You’re Not Losing Your Mind. Ten Symptoms That Might Mean You’re in Perimenopause

It took me three doctors, two prescriptions for anti-depressants, and countless sleepless nights, convinced I might be dying, to figure out I was in perimenopause. I was in my early forties, so as I saw doctor after doctor to address my symptoms, menopause hadn’t entered my mind. Thankfully, I found a third doctor. She listened to me, took me seriously, and told me that I was in fact, in perimenopause. Then she helped me build an actual medical plan to treat my symptoms, instead of writing a prescription and moving on.

If you’re in the middle of your own version of the “what’s happening to me” search right now, wondering what’s actually going on with your body, I want to hand you the list I wish someone had handed me when my journey began.

The symptom list is longer and stranger than anyone tells you

Here’s what almost nobody explains before you’re living it. There are now over 100 symptoms officially associated with perimenopause and menopause, and most of them have nothing to do with a hot flash.

Brain fog. Mental fatigue. Fatigue in general. An ache in your wrist that comes out of nowhere. A shoulder pinching in a way it never has before. Weight gathering around your middle that doesn’t respond to any of the strategies that used to work to take it off. A 3am wake-up that’s stopped being occasional and is now a standing date. Headaches. Ringing in your ears. Vertigo. A sensitivity to sound that has you feeling homicidal at the sound of your partner chewing. Emotional volatility, up one minute, down the next, with a little rage mixed in between that doesn’t feel like you at all. And underneath all of it, a quiet sense that you’re losing yourself bit by bit, almost disappearing before your own eyes.

If you’ve been collecting these symptoms one at a time, trying to figure out how to treat each of them individually, I want to invite you to see them as one collective list instead. It’s possible they’re not ten separate mysteries. It’s possible they’re one pattern, and that pattern has a name. Perimenopause.

You’re not dying, even though it can genuinely feel that way sometimes. But you could be in perimenopause.

It can start a decade earlier than you’d guess

Here’s the number that surprises almost everyone I share it with. The average age of menopause in the US is 50. But menopause has a lead-up period called perimenopause, and that lead-up can last as long as ten years. Do the math, and you land somewhere most women never expect: you can be in perimenopause in your early forties. If you’re in your early 40s reading this list and thinking, that can’t possibly be me, I understand exactly why you’d think that. I thought so too. Most of us are bracing for this transition sometime in our late 40s or early 50s. Nobody tells us it can arrive a full decade ahead of schedule. So when the symptoms show up early, we look everywhere except the real explanation.

You can do something about this, and you don’t have to suffer

I want to be honest with you about why it took three doctors to get an answer. It wasn’t because I have a rare or complicated case. It’s because most general practitioners get just a handful of hours of menopause-specific training across their entire medical education. That’s not a knock on any individual doctor. It’s a genuine gap in how the education system trains physicians, and it’s the reason so many women end up exactly where I was, sitting across from a well-meaning doctor who simply doesn’t have the specific knowledge to connect the dots.

This is why I encourage you to find a specialist to help you through perimenopause. The Menopause Society certifies practitioners. They have a list on their website, and there are now several on-line providers who are dedicated to women’s menopausal health. You want a doctor who will listen to you, not one who gaslights you, or tells you this is just a normal part of getting older and there’s nothing to be done about it. That’s not true. There’s something to be done. You can take charge of these symptoms with the help of an educated medical partner. You don’t have to suffer through them quietly, the way so many women before us have. I’m definitely not going quietly.

You’re not dying. You’re not losing your mind. You’re moving through something real, with an actual name, and you can do something about it.

If any part of this blog resonated with you, or if you were mentally checking items off that list, grab my Midlife Reset Kit and start there. It’s a short video, a workbook, and three steps built for exactly this moment in your life. ↓