Dear Suzi,
Welcome and thank you for sharing your story here. It is relatable to me as I have complex PTSD, anxiety and depression too. I'm 51 and also live alone. Around the age of 40 I felt things were really looking up for me and I was going along pretty ok. At 41 I started to get early symptoms of perimenopause such as increased anxiety and periods starting to become a bit irregular, but I kept on going. I went through some major life stresses but was hanging in there. Then at 47 I was just smashed by perimenopause getting suddenly much worse with really extreme and strange anxiety and depression.
So my sense is you are not so much relapsing into your prior situation, but more that the biological changes of perimenopause are really having an impact. It took me a little while to realise it was perimenopause in my case. I found podcasts online with Dr Louise Newson who is a doctor specialising in perimenopause and menopause from the UK. She interviews women whose mental health had collapsed at this age like mine was. From the information I got from there, and other info from people like Prof Jayashri Kulkarni here in Australia, I decided to try hormone medication. Literally overnight I went from feel shocking to feeling incredibly better. I was initially on a cyclical regime with one of the meds though, so when I had to cycle off that med after two weeks I deteriorated again. It became so obvious that hormones were driving my mental state. I then found a hormone specialist doctor at a menopause clinic. She has been excellent and we have kept adjusting meds and now I'm a lot better than I was in terms of the hormonally driven depression and anxiety. I do get a histamine reaction from one of the hormone medications, unfortunately, so I tried to reduce that one, and then the really bad depression returned. So I had to increase it again and I manage the histamine issues with other meds and a low histamine diet.
It depends how bad your symptoms are getting, but if they are severe or really impacting your quality of life then hormone medication is one thing to consider. Finding someone like a hormone specialist doctor can be really helpful as many regular GPs have limited or outdated knowledge in this area. We aren't allowed to discuss specific meds here so I can't go into detail. But what I have learned is that the fall in estradiol and progesterone affects the brain directly, not just reproductive issues. About 20% of people going through perimenopause experience strong mental health effects from these changes. My hormone specialist doctor said it's often worse for people with a trauma history, though some even get those effects without a trauma history.
Apart from hormone medication, things like self-care through gentle exercise, time in nature, meditation, finding comforting things to listen to to help sleep at night, chatting to people (including helplines) etc are all other things that can help. It's often a time of great transition and re-evaluation in relation to one's own life and way of relating to the world. Many say they become more assertive and no nonsense during this time. Anyway, sorry I wrote so much there 🙈, but I hope you can know it can get better, it just can be a really tough time. I'm happy to chat further or answer any questions. It's very normal to feel so abnormal at this time and to even feel like a different person. So many people describe that. Take care.
