Feeling fearful during menopause & how to overcome it

Read the full video transcript below

Today's topic

Hello and welcome to my weekly video blog. And today on A.Vogel Talks Menopause, I'm going to be talking about feelings of fear in the menopause.

Now, this is another one of these really horrible emotional situations that most women will experience at some point during the menopause. But it can either creep up on you, or it can hit you suddenly like a ton of bricks, and it can completely disrupt your day-to-day life. 

Common fears often experienced

It's a really, really horrible situation. What can happen? You can start to fear everyday situations, so that may be just going out the house, it may be you don't want to go out and socialise and meet new people. It may be that at work, you now start to fear giving presentations or talking with colleagues. It can also be driving.

It's amazing how many women say to me that they've suddenly developed a fear of driving and they just don't want to get in their car anymore. So it can really disrupt just every day-to-day things that you would normally do without even thinking about them.

The other thing that can happen with these fears though is they can become deep-seated almost irrational fears but when you're in this situation, very much like anxiety, it's sometimes difficult to distinguish between what you're feeling and what is reality in a way. 

So what can happen here is you can start to really fear about yourself, about life, about your family. A lot of women find that they start to think a lot about death and they fear that something terrible is going to happen to their loved ones or that's going to happen to themselves as well. 

And it can put you in a total panic to the point where it's really going to disrupt absolutely everything. And it's another one of these most awful places to be because you can't really see a way out of it. It tends to be very all-consuming.

What is causing you to feel fearful?

Now, how does this happen? Well, again, it's all to do with low oestrogen. 

We have different areas of the brain that have developed over the eons, if you like, since life began and these irrational fears tend to stem from what's called the reptilian brain. Now, this is a very simple brain, if you like, it just focuses on life, survival, food, and reproduction. 

And when our oestrogen starts to fall, our control, if you like, on this particular part of the brain, we can lose it. So the primal fears can start to circulate and these very often start first thing in the morning.

So we're looking here when we're talking about fear, it's all about surviving and survival. So this particular part of the brain will be scanning everything. It will be scanning every part of our life, our day-to-day living, looking for anything that's going to maybe affect our security and might have a detrimental effect on our life really. So these fears become all-consuming. 

But today, what happens, we don't have the same primeval fears of, you know, monsters, or dinosaurs, or other big predators coming to get us as soon as we're up and about. But our everyday fears today then become amplified. They become bigger and very often, we can end up almost making stories up about them. 

We might have a sudden thought about one of our children, maybe they're going through a little bit of a tough time. And instead of just having a general worry about them, this part of the brain takes over and creates a horrendous story about what might happen, about what could happen to them. And that again, it just sets us off on to another state of panic. 

So it's a very difficult one to realise you're in it because once you're in it, everything else disappears. But it can be quite a difficult one to treat with remedies as well, because it's one of our more basic instincts that has suddenly been stirred up again. 

What can you do to help overcome your fears?

The best thing to do here, you can look at things like upping your oestrogen if that's what's necessary, something like our menopause support if it's appropriate. You can look at really nice calming remedies, calming herbs, so that may be things like ashwagandha, our stress-relief daytime may be a nice one for taking the edge off things. 

Remember your magnesium and your B vitamins. Remember the water, because dehydration is going to make your nervous system even more jumpy and can run away with you really terribly. So water, very important in this situation. Look at other things that you can do. 

If you find that this is becoming a big day-to-day deal for you, you can look at things like EFT (Emotional freedom techniques), NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming), or CBT (Cognitive behavioural therapy). And what these do, basically, is they help to teach you to take control of your emotions, so you're the one that's in the driving seat rather than your own fears. 

Obviously, if this gets too much, if you feel that it's affecting your day-to-day life to the point where you can't go out the house, if you can't work, if you can't communicate with other members of your family, then this is the point where you go and see your doctor.

The other remedy, which may be nice and helpful for you and is one that you can take with you when you're out and about is the Confidence Essence, just to help to give you a little bit of a boost for those day-to-day fears, such as not wanting to drive or if you're having sort of confidence problems at work. This is a nice gentle one that again, will help to take the edge off things.

Remember, it's just a phase, it will pass

So hope you found this one interesting, it's one of the horrible ones of the menopause. It is just a phase for most women, so do remember this. This is one that when your hormones start to change or rebalance, you will usually come out of it.

Now, if any of you have had any issues like this, if there's anything you've done that you've found has really helped you, we would love to know, so please leave a comment below. 

And until then, I'll see you next week for another edition of A.Vogel Talks Menopause.