One thing that I thought the pandemic and the attendant stress therein took from me was my ability to bounce back emotionally. Recover from set-backs. “Surely,” I thought to myself, as one does, “as this ends, I will regain some semblance of coping with stress”.
Then came the litany of other crisiseses and stressors, never minding the firehose of bad news that most of the internet consists of now. From time to time I would have a Good Week, and think, “this is it, this is the start of getting back to where I was: where I can handle a rejection with aplomb or a set-back with a sigh and roll-up of my sleeves”. (I do realize, before you feel the need to point it out, that I was not necessarily poised 24/7 in the Before Times. Of course I wasn’t. I am an ordinary human being. But I didn’t feel like my battery was blinking red all the time either.)
But then would roll in the next set of clouds, the next wave of Big Problems Requiring Complex Decisions, and wham, I would be back to feeling squashed. Like an RPG character with a status effect called Drain. Every time I healed at a temple, I only got back to 50%.
I thought it was depression. (It is not.)
I thought it was anxiety (already being treated for that).
I thought it might be anemia (and whoo boy was my iron low! but it’s better now, and while that helped, it’s not the whole story).
Then I got a therapist, and I was telling her about my latest moment of having a complete breakdown over a minor incident, and my whole “why am I like this now when I used to be like this then” set of internal questions, and she very quietly coughed into her palm and asked me how old I am. (Answer: going to be 45 at the end of the summer, whee).
“Have you looked into perimenopause…?”
When I said I had been looking into the physical symptoms, she pointed me at some of the mental ones:
- brain fog
- memory enshittifacation
- lack of patience with anyone’s shit
- lack of patience with my own emotional shit
- lack of patience with any shit period, including world shit
My response: “huh”.
“For some people it can be like PMS but all the time,” she added helpfully, and a lightbulb lit (and then exploded) in my brain. Because yes. That’s what it feels like. What it’s felt like for years: PMS but low-grade and all most of the fucking time. Sometimes I don’t feel like I have low-grade PMS and those times, I realize now, are the Good Weeks where I feel normal and ready to deal with the world.
Of course the 2020s have been a whirlwind of shit too, globally. Not excusing that. But my emotional walls are wearing thin, and more of the outside world is getting in.
And wearing thin is the operative metaphor: my hormonal levels are dropping. Well, duh, you say. That’s what (peri)menopause is. But while estrogen and progesterone levels dropping gets talked about all the fucking time, no one talks about the fact that it’s everything decreasing. Including oxytocin and serotonin.
I’m not imagining things. My resilience really has been dropping.
Oxytocin is often called the “cuddle hormone”. By cowards.
“Oxytocin? Oh yes, that’s the hormone that keeps you from eating your baby.”
–my mother
Oxytocin doesn’t just keep you feeling snuggly. It keeps you interested in socializing. It keeps you patient. It keeps you putting up with other people’s shit. (A link to a fascinating deep dive if you want a citation.)
And it drops along with everyone else in middle-age1.
Okay? So?
Honestly, just realizing that I do, in fact, have a Status Condition: Minor PMS cast on me has helped immensely. Just like with Real PMStm, I can mentally take a step back in the moment, and remind myself that my emotions are fried and stress is amplified. I can take a deep breath. I can qualify my reactions to other people so they know why my face is doing that while they’re talking, or (pre)apologize if I’m being snappy. I can re-evaluate The Stressful Thing and ask myself if I could be this upset during A Good Week.
That all makes a huge difference.
This morning I woke up from a nightmare to some bad news. A setback with the launch of Curve. It derailed me enough that I forgot to have my morning coffee until Cutie reminded me. (I did then drink my coffee. That was step one. Coffee is always step one.)
My first instinct was to, honestly, have a big cry and complain about The Setback to anyone who will listen. But that’s not very productive (nor do I want people to deal with that on a regular basis). So I mentally took the step back that I needed. I decided not to do editing this morning (since editing is a big spoon drain). I prioritized going for a walk before it gets too hot. I worked on my website. And I emailed my publisher about back-up plans / next steps.
The urge to pick up a chair and throw it has faded. I wanted to cry, but I didn’t. I have been mostly level-headed and responsible. That’s what I have been wanting; that’s the resilience I miss.
I still don’t feel like I did when I was in my 30s. Maybe I never will again. But this hill doesn’t feel insurmountable any more – I found a sign-post. There is a path forward.
And there is always more walks and more coffee. That helps a lot too.
UPDATE: while I was writing this blag, I got a reply from my publisher. They’re already working on back-up plans. The launch is going to be okay. I could let out that breath I’ve been holding and go on with my day–except that by writing all of this out, I kinda already have.
- Boob joke goes here. ↩︎
Leave a Reply