During menopause, it’s common to experience severe mood swings such as constant irritability, sadness, lack of motivation, aggressiveness, problems concentrating, stress and depression.
The hormonal changes are affecting the way our mind feels – unstable and seemingly out of control. It feels like PMS but 10 times worse.
Here are several ways to make yourself feel better mentally:
1. Accept menopause as another stage of life
It is important to understand what is happening to your body and to adapt to these changes in the best way possible. Menopause is a natural stage in every woman’s life and it is a transitional phase that will come and go. While it lasts, it’s important to dedicate more time to yourself and all those activities that you like the most.
2. Don’t suppress your negative emotions
Accept everything you feel, even if you don’t like it. If you share what you feel with people you trust or journal about all your emotions, you’ll be able to recognise them and deal with them more easily. Good emotional management will make you feel much better about yourself (and people around you will irritate you much less).
3. Boost your self-esteem
To reduce the psychological effects of menopause and achieve good emotional wellbeing, it’s essential to work on your self-esteem. To increase it, you can dedicate time to what you like and what makes you happy. You can do more of the things you’re good at while working on changing the things you don’t like about yourself. If you listen to your intuition more and learn how to voice your opinions and preferences, you’ll develop a fantastic relationship with yourself that will lead to more self-respect, self-trust and self-confidence.
4. Improve your social life
It might be tempting to isolate yourself at home when you’re having mood swings and, but if you kill your social life, that won’t help your mental wellbeing.
Talk to your friends and family regularly. Pay attention to those whose company makes you happier. People are mirrors of one another. If you surround yourself with positive, uplifting people, chances are your spirits will stay higher more often.
5. Talk to your partner about how you feel
Many relationships suffer when a woman goes through menopause. She feels tense and uncomfortable physically because of all the symptoms she’s experiencing, and her partner not understanding her makes things worse.
If you open up about what you’re feeling, they will be able to understand you much better and that will strengthen your relationship.
6. Work on your libido
Your sex drive might be out of whack. Don’t be surprised if you were someone with a high libido all her life, but then you suddenly find yourself cringing at the idea of having sex.
The physical changes you experience during perimenopause and menopause (including the potential weight gain) might affect your libido.
There are many things you can do to increase your libido and the enjoyment of sex, such as masturbation, Kegel exercises and working out.
Having sex regularly is great for your physical health, and it can alleviate some of the psychological symptoms of menopause. To make it more pleasurable, try using a lubricant such as the water-based Motion Lotion which will make sex so much more enjoyable for you.
7. Look for the bright side of menopause
Remember it’s only a phase. Focus on the benefits that this time in your life. No more periods, therefore no more bleeding and cramps. You can enjoy your sex life more now that you’re not worried about a possible unwanted pregnancy.
There is one final trick
Here is a bonus point. Your current age comes with significant life experience. You’ve been through a lot and you’ve learned so much. You’re certainly much wiser than you were in your 20s. Naturally, you’ve learned to care much less about what others think about you. And isn’t that one of the best ways to defeat your emotional dips?
