5 Underlying Emotional Conditions That Make Menopause Harder
- Brainz Magazine
- Mar 26
- 5 min read
Dr. Attaway has worked in Holistic Women's Health for nearly 20 years. Her clinical experiences are now translated into coaching groups, workshops, and written media. She promotes simple strategies for getting and staying healthy.
Menopause has a lot of traction in the media right now, and the conversation is centered around hormones. I’ve been working with menopausal women for 18 years, and I agree that the hormonal change is a large part of women’s crazy symptoms.
But it’s so much more than a hormonal change.
It’s a season where emotional turmoil meets midlife, and physical stressors mash up against life-changing circumstances. It’s a recipe for a few brutal years.
Top five emotional challenges of menopause
The caregiver sandwich: raising a family while caring for aging parents
Loss of sense of self as the lead maternal and/or female figurehead
Loss of luster in the advanced years of a professional career
Envy of a male partner whose aging process seems much simpler
The feeling that time is running out
1. The caregiver sandwich: Raising a family while caring for aging parents
In today’s world, women and men are having children later in life. Many women are still fully immersed in the family-raising stage well into their 50s. Their parents were likely much younger when they were born, and those parents might now be in their late 60s and early 70s while the grandchildren are still young.
These older grandparents don’t have the same type of time and energy for helping with children. Their kind of grandparenting looks different and may be more stressful than helpful at times.
Aging parents face a steady increase in chronic illness and poor health among the baby boomer generation. The women in the middle feel stuck caring for young and old, without having as much support as they would like. They are caring for their children while also managing the needs of their aging parents, and it can be an exhausting place.
Many women feel the longing to lean on their parents in times of strife, but in this case, they feel they must remain quiet and practice gratitude.
This leaves women feeling isolated, vulnerable, and unsupported.
Throw the personal challenges of menopause into the mix, and you’ve got one frazzled mother/daughter.
2. Loss of sense of self as the lead maternal and/or female figurehead
As children age, the relationship with their mother changes. From the angsty teen years to college and young adulthood, the role of mothering takes some dramatic turns.
As teenagers, children replace their parents with friendships and freedom, and Mom is often treated more like an employee than a valued caregiver. As friendships become the dominant source of companionship for a teen, and romantic relationships begin to bloom, it’s easy for mothers to feel like they've been set aside. Most women aren’t ready for this often rapid transition.
Sending children to college, into the military, or some version of young adulthood brings the empty-nest feeling that can turn a primary caregiver into an empty vessel.
Many women have to relearn who they are after years of tending to the family’s needs. Their new sense of purpose might be hard to find. It’s intimidating for many women to seek new joy, new relationships, or new hobbies when they were happy and fulfilled in the role of wife, mother, spouse, or partner.
And again, add the conclusion of hormonal cycling, and women feel like their nurturing years are over and they are doomed to aging.
3. Loss of luster in the advanced years of a professional career
Many women are well into a long professional life by the time the menopausal wheels are turning. After years of working up the corporate ladder, building a business, practicing a craft, or serving an institution, by age 50, the zeal of professional life can lose its luster.
Years ago, excited women joined the workforce and jumped in with both feet to prove themselves and begin changing the professional circumstances, or confines. But as progress was made, we kept a patriarchal system in place that drains a woman’s battery over time.
Although women make up roughly half the workforce, they remain primary caregivers without much allowance or compensation for the extra work. As the natural transition of menopause arrives, women look at their lives and take stock of their accomplishments. For many, the life they thought they were building feels flimsy or not what they imagined.
The energetic requirement to build a solid professional life, perhaps in addition to building a healthy family, is an exhausting pursuit. By age 50, working might be just another chore.
4. Envy of a male partner whose aging process seems much simpler
In celebrity culture, we hear about the double standard of aging between men and women. Culture is kind to men as they age, allowing them to soften into new roles of seniority, acclaim, wisdom, and notoriety. But for women, they often age right off the screen, into the void reserved only for supporting roles, never the main character. Other than grandmother, retiring headmistress, or villainous mother-in-law, there was no story for women over 50.
As women’s bodies change with menopause, it can feel totally outside of their control. They can experience physical decline at a rapid pace: joint problems, sagging skin, thinning hair, loss of sexual interest, weight gain, and bladder leakage. It’s not a great list.
Our male counterparts, however, seem to have a much easier time and maintain their virility, their physical stamina, and their sexual desires for longer. Salt-and-pepper hair is seen as sexy, and bald-headed badasses are everywhere on the big screen.
Not to mention, bladder leakage for men is a much less likely problem.
It simply feels unfair for a woman to watch her partner age gracefully while she feels like the wheels are coming off her carriage.
5. The feeling that time is slipping by
The average age of menopause is anywhere from 45 to 55 years old. According to our longevity scale, that’s about halfway for most women. Half a life lived, and the feeling that time is slipping away.
The menopause transition is just that, a pause. It’s a time when women look at their lives and reflect on what they’ve done and what they’ve yet to do. Many feel like life is cruising by and they haven’t accomplished what they wanted.
For some, it feels like an ending. For others, a new beginning.
Perspective is everything in the menopausal space, driving some women toward reinvention and invigoration, while others simply die on the vine, feeling it’s too late and time has passed them by.
It’s a natural transition, but also an opportunity for transformation.
Take the pause. Take the inventory. Take the time to reflect. But remember, it’s only halfway! You have another life left to live, so get busy.
Coaching women through menopause is a gift, reminding them to lean into their power and wisdom and create new space for themselves.
If you’d like help turning your transition into a transformation, send me a message, and let’s begin.
Read more from Dr. Erin Attaway
Dr. Erin Attaway, Doctor of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine
Dr. Erin Attaway is a leader in Women’s Health and fertility medicine, A busy mother, business owner, and entrepreneur, she promotes reliable and accessible resources for women to integrate into their lives. She believes good health is simple if you’re willing to do the work. Her mission is to empower women everywhere to care for themselves how they deserve.
