Perimenopause & Mood

Women describe snapping at people they love over nothing, lying awake at 3am with a racing mind that never used to race, and crying in the car for reasons they cannot name afterward.

Because it does not look like the hot flashes everyone jokes about, many women do not connect it to perimenopause at all. They conclude they are failing at a life they used to run well.

Therapy gives you a place to make sense of the change, to work on what the rage is actually pointing at, and to build steadiness while your body is in transition.

Many women are told their labs are normal, offered nothing, and sent home feeling dismissed. Some are told it is just stress, or just aging, or handed a suggestion to relax.

To be clear about scope: I am a therapist, not a physician, and nothing here is medical advice. Decisions about hormones and medication belong with your doctor. What I can help with is being taken seriously, by you, so you can advocate for yourself clearly in medical rooms and stop gaslighting yourself between appointments.

We also work on tracking what is actually happening, because arriving at your doctor with specifics changes the conversation.

Under the symptoms there is often a quieter grief. The sharp, energetic, reliable self you were is changing, and nobody holds a ceremony for that.

This grief is real and worth doing properly rather than white-knuckling. It is also not the whole story. Many women come out the other side of this transition with a clearer sense of what they will and will not spend their energy on, and describe it as a kind of arrival.

Our work holds both: honest mourning for what is changing, and deliberate attention to who you are becoming.