Why You Don’t Feel Like Yourself Anymore: The Truth About Menopause No One Explains

By Alison Bladh for Ravoke.com

If you are in your forties or fifties and quietly thinking, I do not feel like myself anymore, you are not alone.

You used to feel sharp, motivated and resilient. You handled pressure. You remembered everything. You had energy at the end of the day.

Now you feel tired, anxious, flat, reactive or strangely disconnected from the woman you used to be. It can feel as if something fundamental has shifted.

You might have been told it is stress or normal ageing, or that you are simply doing too much. But what is happening is deeper than that. This is a neuroendocrine transition, a biological shift that can affect mood, energy, sleep, and how resilient you feel.

As a menopause specialist and nutritional therapist working with women for over 30 years, I see this every week. And it is not in your head.

What you are experiencing during menopause is a whole-body shift involving hormones, brain chemistry, metabolism and the nervous system. When we understand the science of menopause symptoms, everything starts to make sense.

What Is Actually Happening: The Hormone, Brain and Nervous System Shift

Menopause is often reduced to hot flashes. In reality, it is a complex hormonal recalibration that affects nearly every system in the body, especially the brain.

Estrogen and the Brain

Estrogen is not just a reproductive hormone, it plays a central role in brain function. It helps regulate key neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine and acetylcholine, which influence mood, motivation, focus and memory. It also supports mitochondrial energy production, helping your cells generate energy more efficiently. On top of that, estrogen helps regulate inflammation and supports neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to adapt, learn and form new connections.

This is one reason menopause can feel like it affects everything at once. When estrogen levels are steady, many women feel mentally sharper, more emotionally resilient, and more like themselves. During perimenopause, estrogen does not simply decline in a straight line, it can fluctuate significantly. That up and down pattern can make symptoms feel unpredictable, and it helps explain why you might have great days followed by days where you feel flat, foggy, or unusually sensitive.

As estrogen fluctuates and declines during perimenopause and menopause, many women notice that their usual coping capacity changes. You may feel less tolerant of stress, more emotionally reactive, or more easily overwhelmed by things you used to handle without thinking. Mental clarity can feel harder to access, especially under pressure, and confidence can take a hit because you do not recognize how you are showing up in your own life. Some women also notice changes in drive and motivation, not because they have lost ambition, but because the brain’s reward and focus chemistry is shifting.

In other words, the “not myself” feeling is often the brain responding to a changing hormonal environment. This is not weakness. It is biology.

Progesterone and Calm

Progesterone has calming effects on the brain, largely through its metabolites, which help influence gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA) receptors. GABA is the brain’s main calming neurotransmitter system, and it is a pathway also targeted by some prescription anti-anxiety medications, which helps explain why changes in progesterone can feel so noticeable emotionally.

Progesterone also supports healthy sleep. When levels are higher and more stable, many women find it easier to fall asleep and stay asleep. As progesterone declines during the menopause transition, sleep can become lighter and more fragmented. You may fall asleep without a problem, then wake around 3 am with a racing mind, a sense of alertness, or that wired but tired feeling. Poor sleep alone can amplify menopause symptoms, including anxiety, brain fog and low mood. That is why improving sleep is not just about feeling rested, it is one of the most effective ways to steady the nervous system during this stage.

Cortisol and Stress Sensitivity

Midlife often coincides with high life stress. Careers, aging parents, teenage children, and relationship changes can all converge at once. At the same time, hormonal shifts during perimenopause and menopause can alter how the brain and body respond to stress. Research shows that this transition can increase stress sensitivity and reduce resilience, even in women who have always considered themselves calm and capable under pressure.

You may find that situations you once handled with ease now feel overwhelming. Your nervous system can become more reactive, switching more quickly into fight or flight. The amygdala, the brain’s threat detection center, may become more easily activated, which can leave you feeling on edge, tense, or emotionally flooded. This is not you overreacting. It is a nervous system adapting to hormonal change.

Metabolic Changes and Energy

Menopause also affects metabolism. As estrogen and progesterone shift, insulin sensitivity can decline and blood sugar can become more variable, which directly impacts energy, mood stability, and mental clarity. Cortisol plays a role here too, because ongoing stress can make blood sugar more reactive.

This is why some women notice they feel wired but tired, crave sugar more often, or hit a midafternoon crash even if their habits have not changed. You may also find you feel shaky or irritable when you miss a meal, or that sleep is more disrupted after a high sugar evening snack or a couple of glasses of wine. What looks like low willpower is often biology. This is a system shift, and once you support it, many of these symptoms become far more manageable.

Why No One Explains Menopause This Way

We have been talking about menopause far too narrowly. The public conversation often centers on hot flashes and the end of periods, while the mental and neurological symptoms are brushed off or missed entirely. As a result, many women are diagnosed with anxiety or depression in midlife without anyone stepping back to look at the hormonal context. Others are told to exercise more, stress less, or get better sleep, without any real explanation of why their body suddenly feels more reactive, or why their brain does not feel as sharp as it used to.

The science is catching up to what women have been saying for years. Menopause is a whole body metabolic and neurological transition. It can influence the brain, the cardiovascular system, muscles and joints, and even immune function. When you understand that these symptoms are rooted in real biological shifts, the story changes. You stop seeing yourself as failing, and start seeing what your body is asking for.

The Five Core Changes That Make You Feel Not Yourself

1. Energy Instability

During menopause, mitochondrial efficiency can shift, sleep often becomes more fragmented, and blood sugar can become less stable. The result is the kind of exhaustion that feels out of proportion to what you are doing. You may wake tired, lean harder on caffeine, and wonder how your energy could seem to disappear so quickly.

2. Mood Reactivity

With less estrogen support for serotonin and greater stress sensitivity, your emotional buffering can feel lower than it used to be. Small irritations land harder, anxiety sits closer to the surface, and overwhelm can show up faster, even when nothing dramatic has changed. This is not emotional weakness, it is neurochemical change.

3. Brain Fog

Estrogen supports synaptic connectivity and cognitive processing, so during the menopause transition it is common to notice changes in verbal recall and working memory. You might walk into a room and forget why, lose words mid-sentence, or question your competence in a way that feels unsettling. The reassuring truth is that for most women, these cognitive shifts are temporary and improve with proper support.

4. Motivation Changes

Dopamine signaling influences motivation and reward sensitivity, and hormonal changes can alter how rewarding everyday activities feel. Drive may feel blunted, ambition may feel muted, and you may start questioning your purpose, even if you have always been highly capable. This does not mean you are losing yourself, it means your brain chemistry is recalibrating.

5. Body Composition and Self Image

Lean muscle tends to decline more rapidly during midlife, fat distribution can shift, inflammation may rise, and skin collagen naturally decreases. When you look in the mirror and see changes that feel unfamiliar, it can affect confidence more than people realise, because identity is often tied to how we feel in our own body.

What Actually Helps: A Science Based Approach to Menopause Symptoms

Supporting menopause is not about fighting your body, it is about working with biology and giving your systems what they need to steady and recover.

Stabilize blood sugar. Build meals around protein, fiber rich plants, and healthy fats to support insulin sensitivity and reduce energy crashes. Cutting back on ultra processed foods and choosing more whole foods often improves both metabolic stability and mood.

Build and protect muscle. Resistance training is one of the most effective tools in menopause because muscle supports blood sugar control, brain health, and long-term vitality. Protein matters more now, not less, because it helps maintain lean mass and supports recovery.

Regulate the nervous system. Breath work, consistent sleep rhythms, and body-based support such as massage can help calm stress reactivity. Boundaries matter too, reducing chronic stress load is protective, not indulgent.

Support brain health. Omega 3 fats, polyphenol rich foods, regular movement, and consistent hydration can all support cognitive function. Think of it as daily input for your brain, not a quick fix.

Prioritize connection. Meaningful social support helps regulate stress hormones and builds resilience. Even small moments of connection, a walk with a friend, a class, a regular coffee date, can make a measurable difference in how steady you feel.

Improve sleep quality. Morning light exposure, caffeine timing, and a simple evening wind down routine can make sleep more restorative. Even small improvements in sleep can reduce anxiety, brain fog, and fatigue.

This Stage Is Asking for a Different Strategy

Menopause is not a decline, it is a recalibration. Your body is not betraying you, it is adjusting, and it needs a different kind of support than it did in your thirties.

When you understand what is happening in the brain, the nervous system, and metabolism, the self-blame starts to ease. You stop telling yourself you should be coping better, and you start making changes that actually match your biology, steadier blood sugar, better sleep, more strength, more recovery, more support.

I see it all the time. With the right tools, women do not just get through this stage, they come out of it feeling clearer, stronger, and more like themselves again.

That is where real change begins.

For more information on Alison visit: https://www.alisonbladh.com/

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