Perimenopause and the Question: Who Are You Now?

In previous posts, we've gone through this stage of life one thread at a time. Looked at separately, these can feel like a list of things going wrong. Looked at together, I think they're something else: pieces of the same story, told from different perspectives.

Something that feels familiar for many women is trying to return to “being how they were”, but instead they start to feel like they’re only really meeting themself for the first time.

The Underlying Story

There’s a thread running through everything this series has covered, and it's this: you built a version of yourself, over decades, that worked. That version coped without complaint, remembered and tracked everything, stayed sharp under pressure, never asked for too much, and rarely showed anger. That version of you was real and it was also extraordinary - it developed remarkable coping strategies that worked for a long time. 

Those same strategies were also costly, in ways that stayed invisible for a long time because you had the capacity to keep going without noticing the toll. Perimenopause didn't create that cost, rather it reduced your capacity to keep covering for it quietly. 

The memory lapses, brain fog, overwhelm, exhaustion, self-criticism, and rage – is really one long revealing of a cost that had been accumulating for a very long time.

If you have ADHD, that cost was likely larger from the start, because so much of what looked like natural competence was a set of skilled workarounds underneath – for a brain that operated differently than the systems around you seemed designed for. You were maintaining both a life, career, and a censored version of yourself, simultaneously for many years.

"Getting Back to Normal" May Not be the Right Goal

I’ve written before about the understandable instinct to try returning to the familiar version of ourself: the sharper mind, more patient temperament, more reliable memory, and less visible strain. While that instinct makes complete sense, it's also worth gently questioning, because "normal" may have been a version of you that was running close to full capacity all of the time, with little room for rest, or being anything less than “perfect”.

Recovering that exact version of yourself may not be the most useful goal for you now. 

Not because you couldn't get parts of it back – many women do regain real ground in energy, clarity, and reliability, especially with the right support – but because the old version may not have been sustainable.

The Reframe 

There is a reframe that I want to leave you with, that underpins everything this series has covered: what feels like loss right now may also be a gift, even if it doesn’t seem that way yet.

Instead of lamenting the loss of who you were, you have the opportunity to ask yourself who you actually want to be – to explore what’s possible now.

It's not a small or comfortable question. It can feel disorienting to even consider, especially if being competent and resilient have been significant parts of your identity for most of your adult life. If this describes you, underneath that identity there was always a more complete person – one who was allowed to forget sometimes, be overwhelmed sometimes, and be angry sometimes, without any of that meaning you were failing at being yourself.

If you have ADHD, this question may carry extra weight: who might you be if competence and being taken seriously didn't have to mean constant masking to avoid anyone ever seeing the effort underneath? That's not a question with an easy answer, and it's not one you need to answer alone.

Making Space for What Comes Next

Perimenopause can bring changes that make old ways of coping harder to maintain, while also prompting questions about identity, expectations and what you want from this next stage of life.

Counselling can provide a space to slow down, make sense of those changes and explore what might need to be different – without having to work it all out on your own. You don't have to arrive knowing exactly what's wrong, or what needs to change. Sometimes, understanding yourself differently is where change begins.