What if the unraveling of perimenopause is really a rewiring?

Feb 3 / Jenn Wooten

“It feels like I’m unraveling, and I don’t know where to orient.”

Perimenopause can feel like an unraveling. 

Sleep issues:
You wake feeling wired and tired at the same time, like your nervous system never fully shut down the taskmaster overnight.

Momentary fugue states:
You stop mid-sentence because a common word completely disappears, even though you know you know it. You also start referring to people as “Whathisface?”

Sensory reactivity:
“Why does everything sound like nails on a chalkboard?”

Emotional instability:
You feel a surge of anger followed immediately by grief or tears, without a clear trigger.

Estrogen helps modulate the autonomic nervous system and buffer the stress response. This is great when survival depends on our orientation towards social cohesion, conflict mitigation, and the care of others. Basically, let’s stay calm, keep the peace, and tend to others.

But when estrogen drops, so does the buffer on our sympathetic activation increases. And the part of us that spent decades of our reproductive years keeping the peace can no longer hold. As Sharon Blackie says in her book Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life, “I’d been storing up rage like ancient magma, and I was all set to erupt.”

If we’ve never been taught to build capacity for intensity in the nervous system that eruption can feel and look terrifying. But what if it has a purpose?

Across mammalian species and in human hunter-gatherer societies, post-reproductive females often become stabilizing figures for group survival. When the nervous system is no longer organized around protecting offspring, it reorganizes around protecting the conditions that make collective survival possible (the Grandmother hypothesis). Essentially, we shift from caregiving to collective leadership. With that knowledge, it is not surprising that this transition has historically been contained or discredited, because a nervous system no longer organized around appeasement is incompatible with patriarchal stability.

Hormonal changes affect the nervous system.

Hormonal changes aren’t just chemical, they ripple through your nervous system. Even small dips in estrogen or surges in progesterone can:
  • Heighten fight/flight responses
  • Disrupt sleep and circadian rhythms
  • Intensify emotional reactivity
  • Make focus and memory feel slippery
So what’s a gal to do?

Learn how to collaborate with her nervous system.

Ways to Support Your Nervous System

It’s hard to go through this shift without the external structures that support community care, self-expression, and women-centered leadership. We can’t change the medical and social systems overnight, but you can give our nervous system tools to find steadiness, hold intensity and and find ground in order to make change from. 

Here are three video-guided exercises perfect for perimenopause:

Straw Breath

This practice slows the exhale and activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which can quiet an incendiary fight response. By creating space between stimulus and reaction, it helps you feel more present and in control.

EFT Tapping (Prickly Heat Relief)

Feeling tense or overwhelmed? Mindfully tapping on specific acupressure points while acknowledging your feelings helps release pent-up energy, soothe the fight response, and create space for your nervous system to shift toward ease. Accessible to all levels, this practice can be done anywhere.

The Basic Exercise

A simple, highly effective tool to calm your flight response and restore a sense of safety and balance. By shifting your gaze and stimulating the vagus nerve, this practice interrupts hyperarousal and helps your nervous system return to equilibrium. Ideal for moments of anxiety, overwhelm, or racing thoughts.

You deserve care and guidance in this transition

We are no longer enduring this transition as another thing to suffer through silently. Supporting our nervous systems can make sleep, focus, emotional balance, and our capacity to move into collective leadership feel more attainable.

✨ Explore Steady Inside: Nervous System Skills for Life and learn micro-practices designed to help your body regulate and feel grounded. 

One of our Steady Inside users says, “This practice has given me ground to stand on as my hormones shift and I don’t recognize my reactions anymore. Now, with new practices, I’m learning ways to respond that are not self-silencing, shutting down, or my usual good girl persona to keep the peace. It’s been comforting and liberating.”

Steadiness is a Practice You Can Take on the Road

We are no longer enduring this transition as another thing to suffer through silently. Supporting our nervous systems can make sleep, focus, emotional balance, and our capacity to move into collective leadership feel more attainable.

Explore Steady Inside: Nervous System Skills for Life and learn micro-practices designed to help your body regulate and feel grounded. 

One of our Steady Inside users says, “This practice has given me ground to stand on as my hormones shift and I don’t recognize my reactions anymore. Now, with new practices, I’m learning ways to respond that are not self-silencing, shutting down, or my usual good girl persona to keep the peace. It’s been comforting and liberating.”