Understanding Mid-Life Anxiety
Anxiety can happen at any age but midlife has a unique collection of potential triggers. It’s a time when our kids leave home and we may need to recalibrate our identity. All the things we thought were adult problems are now our own.
We might be worried about ageing or our marriage and there can be uncertainty around finances and security in our retirement. We can find ourselves in a caring role or sandwiched between the needs of our children and parents. According to a survey from Anxiety UK, 78% of respondents felt more anxious as a result of becoming a carer. And then there’s the menopause.
“It might be mild anxiety before a flush or a full-on panic attack, but 65% of the women I’ve surveyed said they felt more anxious at this time,” says menopause expert Maryon Stewart (maryonstewart.com).
“When we are coping with a lot of changes in life and feel in a bad state, then any difficulty - whether it’s a challenging teenager or career stress - can seem like a mountain to tackle. If we can get to a point where we are no longer overwhelmed with anxiety and other menopausal symptoms, then we can look forward to a new stage of life.”
Stewart believes that many women enter the menopause years with their nutrients depleted by stress, dieting and ill health, so the first step is to boost them with a balanced diet and a broad-spectrum vitamin and mineral supplement, which will help normalise our hormonal function and help us feel calmer. She also recommends replenishing our diminishing oestrogen levels with natural oestrogen from plant foods, such as soya, linseeds and red clover supplements. “It tricks the brain, so it stops sending out thermal surges in an attempt to ‘wake up’ our ovaries so they start producing oestrogen again.” With fewer flushes, anxious feelings are less likely to be triggered.
Feeding your ‘second brain’
What we eat may affect anxiety in other ways too. “The gut is known as the ‘second brain’ as it has a profound effect on the functioning and wellbeing of our body,” says Dr Eileen Murphy, a specialist in the microbiome and gastrointestinal health. “The gut produces 90% of our body’s serotonin, which boosts feelings of happiness. The production of the stress hormone cortisol is also modulated by the microbiome, so if we can improve the levels of healthy bacteria in our gut, it may have a positive effect on our stress response.” There’s evidence that omega-3 fatty acids, fibre, probiotics and prebiotics can all improve gut health. “Eating a diet that’s good for gut health may help to make you more resilient to stressors,” says Dr Murphy.
Women tend to get the shorter end of the stick when it comes to facing midlife. Whether it’s due to changing hormones or the changing roles as a woman during this period, the crisis can hit them hard. Many men think they’d be happier if they make a big change at this time and feel a desire for pleasure and thrills. They make impulsive decisions, only to regret them later.
Women on the other hand, can lose that sense of excitement as they feel the pressures of adulthood weighing them down. They can become emotional wrecks experiencing sudden shifts in personality traits - a change possibly due to a decrease in oestrogen during perimenopause anywhere between five and ten years before menopause. Symptoms can include weight gain, fine lines and sagging skin, lethargy, blue moods and heat intolerance.
Hormonal Hijack
Midlife can change the way women deal with stress too. When hormonal changes occur they can introduce a new level of stress to the system and the delicate balance a woman may have had before this juncture suddenly falls apart. A woman’s levels of anxiety skyrockets and her relationships can suffer. Neuroscience research has found that the brain undergoes a profound and drastic change when it perceives emotional stress. Frustration with a spouse, resentment towards an in-law, confronting a rude teenager, news of a back-stabbing colleague, aggressive calls or emails - all these situations can flip the brain into a mode called the ‘amygdala hijack’.
The amygdala plays a key role in our stimulus system to help us stay alive when it perceives a threat. During an amygdala hijack, the brain defaults to survival mode according to the laws of fight, flight or freeze. When forced into what the brain recognises as a stressful situation, the body reacts to defend itself with either fight (i.e. attacking someone verbally or bodily), take flight (i.e. leaving the room) or freeze (i.e. becoming immobilised or robbed of thought).
Such stressors destroy harmony as the woman loses the ability to speak for herself and the people around her productively. Honed by her hormones, crushed by her caregiving duties and pushed over by stress, it’s no wonder so many women and their relationships come near to breaking point.
Midlife Crisis
The term ‘midlife crisis’ was coined in a 1965 paper by Canadian psychoanalyst who described how people entering middle age are confronted with the limitations of their life and their own mortality. Middle age, writes the journalist Miranda Sawyer in Out Of Time - her book about making peace with her own age - is full of “…money problems, of work responsibilities and looming insecurities, of boredom and frustration and a lack of self-realisation, of caring for those younger and older than ourselves, of diminishing fitness, energy and relevance.”
At a recent dialogue called ‘A Midlife Balancing Act’, Pharmacist Datin Swanee Teh said, “Far too many women go through midlife without understanding why they are feeling and reacting the way they do to the people around them. It’s during this period of their lives that women feel the most alone and vulnerable. Our message is for women to be kinder to themselves and to embrace their femininity with wellness and strength.” The dialogue was organised by Nuvafemme to raise awareness of the ‘sandwich’ generation who are pinned between duties of taking care of both the young and the old.
Hypnotherapy
Experts at the event shared how women can acquire the necessary skills to stay in charge of their situation and find a new balance between their existing responsibilities and their hormonal situation. According to clinical hypnotherapist Thanam Selva, the first step to curating healthy relationships with others is to ensure that one has a positive relationship with oneself.
“Managing your emotional state requires managing your thoughts on a subconscious level. Hypnosis catches a bad rap for being a silly party trick, but there is more to it than meets the eye. Hypnotherapy harnesses the power of suggestion to help develop a calm state of mind, dampening the likelihood of an amygdala hijack,” she said. “It’s common for women to ruminate on their problems, priming their minds to see things in a negative light. Hypnotherapy has been used effectively to help modify those negative thoughts of the subconscious, transforming outlooks from bleak to uplifting. Change is best when it comes from the subconscious,” she added.
Thanam’s top tips for perimenopausal women are to take deep breaths from time to time, appreciate nature, and in hard times, always say to yourself that it is not the end of the world.
Due to a woman’s emotional fragility at this time, relationships can often suffer and divorce rates shoot up. “The quality of a relationship largely relies on the quality of the conversation between the two parties,” said conversational IQ coach Cindy Duong-Ooi, who delved into the chemistry of the brain to help explain the way women in their midlife could learn to transform the conversations they have with the people in their lives.
“Words activate neurochemistry,” Doung-Ooi revealed, “and words that include, appreciate and celebrate cause the brain to release chemicals like oxytocin, serotonin and dopamine that stimulate feelings of calm and connection with others. If we are able to approach our conversations with mindfulness, we hold the power to speak appreciation, inclusion, empathy and hope, even during times of adversity.”
Dealing with hormones and midlife more broadly isn’t always easy and women are encouraged to seek their doctor’s advice during this time.
