Calling All Girlfriends!

These first few entries are copied from Facebook and emails in an effort to keep the thought stream together.

October 7th, 2014
Email to girlfriends:

So, you ladies experiencing the menopausal hormone ride (or those who have found their way through already), how do you cope?  What tools / herbs / meds do you or did you use to manage the anxiety and crying?

I started over a year ago on the emotional rollercoaster - first just one day during my cycle I was teenage-level emotional, then 2 days, then 3, until over half the time was like that.  I didn't know what it was, I just knew that everything was hard and sad and personal and hopeless during that time and it was running my head when it hit.  Since then its added to the mix full blown anxiety attacks and what one doctor wants to label as simple depression.

  

I started on maca root and that has helped pretty well when I remembered to take it regularly and before I built up a tolerance. 

I went to see a standard western style doc a month or so ago and she waved off menopause saying I'd have more symptoms if it were that, and offered Zoloft.

Last week I went to see a naturopath, and he drew me this awesome graph of how our estrogen and progesterone levels flow when we're in our 30s, and then drew another of what happens in our 40s.  He showed how the progesterone can or does drop before the estrogen levels start to drop, and that can absolutely cause these kinds and levels of stress/depression/anxiety as what I've been feeling without yet having any other symptoms.  So he gave me Vitamin D and some progesterone cream to use each night and we'll check in again soon to see how its going and adjust as necessary.

During all this time, I've been working to teach myself to manage these feelings.  One thing I've been doing is removing from my life when possible the things and people that trigger me to go down the grind-churn-angry hole.  Another is to train myself to recognize these feelings when they hit as feelings being caused by my hormone levels - NOT by something outside of me (ok, in most cases).  Meaning, I'm getting quite good at remembering when I'm in the depths of an anxiety attack that nothing in my life really warrants this type of anxiety, that nothing in my life is hopeless or worthy of so much crying.  That my life is fine, pretty fucking great as it happens, its just my hormone levels.

So, I'm on a path with a doctor I like who actually listens, and I'm mastering not letting my head get to an actual freak out about my life when my life is fine and its really just the hormones.

  

BUT.  Knowing its just the hormones and knowing nothing is actually fucked up and worthy of so much anxiety doesn't actually stop the physical manifestations of those feelings.  When it hits, I still have to sit and cry (or hide and cry when I'm at work), I still feel all flighty and speedy inside, I still feel the nerves going crazy, I'm still triggered by certain topics and people.  I still have a really hard time leaving for work in the morning (I don't always make it out the door) because I loath the idea of being this way in the middle of cubicle-land and in front of people who will ask me whats wrong but that I'm not really close enough to to want to talk about it.  I still have problems wanting to participate in my social scene unless its been a really good day.  

All of this even though I *know* my life is essentially fine.

I'd thought of doing the Zoloft anyway, but then my naturopath said that our bodies take about 6 months to get used to the internal noise of that drug that makes it work and then I'd get to up the dose or take something else; he painted this picture of me needing to take it for 4-6 weeks before we really knew if it'd be effective enough, and then in 6 months I'd be the same person I was when I started only my body would need the Zoloft to stay there and not get even more depressed.  He feels its a bad short term solution that was just easy for that other doc to prescribe because it is so normalized a "solution" to depression, and that we need to be finding a better long term solution that my body wouldn't just build up a tolerance to, especially since he agrees with me that its not simply depression but instead mood/emotional flux due to menopausal hormone level changes. 

So I don't want to do any head-meds that will act like that; I don't see that as useful long-term and the short term use I don't see as worth the long term let-down.

So far I'm using the progesterone cream nightly, working to build a meditation / mindfulness practice to help me cultivate tools to quiet my mind, stirring regular exercise back into my routine, upping my vitamin D and Bs, and starting to adjust my diet to maximize foods that'll give me progesterone and reduce those that'll give me more estrogen.

Its also been suggested that I start journaling, but I feel about journaling the same as I feel about yoga - in theory its totally awesome and we should all do it, but in practice I've never managed to keep it up for more than one or two sessions.

I haven't shared this with many people, not the true levels I'm being effected by all this.  Not till now - I need help from smart women who've dealt with it!