Coping with the Emotional Side of Menopause

Whether you’re teetering on the edge of perimenopause, or fully onboard the Decreasing Hormone Express, no doubt you’ll know the most common symptoms of menopause (and there are a whopping 34 of them) such as hot flushes, night sweats, mood swings, tiredness, poor sleep patterns, difficulty concentrating and a lack of libido. The less commonly known symptoms include headaches and migraines; changes in hair, dry skin and itchy skin; dry itchy eyes, nausea, tender breasts, vaginal atrophy, poor concentration, poor memory, joint pains, anxiety and depression.

The problem is that many women may not immediately realise that these symptoms are caused by the sudden changes in their hormone levels and put these changes down to the stress of daily life (particularly this year!) leading to a delay in visiting a GP for treatment options.

Your first step should always be a visit to your GP, but there are things you can do yourself to help alleviate the mental and emotional effects of some of the symptoms. We spoke to psychotherapist, stress coach and author, Siobhan Murray, about coping mechanisms for the emotional side of it all, and finding your balance again.

Back to Basics

It is, she explains, about going back to basics; starting with the simple things and dealing with the big triggers first and foremost.

“The first thing to deal with is your sleeping pattern. Because if that’s not right, for the whole day you're constantly playing catch up,” she says.

“You might get to midday and have decent cognitive reasoning, but by one o'clock, you're back to feeling exhausted again because your melatonin production is being hindered. And we’ve been told to get our sleep right for years, but what I think is really coming out now is that your sleep is actually the most important of everything. I use what’s called a Lumie Light.

“They work by the light going down from a bright light to a very dim one, so it slowly switches off completely over a 30 minute period. It works by activating the melatonin, which helps to promote your sleep. And then the reverse of that in the morning. Our body wants to wake up naturally. So we can help by using a UV light or an equivalent. And then it’s the normal things, staying away from your phone at least an hour before you go to bed, reducing your alcohol and coffee consumption in the evening.”

Siobhan then mentions brain fog and separately Decision Fatigue as two other menopausal symptoms that can particularly impinge on daily activities. Decision Fatigue is when you struggle to make the most basic of choices and she says a lot of it is down to feeling overwhelmed with everything on our plates. The idea is to deal with this in bursts – so the smaller, simpler decisions are sorted before the rest.

“If you imagine an elastic band, you wake up in the morning, and it's sitting on your desk at work and looks as it should with no tension on it. And every time you make a decision, the elastic band gets pulled tighter and tighter and tighter. We’re using up all our resources throughout the day, just having to make these choices.”

“If we can take 25% of those say smaller decisions away, because we've already sorted them in our heads (such as planning the weekly dinners on a Sunday), then we're giving ourselves more mental capacity and mental energy to be able to focus on the things which require more of our time.”

The Burnout Effect

Having written a book on the effects of burnout, it’s no surprise that Siobhan agrees that this year, in particular, will see women both struggling with menopause, as well as dealing with varying levels of burnout.

“The last six months alone will have catapulted a lot of people into levels of burnout. Add in the whole experience of going through menopause for those where it becomes an issue, in stress, and anxiety and parenting, and then you put in everything that happens to the body from a hormonal perspective, it’s a recipe for the perfect storm.”

The solution, she says, comes down to negotiables and non-negotiables. “At any given time in life, it doesn't matter what age you are, there's always going to be times where you're going to have to look at things to go, have I got too many things going on right now? And what's negotiable? What can I let go of? What can I pull back on, so I've got more time for the non-negotiables in my life, from cooking dinner or feeding the kids whatever it is.”

“So maybe it's time to sit down and go, okay, maybe I need to pull my life back to basics. What I’ve seen a lot of women do, is they get hit with the tsunami of hormonal changes and they try to continue to still do everything they were doing prior to this hormonal explosion. And sometimes we need to learn how to be kind to ourselves and dial down the notch a bit and say no, I’m not going to be as hard on myself and I do everything that I could do six months ago.

“As women, we're incredibly hard on ourselves. And I think women think that they need to get through menopause and not allow themselves to know that your body's going through a massive change. You’d be nice to your kids or your friends? Why aren't we nice to ourselves? We don’t have to be Superwomen. We can just do what we can – it’s more than enough.”

Heyday in conversation with Siobhan Murray
What difficult menopause symptoms have you been dealing with?
Tell us in the comments below…