1. You Have Less Tolerance for Other People
You may find that you can tolerate your family less, your friends less, or even your workmates less.
You just feel irritated and fed up with people.
A lot of this is linked to the hormone oxytocin, sometimes known as our ‘love hormone’ or bonding hormone. When oxytocin decreases during menopause, we can often feel less connected to other people.
2. You Need More Time Alone
This was definitely me. I found that I just needed to be alone. I wanted peace and quiet. I didn’t want people bothering me, and I would get fed up with people wanting to put their needs onto me.
I actually found myself standing at my back door, wishing I could just fly off into the sunset, never to be seen again!
This is a really common experience, and a lot of it can be to do with the fact that our sensory perception becomes much more sensitive.
Although things around us haven’t necessarily changed, our minds can feel as though there is more and more sensory input coming in. Eventually, it can feel as though we just can’t cope with everything that’s going on.
3. Your Less Confident
This is a really big one, and it can happen in all sorts of different ways.
Your body changes. You might find that your shape changes, you put on weight, your skin changes or your hair changes.
You may also find that you’re just not coping quite so well at work with things that you would normally have done with gusto.
Perhaps you’re having to double-think or second-guess things. Maybe you’re making lists of things that, previously, you would have remembered off the top of your head.
Very often, this is simply because you feel different about yourself. Your confidence in yourself can decrease alongside everything else you’re experiencing.
4. You No Longer Want to People-Please
You may find that you simply don’t want to please everyone anymore.
It’s amazing how many women tell me that when somebody asks them to do something it’s just the last straw.
You’ve been saying yes to everybody all the time. You’re trying to please everyone, but what happens to you?
You can end up not even being at the bottom of your own list of all the people you have to help.
Then it may suddenly get to the point where somebody asks you to do something just once too often, and you think, ‘Right, I’ve had enough. I’m not going to do that anymore.’
You may also find that you’re simply fed up with other people’s ‘dramas’.
There may be things going on in your family, and you get pulled into them. You worry about what’s happening and perhaps try to be the mediator.
You’re trying to be everything to everybody, and that can be incredibly draining. You can become very tired, alongside all the other symptoms you may be experiencing.
5. Your Emotional Responses Have Changed
Your emotional responses to things can change, too.
You may suddenly find yourself crying and have absolutely no idea why. What are the tears for? What’s brought them on? Sometimes, you simply don’t know.
It can come on unexpectedly and at any stage.
You may find that you’re incredibly sensitive to the news or to things happening around you. There is so much going on in the world today, much of it negative, and we can get pulled into that.
It can make us feel very sad, very uncomfortable and sometimes even hopeless, because there’s nothing we can do to change things.
But it can also be the opposite.
Some people find that they become really flat. They become emotionally detached. They don’t find any joy or happiness. Everything just seems to be a sort of grey shade sitting there.
So, being hyper-emotional and feeling almost completely non-emotional can be two sides of the same coin.
Falling oestrogen can affect our mood and our emotional wellbeing, and this can show up in very different ways for different people.
6. You’ve Become More Assertive
You may suddenly find that you’re speaking up about things.
Again, this can be linked to that change in tolerance. You may find yourself saying:
‘No, I’m not going to put up with that anymore.’
‘No, I don’t want to do that.’
It’s such an interesting one because I was speaking to someone the other day who had started to feel really uncomfortable about becoming more assertive.
They were worried about how other people would react to this ‘new her’.
Personally, I think this can be a good thing.
As I mentioned before, we often spend so much time people-pleasing that we forget about ourselves. It can be good for us to put ourselves first sometimes – to say, ‘No, I don’t want to do that. I am going to do this.’
It can make us feel better, and that can help our confidence too, particularly if a loss of confidence is another issue you’re experiencing.
7. You’ve Lost Your Filter
Finally, you may find that you’ve lost your filter.
Instead of thinking something and keeping it to yourself, you might find yourself in a situation where normally you would think, ‘I don’t like that at all’, but suddenly you’re actually saying it before you’ve even had time to properly think about it!
You may have these outbursts. You may start telling people exactly how it is, and that can feel quite disconcerting.
Again, though, it’s worth trying to have a little think first, count to 5 if you can. Then, instead of simply blurting something out in a negative way, you can try to put your assertive comments across in a more positive way.
This is another change that many people have told me they’ve experienced. They’ve been shocked by it – and their families have been shocked, too!
These Changes Can Be Common but Also Unsettling
These are all really common changes that you may experience during the menopause, and they can be very puzzling.
Particularly if you’re not used to being so outspoken, assertive or emotional, these changes can feel very unsettling.
But sometimes, these changes can also help you to understand what you need.
Perhaps you need more time for yourself. Perhaps you need to start saying no. Perhaps you’ve spent years putting everybody else first and are finally beginning to recognise that your own needs matter, too.
So, did you experience any of these changes? What happened, and how did you cope with them? How did the people around you respond?
Or perhaps you experienced something completely different that had a big effect on you – hopefully a positive one.
Please share your stories. I love reading them, and you may be helping someone else who is going through exactly the same thing.
Other articles you might find helpful:
10 Strange Menopause Symptoms Nobody Warns You About
7 Silent Emotional Symptoms of Menopause That We Need To Talk About More
