16 horror stories about perimenopause

(and what I did about them)

The Cut – a major American website – has published a series on this tricky transition, fronted by an article about The Perimenopause Gold Rush. I was prepared to dislike it, but the author, Jessica Bennet, has done an excellent job of capturing just how messed up and contradictory this transition right now is – including the role doctors and celebrities are playing.

In honor of the accompanying piece 11 horror stories about perimenopause — including sudden weight gain, flooding periods with giant blood clots, inability to orgasm, and more — I decided to share my own list. Keep in mind, I think I started all this around 39 or 40 and I didn’t know I was in perimenopause until I was about 47, so each new symptom felt like a fresh horror. I truly thought I was dying a lot of the time. And looking back, I was very emotionally unstable (and I imagine quite off-putting to others) too.

The only benefit of all that pain — albeit a significant one — is that I can now tell you what I did about it. And even if hormone therapy is your ultimate solution, one recurring theme of all my research is that it probably won’t solve all your problems. At the same time I’m convinced that declining progesterone — the hormone that governs resilience and stress response — left me vulnerable to chronic stress, unresolved trauma, and lingering health issues.

While it would’ve been nice to have a doctor recognize what was happening, in the end I was forced to take a long, hard look at myself.

As the Irish yoga instructor and all-round lovely person Niamh Daly writes in her beautiful new book Yoga for Menopause and Beyond: “As difficult as it can be, perimenopause could be seen as a gift. It shows a woman what needs to be done.”

Please remember: this is what I did for me. It is no way medical advice. I’m a journalist who talks to doctors, looks at research and gathers information about the human experience. The rest is up to you.

Here goes:

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1. Recurring nightmares

At around 40, I began having terrifying, recurring nightmares — every night. I would wake up gasping, sometimes on my knees or standing beside the bed. In my mind, I had a prescription for a pill that kept me alive, but I’d forgotten to take it – for days. Panicked, I’d search for it in my bedside drawer so I could avoid imminent death.

What I did: During a discussion about dreams at a yoga retreat in Sri Lanka, I mentioned what was going on. Someone suggested a variation on Lucid Dreaming might work. So I started telling myself, ‘I’m not dying, there is no pill, nothing is wrong and I am safe’ every night before bed. The nightmares stopped within a few days, though I still get mild versions when I’m stressed. They are a good reminder to calm down. Also, and I’ll keep saying it, this was where I realized: ‘whoa, I can change my life by altering what I think’.

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2. Mental health challenges

Around the same time, my lifelong tendency to ruminate intensified. I became paranoid about how I was perceived at work. As an editor managing a large team, I felt constantly judged and weirdly under a microscope. What I now know are intrusive thoughts kicked into overdrive, with irrational fears about family disasters, work mistakes, household appliances left on or being arrested (although I’d done nothing wrong). These thoughts triggered waves of terror and fright that took hours to pass.

What I did: Four years of talk therapy helped me uncover childhood patterns and learn mindfulness techniques. I also discovered the Brainwave app, which uses binaural beats to calm the mind. Sheryl Paul’s book The Wisdom of Anxiety taught me to name and address intrusive thoughts, rather than believing them. Later on, breathwork and somatic healing movement.

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3. Unexplained physical symptoms

At work, I often experienced burning smells, tingling, itching, or random shooting pain. Sometimes I felt breathless and panicked, thinking I was having a stroke. I’d ask other people if they ever felt like this, searching for some solace. They would look at me with concern and say no.

What I did: I endured these symptoms for years and worried about them constantly until starting Hotflash inc and learning about the many manifestations of perimenopause. Now I don’t do anything unless it’s truly acute or it’s been happening for at least five days straight. Sheryl Paul also really helped me with health anxiety, explaining a) a good way of dealing with it is to ask what care we need that we are not giving ourselves and b) that when something it truly wrong, it will become apparent.

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4. Fear of flying

In my early 40s, I developed a major fear of flying — four years after moving overseas and having to make several long-haul flights to Canada each year. The anxiety started the day before a flight and extended to freaking out at the slightest turbulence in the air. I began drinking triple whiskeys before boarding to cope.

What I did: I booked a session in a flight simulator with my boyfriend at the time. He’d been a flight engineer in the US military and explained everything that was happening, which helped me understand that planes aren’t just ‘hurtling through the air’ but are more like cars on a highway. I stopped drinking before flights and my anxiety eased over time.

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5. Chest pains

Around 41, I woke up with severe chest pains and shooting pain down my left arm. I called an ambulance and spent the night in the ER. It turned out to be nothing.

What I did: Had a full cardio workup. Afterward, every time I had chest pains, I reminded myself, ‘It’s not a heart attack’.

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6. Hair loss

At 42, during a particularly stressful period, all my eyelashes fell out. I felt absolutely hideous and terrified. They grew back and then fell out again.

What I did: I saw a trichologist who after extensive blood tests reassured me there was no physical issue, which meant that it was stress-related. When he jokingly asked about my relationship status and suggested I ‘bin the boyfriend’, I realized he was right. This marked the beginning of a major life shift.

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7. Suicidal ideation

During the above years, I felt more alone than I ever had before. I struggled with regular automatic negative thoughts (ANTs) and suicidal ideation — a problem that peaked around 48. It was very bleak and I hid it from almost everyone.

What I did: Four years of talk therapy and hypnosis for anxiety. Later on, breathwork and somatic bodywork helped move trauma through my body. Learning that there were terms for these things, remembering what happened to help the nightmares and deciding to consciously focus on changing my thinking, as well as following super-positive people, was also very helpful. Around that time I came across Mel Robbins saying “no one is coming” and for some reason, that was the wakeup call I needed to take responsibility for my mental state. Life is much easier now.