June 2024 – Menopause Madness

Dating carried on in June, and I spoke to a guy for a few weeks. We seemed to have a connection online, and I went on a few dates with this guy, which were lovely. However, I wasn’t feeling a physical connection with him, so sadly, I had to stop chatting. It felt horrible doing this, but I knew it was the right thing to do for both of us.

June was a bit of a crazy month with parents visiting, a trip to Swindon for a surprise meal for my mum’s 80th birthday, and lots going on with uni work, business meetings and networking events – all of which I would usually take in my stride, a little more full on than some months but nothing that I had not handled before.

However, in the past few months, I have been struggling mentally with a few things, including this blog, you will have noticed that I’ve not posted for ages and months behind with these monthly posts! My head as I put it has been like a shed (full of rubbish that is of no use to anyone!). I just lost all motivation to write it, felt like I was a broken record and wondering the point of it was.

These feelings finally came to a head one week/weekend when I felt completely useless. When a friend asked what was wrong I basically said “Everything and nothing”, it was a strange thing to say maybe but that’s all I could think of saying as at the time I had no reason to feel like I was but also felt like I have every reason to feel useless. For months I have been having irrational thoughts, the week before menstruation but in June they hit me hard one weekend. A few of these thoughts were:

• I needed to give my cats back to the charity I rescued them from as I was good enough to be a pet owner and they were unhappy and would be happier with someone else.
• I needed to resign from my job at the uni as I was failing at it and was going to be sacked anyway.
• I needed to sell my house and buy a bungalow as my knees were so painful that could hardly walk up the stairs without bursting into tears.
• I wasn’t safe to drive as my mind wasn’t present to be 100% focused on the road and other road users.

So the safest thing I thought to do was to stay at home all weekend, I just didn’t feel up for human interaction, not sure whether I could hold it together for long enough to have a conversation without bursting into tears.

Then there were days when I would just sit and sob, tears streaming down my face for no apparent reason at all, thankfully on these days I was working at home so I simply continued to work the best I could as I had deadlines to meet, other days, I was crying in my car on the way to uni if a certain song was played on the radio, the tears would dry as quickly as they came.

When I mentioned these thoughts to a couple of female colleagues at work the first thing they said was that I needed to go and see my doctor as these were definitely menopause related.

Despite menopause affecting 50% of the population and getting more air time in the media and social media, there is still a massive taboo around it as well as it being such an individual thing.

Being a nutritionist, I know quite a lot about the physical side of peri/menopause and understand how the body changes during this period but not that much about the impact it has on your mental health (I qualified 15 years ago and back then we had a few lessons around the menopause, this was mainly the physical changes). Yes, I’ve had friends go through menopause as well as family members but I’d not discussed it much with many people, it’s a tough one to bring up really.

I think I’ve been pretty lucky over the years with menstruation, having light periods, little to no period pains and mild PMT (I live on my own so harder to know if I was getting PMT), yes I was aware I got a little emotional each month but that had little effect on my day-to-day life. To suddenly get all these feelings was hard and also getting serious period pain (especially when I was exercising) and has hit me like a tonne of bricks.

I know that I need to embrace this period of my life, but also know that there is help out there to support me too! As you will know I’m the worst at asking for help, but I did book an appointment with my GP to see what support medically was available to me (will update you on this appointment in July’s post). I know what I can do naturally and have been doing this for years as it’s just my normal way of life in terms of eating well, exercising, bedtime routine and sleeping, alcohol intake etc but know that there is only so much this will support my body.

As well as embracing this new chapter there is also accepting that some things will never happen like becoming a mum (biologically anyway) and this is probably the hardest thing, as I write this I have tears in my eyes as it just makes me really sad, I’ve really not accepted it yet and not sure I ever will.

Despite all this going on, you kind of have to just keep carrying on, I have to say though, the guy I mentioned at the top of the blog was such a sweetheart when I was going through all this, I know that I’m very self-aware and honest about my feelings so told him as didn’t want him to think I was being strange if the tone of my messages changed. He was kind and gentle with me which was lovely to feel so supported by someone I hardly knew.

I’m not saying my friends haven’t been supported, they have/are, however, I initially didn’t tell them about what I was going through as didn’t realise what it was really!!