Mood
The irritability, the anxiety and the flat days nobody warned you about, and the short practices that take the edge off.
Start here
Why am I so angry? Perimenopause rage, explained
The sudden fury that seems to come from nowhere is one of the most commonly described experiences of perimenopause and one of the least discussed. What is behind it, and what women find helps.
Anxiety that arrives without a reason
The feeling turns up first and your brain goes looking for something to attach it to. Why anxiety is so common in perimenopause, and what women find helps.
Is this perimenopause, or is it depression?
Low mood in your forties is commonly put down to hormones, and sometimes it is something that needs treating. How clinicians tell them apart, and why you do not have to decide alone.
Questions to ask your doctor about mood and perimenopause
Mood is the thing women most want to talk about and the thing least likely to reach the notes. How to describe it so it lands, and the questions worth asking.
What to do about it
Wind down
A ten-minute wind-down that ends the day
A short, repeatable sequence that tells your body the day is finished.
10 min · Narrated
In the night
When you wake at 3am
What tends to help when you are awake in the middle of the night and cannot get back down.
4 min · Narrated
Understand
Morning light, evening dark
The simplest lever on the body clock, and the one most often skipped.
3 min · Narrated
Practice
A body scan for a racing mind
Ten quiet minutes that give a busy head something undemanding to hold onto.
10 min · Narrated
What works
CBT-I, the treatment nobody explains
The first-line clinical treatment for persistent insomnia, in plain language, and how to reach it in the US and UK.
6 min · NHS and clinical guidelines
In the evening
Tired but wired
Exhausted all day, then oddly alert at eleven at night. Why the two go together, and what softens it.
4 min · Narrated
What to try
Eat for it
Blood sugar has more to do with mood than anyone tells you
Move for it
The best evidenced thing there is for a low or wired day
Take the edge off
Short practices for when the fuse has already gone
What works
What works for mood
Every approach women ask us about, with what the research actually shows. No hype, no hard no.
Take it to your doctor
Doctor Prep
It turns what you have been living with into a dated sheet your doctor can act on.
Lowering the daily stress load protects the brain and heart as much as it changes how today feels.
Later in the journey
The mood turbulence of the transition tends to be exactly that: of the transition. For many women it genuinely settles in the years after menopause, and plenty describe their late 50s as steadier than their 40s. A low mood that arrives or stays years after the final period deserves its own conversation rather than being filed under hormones.
Where this comes from
Short practices written for Narrated, plus plain-language background on what women commonly describe in these years.
Something new most weeks. Sources: NHS mental health information, Samaritans, Written for Narrated.
Nothing here is ranked by who paid, and nobody buys a place on this page. Narrated is paid by the women who use it and by nobody else. Where we link out, the original publisher is named so you can check it yourself.
Get the weekly letter
One useful email a week on perimenopause and menopause. What the studies say, in plain words. Free.
Or find out what is happening to you, free, in two minutes.