Chill pills: Managing midlife moods

Midlife moodswings have you feeling like you’re going crazy? Here’s 5 strategies for managing midlife moods.

Show notes

Perimenopause often comes with a massive helping of crankiness, anger, sadness, loss of confidence, anxiety, forgetfulness, and fatigue. No wonder we can feel like we’re losing it.

Acknowledging these mood swings are a normal part of hormonal changes and that many women go through similar experiences is the first step to getting to grips with them. You’re not alone and it’s completely normal to love your life one minute and the next to feel as though everything sucks.

In this podcast episode, we cover strategies for managing your moods. These include:

• Emotion management
• Mindful breathing
• Activities that bring you into the present moment
• EFT tapping (here’s a link to the Tapping Solution)
• Life coaching 

We also refer to some stats and facts from the following places you may find useful:

• American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists
• Web MD

Transcript

Kate: Welcome to the Midlife Spotlight podcast. I’m Kate Campion –

Sara: and I’m Sara Garska –

Kate: and we’re certified life coaches obsessed with helping you find joy in this next act of your life. Whether it’s reviving your midlife marriage, losing weight, or scratching that “what next” itch, we’re here to share our experience and expertise with you.

This podcast is a weekly dose of YOU time, where you get the tools and tricks to improve your health and happiness. Talking to you is so much fun, so thanks for tuning in. Let’s get started.

Kate: Hey, and welcome to Midlife Spotlight, the show that helps you enjoy your next act. I’m Kate Campion.

Sara: and I’m Sara Garska.

Kate: And in today’s episode, we’ll be talking about five ways to manage your moods in midlife. Now, Sara, I started thinking about this as a particular topic because of a few months ago now, I was at a spa, and my husband was getting a massage and I was getting a facial.  And I was lying there during this facial thinking, This is such a wonderful experience. So lucky, what a wonderful life I have, et cetera, cetera.  And then actually now I think about it, we were going overseas the next day as well. So it was all tied into a whole lot of fun things happening.  And then in the car on the way home, I just suddenly became like filled with this irrational, irrationally negative, negative mood.  And I was just saying to my husband, I cannot even explain like why I feel this way, why I feel so irritable, why I feel so stressed, like everything sucks.  But it was just incredibly powerful. 

And as you’ve mentioned, you’re on the other side of the menopause fun times.  

Sara: Yes. 

Kate: And actually since I started doing, since I, that experience, I’ve actually started HRT, which has just been such a game changer and has done wonders for my moods and other things.  But dealing with those mood swings, dealing with that irritability and stress,  is often a really new experience for most of us that have been reasonably calm or managed to deal with stress reasonably well in our lives.  

And so I thought, I can’t be the only person that deals with this kind of thing. And in my conversations with friends and colleagues who are of a similar age, they’ve definitely experienced these moments of irrational rage or just one minute feeling so good, next minute feeling so bad.  So I went and did a little bit of research into it as I’d like to do. And I discovered, which I’ll link to in the show notes, that basically those mood swings are a lot like PMS.  

And when I went back and thought about, particularly when I first started getting my period, know, like back in my early teenage years when things weren’t as regular, you know, yeah, that used to be a pretty rough time.  So for a lot of women, those mood changes are very much like PMS and four in ten woman actually experience it, which is a lot.  And unlike PMS, though, they can just come at any time. So you can never actually be prepared for them.  And it even has a name. The peri-menopausal mood instability. Gotta love it. What’s the matter with you? I’m just experiencing puree menopausal mood instability.  Please forgive me.

Sara: Isn’t that all in your head? Yes, I was reading the research that you had provided. And so to me, it was really interesting because it’s a real thing.  And I never thought it wasn’t a real thing. But I feel like I didn’t have that kind of awareness.  And it’s really in looking at the things that you provided and seeing your show notes. And I know we’re going to talk about it later.  was like, oh, I was having that.  I just didn’t know what. Yeah.

Kate: You just thought you were going crazy, right? 

Sara: I did go crazy. But I just didn’t tie it into that, and we’ll come back to it, but my friends and stuff could see it happening. just been at the time, so I’m really, can’t wait for you to dig into this one.  

Kate: Yeah, because I just think like actually acknowledging that these changes and these moods that you’re experiencing are part of the whole hormonal changes in our life is just so important because like those changes, they can be crankiness and anger, feeling sad. The key one I see in the midlife woman that they don’t connect with perimenopause is a loss of confidence and a loss of self-esteem. 

And they just start to feel as though they have got nothing to offer the world, that they, you know, they go and try something new and they just don’t feel like they’ve got the confidence to actually do it so they they back off and don’t do these new things.  Anxiety is another huge one. Forgetfulness key as well. the amount of time I used to start before I started HRT that I would start saying a sentence and I would just be like dropping off mid-sentence and I wouldn’t know what was going to come next.  I was like, this isn’t, know, I’ve spent my life communicating to people, you know, I’ve been, I was a teacher for 20 years and now suddenly I can’t even get a sentence out?  

And then just feeling super tired and like the mood swings that I’ve said before. So like actually a lot of the things that we talk about in Midlife Spotlight is the fact that awareness is often the first step, right?  So just being aware that these changes in our moods are actually unfortunately a completely normal thing. You know, you’re not alone.  There are a lot of women that are going through the same thing, have gone through the same thing. And I think like you were saying other people can notice it in you, but if you actually aren’t talking about what’s happening for you on the inside, it can feel very isolating.

Sara: Yeah, because we can feel embarrassed about it as well. Yeah. one of the things that was in the reading, not that you assigned, but the reading that is,  but one of the things that’s on the list is withdrawing. Withdrawing. And that was my thing. That’s what everyone started noticing first is I just withdrew from life. I checked out. But, one of the things that you had said was when you talked to other women about it or, you know, like, I didn’t realize that these were connected to perimenopause.  And, you know, because one of the reasons, like, you know, when we talk about things like having anxiety or being forgetful, like, we don’t want to admit those kind of things to other people.  So sometimes we don’t even talk about it because it’s like, ooh, we’re not perfect anymore, or like, I’m forgetful.  Maybe there’s something wrong with me or anxiety. I had no idea I had anxiety. no idea, no idea. And so I just thought, like, there was something wrong with me.  of course I’m not going to talk to friends about that.

So that was a good point. Like, yeah, it’s something… That’s why I’m excited we’re having this conversation. Y

Kate: Yeah, because it is such a big thing and it actually really connects with how you feel like you’re showing up with your friends and also how you feel like you’re showing up at work.  And I mean the reality is that there’s an increasing number of women in the workforce who are going through these symptoms right now and this is a discussion for another day but actually understanding the impact on those changes in your work and making sure that you manage your work in a way that can support you through them is just so important.  

But to stick to the topic for now, thinking about why it’s actually important to acknowledge that these mood swings and these other things that we are experiencing are quite normal.  And then to take more proactive, positive ways of managing them because there’s so many unhealthy ways that you can manage your moods and the main ones are drinking and eating right.

That’s what midlife woman often do.

So we’re going to cover a few things today that you can actually do when you are experiencing those things.  And so how I’ve done it, because I love, I love order and logic, is we’re going to start unpacking, first of all, one strategy to use in the midst of the emotion.  And then we’re going to go right out to actually dealing with these things on a more global scale. 

So first of all, when these mood swings come, they can be incredibly intense.  And even like those feelings, you said of anxiety or those feelings of rage, they can just kind of take over. So one strategy, which is an emotion management strategy, is just to pause, because it can be very easy to just like get swept away.  I can be, I have been volatile. And, you know, so I’m grumpy, I can just like ride that wave of grumpiness and be grumpy till the cow’s come home.  So pausing, acknowledging the emotion, like I feel anxious right now. I actually feel anxious. 

And then the next thing is to feel the emotion.  And this has been a really interesting one for me is that, you know, so much of the time we’re in our heads and we’re thinking and we’re trying to unpack and make sense of stuff.  But when we’re feeling the emotion, we can actually concentrate on where in the body am I feeling this right now? 

And a lot of the time for me, it might be around the throat. So, you know, it’s that feeling of like not being able to speak properly or clearly.  So you’ve paused, I feel anxious, where am I feeling this anxiety? Okay. And the funny thing is, is we cannot sustain a focus on an emotion for that long.  

Sara: About 90 seconds. 

Kate: Yes, you and I read the same thing because it It was like about 90 seconds, as much as you can feel it.  So if you’re not, like I said, going with it, if you’re not actually allowing yourself to keep being angry or being anxious, then in about 90 seconds that feeling is going to lessen in its intensity.  And that’s kind of when you can just kind of let it go a little bit. So that’s strategy one.  And what I also want to say with that though is like, you know, there’s a lot of emphasis on our society to about feeling good all the time and how it’s important to feel good and high vibe or whatever.  But the reality is we don’t, you know, we don’t feel good all the time.

Sara: And that’s not even a reasonable expectation. And I want add something to the feeling, the feelings part because, you know, it almost sounds like a cliche at some point.  But what I want to kind of separate out for listeners is we often think that if we pause to feel a feeling and I’m going to go with your anger one because sometimes we’re afraid to because we’re afraid we’re just going to explode. So what I want to do is give a little bit more definition to that.  So when you actually do so there’s ways that we handle our emotions. So we love we women loved you know we’re thought of as the feeling sex you know, women are the ones that feel their feelings.  And it’s like, no women are actually really good at not feeling their feelings. And so what I mean by that is like when we feel that hit of anger, we think that feeling our feeling might be yelling at someone letting someone else know how angry we are.  And that’s actually one way of reacting to a feeling. It’s not feeling it.

Sara: It’s like we’re having a reaction to it and we want to put it off on somebody else like, okay I’m mad.  I’m going to put it off on you. 

Kate: It’s your fault.

Sara: And then the other thing we do is we want to avoid it.  And that goes back to you know. Oh, let’s go have a pint of ice cream or, you know, and that’s a way of not feeling.  So what Kate was describing is that sitting there, you know, and even if you can’t name the feeling tuning into your body, that’s where you’re going to feel it.  And it will feel uncomfortable. And like you said, you feel yours in your throat. A lot of times throat, chest, or gut are a lot of times.  And what you’re going to feel is some pressure or constriction. It’s sort of unpleasant, but it’s just for 90 seconds. And then that’s how you process that feeling. Yeah. Throwing it back to you.

Kate: Yeah. No, that’s great. So that was our strategy for like, I’m right in the moment. And then what about sort of like I said, going out the next step.  So in New Zealand, we have a rugby league. I don’t think rugby is a very common sport in America.  I guess it’s a little bit like football. It’s a bit rougher. And within that, there’s another branch of it called rugby league.  

And New Zealand has this team called the Warriors. And this is probably going back about, I don’t know, five, six, seven, eight years.  We’re watching a game because my husband loves sport. And in between them doing like these big complicated, you know, running and sort of moments of trying to get the ball and do whatever it is that they did with the ball, when they would come together for like when someone else was going to kick or something like that, they’d get into this huddle and then that all start breathing.  And it was really bizarre to watch because I think it’s because we associate that kind of sport with being quite masculine.  And all of a sudden they were doing this, you know, breathing activity, which seemed a bit more different. But I was like, okay, what are they actually doing?  

And so for most of us now, we’re kind of aware that our breath is connected to our sort of flight or fight response.  So when we are feeling like really uptight, really anxious, really angry or whatever that can be, and in these cases with these sports people are like really tense and so on, you know, our brain goes into survival mode.  And so when it goes into survival mode, we actually lose the ability to think rationally because we’re just going on that flight or flight response.  You cannot breathe in a slow and regular pattern and maintain that flight or flight response. So what these guys were doing in their sport and what you can do in your life is to actually focus on the breath and control the breath.  And what that will do is that will reduce that flight flight response so you can actually start to make decisions at a base more of logic and not based on pure emotion.  

And interestingly, like I’ve heard a lot of people talk about box breathing, which is a very simple like breathing for four, hold for four, breathe out for four, hold for four.  And I did this meditation class some years ago now actually and what she said to us was, don’t do the box breathing.  And funnily enough, I’d just taught it to my school students. Don’t do the box breathing because when we hold on the exhale, we actually can get a bit panicky because there’s no air in our lungs.  so what she said to focus on was like a triangle sort of breathing. So you know, breathe in for four, hold for four, breathe out for four, and then go back into the inhale. So, it’s so easy to do because you can literally just imagine a triangle in your head and sort of go in two three four out two three four. Or the other thing that I do when I’ve taught breathing to others is to really focus on your nostrils, in the sensation of the air coming in.  That’s my second little strategy.

Sara: I like that one because I haven’t heard those terms in the box or the triangle, but I love that because that description now it’s like, oh, okay, got it.  It’s super easy to remember. I want to try it. Like I’m sitting here, I  want to try it, but I’ll wait till after this. 

Kate: And it’s really good to do like if you’re in a sort of a situation that’s a little bit out of your control as well And you’re just actually focusing on your breathing to just keep grounded and present in the moment rather than just sort of you know go away with it all and so we’ve gone from like right in the moment.  We’ve gone now with that sort of like bigger situation of dealing with that stress Then there are other activities that you can do that help sort of keep you present that help you deal with your mood swings And for me, I’ve put three things  The first one is cooking, and my children would think this is hilarious because I was the world’s worst cook.

But as I’ve gotten older and as they’ve left home  and I’ve got more time-

Sara: I’ve got a daughter who posted something, like, I noticed it because she was doing a little meme to be funny, but I was like, I made that for your school lunch and you’re putting it out there to make fun of it.  She didn’t mention me by name. But just the food that traumatized her. Sorry to interrupt.

Kate: No, I was just thinking about some of the food we gave our kids, but back to cooking, I love actually making recipes that are… I don’t want to say too complicated because that can get a little bit stressful, but one’s it involves a lot of preparation and so the act of chopping vegetables, for example, chopping, dicing, slicing, activities that force you to concentrate, because otherwise you’re going to cut your finger off, that they can be really good at pulling you out part of those moods because you’re very focused. Gardening is another one for me. I particularly love pruning things. one thing actually that I do that I don’t know that a lot of people think about is I consciously choose to not listen to anything in headphones or whatever when I’m doing an activity.  So, because to me that’s a form of distraction. So I will actually do the gardening and just like be present to pulling out the weeds, trimming the plants.  the third one is running. And same thing with running as I don’t use. I don’t listen to anything when I run.  That actually came because I ruined my phone in a rainstorm one day when I was running. But, you know, I actually realized then that I was much more able to process the thoughts.  

So you know how we were talking about in the beginning about how letting the emotion go through you by experiencing it by feeling it, you know, when you’re running and gardening and your mind is kind of free and it’s not got other things coming to it, the thoughts can just come in and then you can learn to let the thoughts go.  And you’ve found that walking for you has been a similar activity.

Sara: Oh, I have used walking. So I’m 61. So I was still in college when I became a regular walker.  And I just started doing three miles most evenings and oh, it’s just always been my go-to. Like, when I finished work at the end of the day, I love just throwing on my tennis shoes and going out for a walk.  But I’ve always used it and, you know, because we’re talking about this for mood management. When I would get in a bad mood, that used to be one of my go-to’s.

 Like, I’m just going to go walk it off.  I’m going to go walk it off. And so I’ve just found it and I’m like, sometimes I do listen to music, but a lot of  I’ll just choose to just be present. And so what I mean by that is when I’m walking, like, I’ll just spend a little bit of time like, what are the sounds I hear?  And the birds or insects and different things, the wind. And then I’ll be like, what do I see? I’ll look at the flowers and the water and any animals I see.

And I’ll do it with all my senses.

And it’s just a way to tune into what is my body experiencing in this. And does get you out of that, your headspace, where you’re overthinking things. yeah, walking is my go to for everything.

Kate: Sounds fantastic. And so when we were talking about this together, and like I said, that sort of moving outwards to manage our modes, you were telling me a little bit about EFT tapping. So tell us more about that.

Sara: Yes, another of my go tos. Yeah. So I, so I’m not affiliated with this company at all, but I do use a phone app from the tapping solution and they also have a website. I have done probably over 300 sessions since I signed up for the app. I don’t do it daily, but I really consider it part of just not just managing moods that come up, but managing overall things.  

For those of you that don’t know what it is, EFT stands for emotional freedom technique. Some people just call it tapping.  That’s usually what I call it. the tapping solution, that’s a brother sister, and all of a sudden I’m drawing a blank on their name, even though it’s – Bortner. The Bortners.  They have written books, and so they’ve created this made it more mainstream, where before it might have just seemed kind of weird.  And so what it’s based on is Chinese acupressure and also modern psychology. So what you’re doing is you’re actually using your fingers to tap on different parts of your body.  And so there’s a lot of free resources and we’ll link to that so that you can look them over and you can find lots of tapping scripts on YouTube.  But what it does is, and there’s research behind it, it brings your stress levels down. brings your cortisol down.  

And so what I really like about tapping is when you start, before you start it, you kind of rate yourself.  Like if you’re feeling very anxious and it’s a 10, you make a note of that. You always kind of make a note of where you’re starting.  then you don’t have to follow script once you know, but I like guided things. like guided meditation. like guided tapping.  so after you do the thing, it usually lasts five, 10 minutes, some of them are a little more. Then you rate yourself again.  And that’s how you know it’s working. If you’re starting in a 10 and then you get down to a 5, you’re like, wow, you actually feel better. And so it is great when, you know, I find it great for anxiety, racing mind, selling down for sleep. 

So you focus on what your thoughts, so that’s kind of neat. So we both like positive psychology and things, with tapping, you start with what your negative thoughts. You like get them all out there and you tap through them and it calms your body down as you go through it.  And so as you’re tapping, it keeps sending this calming signal to your brain and it lets your brain know it’s safe to relax.  And you think about these things that are causing your stress and you bring your stress down. And then with most of tapping scripts, then also start giving you positive statements.  So you usually end up feeling so much better. I find like my life goes better the more I practice it.  You can find lots of YouTube videos. There’s people that are fairly well known, putting free videos out. The Tapping app is an app you can get for your phone.  And then the tapping solution, that’s it. Tapping solution also has a website that has some free meditations to try.

Kate: Yeah, it’s definitely worth checking out. I think we should do a full episode on that another time, because I’ve also used it successfully in feeling better about my body.  

Sara: Oh, really? 

Kate : Yeah, it’s something that works really well, not just for those mood moments, but actually for some longer term changes as well.  So be cool to talk about that. But the other thing as well, no surprises for both of us, but life coaching can help with managing your modes too.  

Sara: That is so true. So I have a life coach and I’m in my second year working with her. when I hired her, it was 100% “help me process feelings.”  Like, help me process feelings because, you know, as we talked about it earlier in this episode, it can feel really uncomfortable to feel feelings.  Like, it’s just something we don’t normally put ourselves through. And so I really, because I’d noticed there were areas of my life where my mood was getting in my way.  Like, it was just getting in my way. And like, instead of being, like, relationships, I’ll use that one.

And because I was so uncomfortable with my feelings, I just wanted to run away. And so with a life coach, it helped me learn to be present and to be present in my body and to feel those feelings without trying to, you know, take it out on someone else or run away from the other person.    

Kate: Yeah, so thinking about how I might use it with a client, there’s probably like different techniques and things like one of the things we use as a voice dialogue.  I don’t know if that’s something that you’ve ever done. Well, you essentially assign-. It’s so it’s so cool. Yeah, you assign the different parts of the problem and we actually work through quite a script really on each part having a voice and thinking of what it is that it’s asking of you. I guess in the case of the moods, what is his, what actually is this anger, what role is it serving, what do I need to listen to about this and then you kind of do, you know, this dialogue between the two different parts and then come to a resolution, which is just really, really neat. There are a lot of different strategies that we can do in life coaching that, you know, go beyond the big questions of what you’re doing with your life and actually right down into., yeah, how do I just actually manage showing up without being in a terrible mood all the time.

Sara: I think it’s the biggest part sometimes. It’s like, because everything we want, every single thing we want is on the other side of a feeling. You know, like we were talking about, you know, even be able to feel your anger or feeling comfortable? That allows you to do so much more because you’re not so busy trying to push it away or avoid it or numb it.

Kate: Yeah, it’s a little bit of an aside, but I was actually thinking about what you were saying with how we’ve been brought up.  And like when my children were little or they’d start crying, my instant thing would be don’t cry and look to distract them from the tears by giving them a treat or trying to do something.  

And interestingly, I was watching my niece the other day and she got really upset about something. My sister just kind of just let her cry and then she stopped and I thought, this is another one of those generational differences. You know, like my niece is just getting taught to just process her feelings, not distract, you know, herself from them, not move from them. Yeah, it was it was an interesting thing to watch. I was just reflecting on how much, how much influence that we can have in the way we talk to ourselves and talk to our others about our feelings and being able to move through them.

So to sum all that up, some of that are really what we’ve looked at today is the different ways in which when you are experiencing these moods in midlife, how you can start off just actually managing the emotion in the moment, how you can use breathing to get you through, how you can use activities that help bring you into the present moment, then into tapping and then into coaching.  So what we’ll do is that we’ll encourage you to test them out and add them to your toolkit by putting links to relevant things in the show notes.  And that’s all for today.

Sara: If you’ve tried things out, feel free to let us know how it went.

Kate: That would be fantastic.

Sara: Thank you Kate, that was great.

Kate: Thanks so much for listening to today’s episode. If you loved what you heard, you can leave a review so we know to keep more of it coming. You can also visit our website at midlifespotlight.com and learn a little bit more about us. We love connecting with you and can’t wait to see you next week.