Menopause
Menopause
Menopause
Perimenopause and menopause are among the most significant biological and psychological transitions in a woman’s life, and among the least well supported. The hormonal changes involved affect sleep, mood, cognition, concentration, and energy in ways that are frequently more disruptive than expected, and often more invisible to the people around you than the experience warrants.
Many women describe managing the gap between how they appear on the outside and how destabilised they feel on the inside largely alone. There can be a pressure, professional, relational, or internal, to continue functioning at the same level while absorbing changes that are genuinely significant. That pressure has its own cost.
The psychological dimensions of menopause
The physical symptoms of menopause are well documented. What receives less attention is the psychological and relational impact of the transition, and this is often where the most significant difficulty sits.
Menopause can bring a quiet but disorienting shift in identity. The sense of who you are, how you inhabit your body, what roles you occupy, and what you want from the next chapter of your life can all become uncertain in ways that are difficult to articulate. For some women this surface uncertainty connects to something deeper: earlier experiences of loss or trauma that the transition has brought closer to the surface, or longstanding questions about self-worth and self-permission that the hormonal upheaval has made harder to suppress.
For others, the difficulty is more specifically relational. Menopause can shift how you experience intimacy, desire, and your sense of yourself in partnerships and friendships. It can bring grief, about ageing, about fertility, about a version of yourself that feels like it’s receding, that isn’t always easy to name or bring into conversation.
Some women also notice that the emotional volatility of perimenopause, the rage, the tearfulness, the sudden loss of tolerance for situations they have endured for years, is less about hormones than it first appears. The transition can have a way of surfacing feelings that have been carefully managed for a long time.
Early menopause and surgical menopause bring their own particular difficulties, including losses that may not have been anticipated or chosen. These deserve careful, unhurried attention.
How therapy can help
Therapy offers a space to make sense of what is happening beyond symptom management. That might mean exploring the identity questions the transition is raising, understanding why this particular period of life feels so destabilising, or working with the grief, anxiety, or relationship difficulties that have surfaced alongside the physical changes.
My approach is relational and psychodynamic, which means I’m interested in the longer story behind what you’re experiencing now, as well as the immediate difficulty. I also offer therapeutic writing groups specifically for women navigating perimenopause and menopause, which can offer a different kind of space for reflection and connection.
Resources
- Preparing for the Perimenopause and Menopause — Louise Newson
- The Menopause Brain — Lisa Mosconi
- Hagitude — Sharon Blackie
- Menopause and Me: menopauseandme.co.uk
- Menopause Matters: menopausematters.co.uk
Samantha Merry is a BACP Senior Accredited Psychotherapist in private practice in Bromley, South East London, and a doctoral researcher at the University of Chester. She offers individual therapy and therapeutic writing groups for women navigating menopause and perimenopause.