Hi Tropical
I really don't think any patch is strong enough or powerful enough to affect you so much in such a short space of time? I honestly don't.
It's just your anxiety screwing with your head. I was just the same as you. I think I had convinced myself that as soon as I put a patch on there would be a roll of thunder and a seismic shift in the Earth, or some such nonsense
![Undecided :-\](https://www.menopausematters.co.uk/forum/Smileys/extended/undecided.gif)
I felt like I had taken an irrevocable step and was somehow going to be a changed person forever. It felt very final and momentous.
The reality was that the hormones in the patch are very gentle. They are there to help you not hurt you. And left alone to do their job, they aren't going to 'change' you. They are just going to help return you to how you used to be before all this peri nightmare started.
I think just wearing a quarter of half a patch is a bit pointless. It's not going to help you as much as it needs to. You're just consigning yourself to still feeling stressed and anxious about wearing an HRT patch without the benefits of it actually working and making you feel better. I don't see the point? You're putting yourself in a pretty pointless state of limbo, neither going forward or going back.
I do understand that 'wired' feeling though and it scared me too. But I figured that my body had been depleted of oestrogen for over a year so by adding oestrogen back into my chemistry was bound to have some side effects. I tried to envisage the 'wired' feeling as a positive force. An encouraging sign of the oestrogen starting to flex its muscles and rejuvenating my poor, drained circuitry.
I do feel such a lot of empathy for what you're feeling. I know I felt just the same the first weekend I started HRT, and then 2 weeks later when my mood really dipped with my withdrawl bleed arriving. A sort of hopeless despair that nothing was going to help me and that it was all in vain.
But that's not the HRT making you feel that way, it's the bloody fluctuating hormones and low oestrogen.
These last 2 weeks since I have been on the higher dose have felt a slow return of my old self. I feel slightly more sassy (for want of a better word) and have felt irritable once or twice. I have felt impatient and also found myself giggling. All emotions which I haven't really experienced in over a year. I had become such a pale, watery copy of my old self. Too drained and emotionally fragile to do much more than a tepid smile once in a while.
It's a bit frightening to have all these emotions slowly being switched back on but also wonderful. I was only half alive before, in fact probably only a quarter alive?
Please, please stick with the HRT and be good to yourself
![Smiley :)](https://www.menopausematters.co.uk/forum/Smileys/extended/smiley.gif)