Perimenopause Anxiety Is Valid — But It Doesn’t Have to Control You

Over the years, both through living with anxiety myself, and supporting clients through theirs, I’ve come to realise a somewhat unexpected truth:

Anxiety itself isn’t inherently disabling.

In fact, anxiety on its own is completely natural. More than that — it can be incredibly useful. Necessary, even. Sometimes, anxiety can even be life-saving.

At its core, anxiety is simply a very human and normal emotional signal from our body, alerting us that something we deeply care about feels threatened, or is at risk.

Once I fully embraced this understanding, and truly believed it, I was able to uncover a crucial insight:

If anxiety feels overwhelming or debilitating, then there’s usually something else at play alongside it. And recognising this has been a total game changer for me.

Here’s now what I've realised feels far more disabling than anxiety itself:

• Experiencing anxiety while also listening to a harsh inner critic telling me I “shouldn’t” feel anxious.

• Feeling anxious and believing there’s something wrong with me for having those feelings.

• Struggling with anxiety alone, in secret, thinking “I’m the only one who feels this way.”

• Constantly battling anxiety — trying to shrink it, silence it, or ignore it — which is utterly exhausting.

• Feeling invalidated in my anxiety, perhaps because others have dismissed it as “overthinking” or “silly worry.”

• Pretending to be calm on the outside while feeling intense anxiety internally — which also takes a huge toll.

• Letting anxiety stop me from pursuing things that truly matter to me because I doubt my ability to handle them.

• Allowing anxiety to limit my world, my creativity, and my voice, shrinking how fully I live.

Since I started to consciously separate pure anxiety from these other layers, I’ve found I can actually live well with anxiety.

That’s especially important for me now, as perimenopause seems to have added even more anxiety to my life — despite all my efforts to keep it manageable.

So my 40s have demanded a new kind of attention to anxiety. In perimenopause, I simply don’t have the energy to keep fighting it like before. And I’ve noticed how draining it is to constantly berate myself for feeling anxious.

Perimenopause has brought exhaustion and burnout on a whole new level for me. Realizing how much extra energy I was wasting by battling my anxiety — by hiding it, denying it, fighting it — has been invaluable. Because no matter how hard I fought, I always seemed to lose that war.

I can’t control everything that perimenopause throws my way — but I realized I can control this: I can stop fighting my anxiety. Instead, I can approach it with acceptance, gentleness, compassion, and curiosity.

I’m learning to distinguish between the anxiety itself, and the shame about anxiety — And I'm finding that it's the shame that’s actually more painful and harder to live with, yet also more possible to overcome (thanks to my shame-resilience practice, inspired by Brené Brown — more on that in future posts!).

With this approach to my anxiety, I genuinely feel so much better:

Yes, anxiety is a part of my daily life.

But does it often stop me from doing the things that really matter to me? Not anymore. And when it does, I now try to be kind to myself and recognise that maybe, for now, the risks truly outweigh the benefits of that choice.

Does anxiety make me feel bad about who I am? Absolutely not. I’m confident there’s nothing wrong with me for feeling anxious — it’s a human emotion with a very important purpose.

And best of all, I’m finding that I'm saving so much energy by no longer fighting anxiety or pretending it’s not there... and in perimenopause especially, we need to conserve every bit of energy we can get.

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I'm Dr. Jenny Turner, clinical psychologist, mum and founder of Mind Body Soul Psychology - a specialist, trauma-informed, private psychology service for mothers in midlife - I can help you finally begin to relate to your own anxieties in a way that enriches your life.

I offer online appointments to women based all over the UK, and I offer in-person appointments in Ripon, North Yorkshire - click here to find out more: www.mindbodysoulpsychology.co.uk

You might also like to follow me on Instagram, @drjennypsychologist , for regular moments of solidarity in the challenges of this midlife mothering journey, as well as compassion & inspirations for realistic self-care, at this time of life.

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Ps. This post was created with the help of AI: I wrote an entirely original piece for my Substack newsletter recently, and I asked ChatGPT to re-word this original piece, so that I could publish it separately, as this blog, without negatively impacting the SEO of my website, or my Substack. I then read through ChatGPT's suggested blog, and edited it, to make it feel more like my own writing again.