find a therapist here 

“A hot flush feels as though I am being very quickly overwhelmed with unbearable and stifling heat.”

This describes how a menopausal hot flush felt for one woman I have worked with. When it happens, you feel as though everyone is looking at you, wondering who that strange woman is who has suddenly turned beetroot red and started sweating. 

You certainly don’t want colleagues at work to notice or know what you are going through because you don’t want them to think of you as ‘old’. It isn’t just the hot flushes either; you feel dried up, past-it, forgetful, you can’t sleep, your self-confidence has plummeted and ultimately you just don’t feel like ‘you’ anymore.

“It’s the most horrible time of my life. It comes at the same time as all the other horrid stuff, parents’ deaths, children leaving home. A perfect storm of yukness!”

Caused by the reduction of levels of the hormone oestrogen the symptoms of the menopause typically begin for women in their late 40s. When oestrogen levels begin to drop, periods become erratic and the other symptoms make their presence felt. This early part is technically known as the perimenopause. 

Medically speaking, the actual menopause occurs when you haven’t had a period for a year. The average age at which this happens is early 50s. For some women the unpleasant symptoms disappear with time, but others can carry on experiencing problems for many years. These symptoms aren’t just physical either.

“I feel anxious, a constant feeling of nerves and stress for no apparent reason, then a sudden burst of feeling very angry.”

Why does the menopause make me emotional?

Oestrogen doesn’t just regulate the ovaries, it has an impact on many other parts of the body, including the brain. It interacts with the part of the brain that affects bodily temperature, as a result, decreasing levels of oestrogen mean the brain detects too much body heat and takes steps to reduce it – causing a hot flush!

Oestrogen acts as an emotional regulator as well, having an effect on the brain that is very similar to the class of antidepressant medication called SSRIs. The body’s stress regulating organs, the adrenal glands, are also affected by falling levels of oestrogen. As a result, we become more sensitive to stress, meaning that levels of anxiety increase and women become more susceptible to depression and mood swings.

For many years, menopause was ignored, not spoken about, hidden away. Women didn’t want to talk about how it felt because they saw being menopausal as the start of being defined as ‘an old crone’. The treatment choices that women were hearing from the medical profession didn’t help either. You could either take hormone replacement therapy (HRT), which had risks and might even give you cancer, or you could just muddle through. There seemed to be no other effective alternatives!