K.C.

Jun 20 · Posted

The anxiety thing is the bit I can't explain to anyone. There's no trigger. Nothing bad has happened. Work is fine, kids are fine, nothing is on fire. And yet at about half six most evenings I get this low-level dread that just... sits there. Like waiting for news that never comes. My husband looks at me like I should be able to name the reason and I genuinely cannot. I'm 50 and I've started wondering if this is hormonal rather than me just falling apart psychologically. Someone on here mentioned it a while back, the anxiety that doesn't have a story attached to it, and that phrase has stayed with me. I've got a GP appointment coming up and I'm going to try to ask about HRT and whether it can help with sleep and this formless dread specifically. I always forget half of what I want to say the moment I sit down in that room so I've been writing things down this week. Not symptoms exactly, more like... the texture of how I feel. Hoping that's useful. Also started eating a proper breakfast with eggs or something substantial because I read it can help with the afternoon energy crash. Too early to know if it's doing anything but I've managed it four days running which for me is practically an achievement. Dinner has been whatever's fastest. Pasta, beans on toast, leftovers. I cannot be doing with cooking properly when I feel like this and I've stopped pretending I will. x

Jun 17 · Posted

Right so the anxiety thing is driving me absolutely mad because there's nothing wrong. Like, objectively. Kids are fine, job is fine, marriage is fine. And yet I wake up at 3am with this horrible dread sitting on my chest and I genuinely cannot tell you what it's about. It's not worry exactly. It's more like my body decided something terrible is happening and forgot to tell my brain what it is. I'm 50 and I've started wondering if this is peri doing its thing rather than me just quietly losing my mind. The randomness of it is what gets me. No trigger. No bad news. Just... dread, out of nowhere, usually mid-afternoon or in the small hours. I've got a GP appointment next month and I'm already stressing about how to explain it without sounding vague and melodramatic. My main question I want to ask is whether HRT can help with sleep and this kind of background anxiety or whether it's just for flushes. Because I don't have many flushes. Mostly I have this. On a practical note I started having a proper breakfast with eggs or Greek yoghurt a few weeks ago instead of just coffee, and I genuinely think my mornings are slightly less bleak? Could be coincidence. Probably is. But I'm noting it anyway. Dinner has been absolute carnage recently, I'm not going to pretend otherwise. Beans on toast twice this week. I've stopped feeling guilty about it. Anyone managed to articulate the unprovoked anxiety thing to their GP without getting the "have you tried mindfulness" brush-off? x

Jun 8 · Posted

Hi all. I don't usually post about good things because honestly I mostly come here at 3am when I'm catastrophising and the house is quiet and I've convinced myself I'm dying. But this week something shifted slightly and I want to note it somewhere before my brain erases it, which it absolutely will. So background: I've been waking between 3 and 4am for about four months now. Sometimes I go back to sleep, sometimes I'm just... awake. Lying there. Heart going a bit fast for no reason. Brain doing that thing where it cycles through every mildly embarrassing thing I've said since 2009 and also the work presentation I have next Thursday and also whether I've booked the dentist for my youngest. You know the one. I've been trying to work out if this is anxiety or peri or just... life being a lot right now. Probably all three, honestly. But I've been keeping a rough note on my phone, nothing fancy, just a few words each morning about sleep and how I felt when I woke up. And I started noticing that the mornings I woke up feeling slightly less wrecked were the mornings after I'd eaten a proper breakfast the day before. Not even a special breakfast. Just something with actual protein in it rather than half a piece of toast grabbed while answering a school run question. So this week I made myself eat eggs or yogurt or something with a bit of substance before I opened my laptop. Every day. And I did not hit that horrible shaky wall at about half three in the afternoon that usually makes me want to cry into my keyboard. I still woke up at 3am on Tuesday. But I went back to sleep by 4, which felt like a miracle honestly. I'm not saying it's fixed anything. I'm not saying it's connected. My GP appointment is in three weeks and I'm going armed with my phone notes and a list of questions about whether any of this is hormonal because I genuinely don't know and I'm tired of not knowing. But I wanted to write this down somewhere that isn't just my notes app, because it felt worth saying out loud. If you're also doing the 3am thing and wondering if it's just you: it's not just you. That much I do know. x