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[Tempest]

Racjen, Clonidine is also used as an alternative to HRT and helps with hot flushes. It helps to reduce the effect of adrenaline and was at one time popular for anxiety and for ADHD too. I hope this helps. xxxx

[racjen]

Thanks Tempest and Aspie, I looked up clonidine and it comes plastered with warnings about causing depression in people who're already prone to it, so I don't think I'll be going anywhere near it. Shame though....the search continues x

[donnarob]

Hi Lollipop

Absolutely "get" where you are coming from and I hate that jittery, jingly jangly feeling when the Adrenalin kicks in.  In a lot of ways, it's physcoschematic as the more you panic about your symptoms, the worse they get.  Sometimes, my heart pounds so much I feel as if I am going to have a heart attack and it's the inbalance of hormones which are rearing their ugly head.

That feeling of dread, when you don't want to leave the house is absolutely horrible and then it all passes

Hope this makes sense.

Donna

[ladylollipop]

Hello Donna, thank you for your answer. I agree with you that when the anxiety kicks in you start to panic and then symptoms get worse. The anxiety feeling often leads to strange thoughts which makes me even more anxious. I was told that low estrogen is responsible for these thoughts. I have started with HRT (patches) .  So far my head became much clearer hope the anxiety goes away too.

Lady lollipop 

[Roseneath]

donnarob. Just to say I totally empathise with your last post about the crippling effect of anxiety. About a week ago I had a night when my heart was going like the clappers, I was wired with the adrenaline, awful thoughts, muscle spasams on the verge of phoning NHS 111 in the wee hours. I have had a couple of similar nights in the last 2 years. All the advice of getting up, reading a book, not worrying etc just went out of the window. The next day I was exhausted. Queue emergency GP appointment thinking I had something awful, high BP, blood sugar, thyroid, Parkinsons etc and heart packing up.  GP (once again) reassures me it is just anxiety by raised hormones (but at my request does some blood tests & ECG on the spot to make me feel better), everything s all fine. Again!  A week later all of it has lifted. We have had family staying so I have had to get on with things, go out, cook dinners.  I took sleeping tabs for a couple of nights and got an amazing 8 hours, I have been jogging.   I am a totally different lucid person. I have had about 6 incidents like this over the past few years and the problem is I know when I get another one I will go round the same loop.

[Kathleen]

Hello ladies.

I just wanted to add that my menopausal neighbour has had similar episodes but with depression and low mood rather than fear and adrenaline. When these episodes pass,  as they always do, she says that she feels like a different person.  All very frustrating and upsetting none the less.

Take care everyone.

K.

[CLKD]

These feelings are real.  One could not imagine anything that would cause such sudden physicality. 

I think our brains deal with trauma at the time which gets pushed to the side then rears it's Ugly Head when we are low.  I know that stuff leaps out at me as I'm dropping off to sleep very often ...........  things that I deal with during the day in a background kind of way.  Then whoosh.

Even though I know the rationale behind the fight/flight response it doesn't stop my sudden panic attacks with the feelings they bring to me.  I can do all the 'it is caused by ........... ' thinking but the physicality takes over.  4 me adrenaline feels like hot water pouring through my veins, the 1st time it scared the s..t out of me but I do recognise it these days.

[GypsyRoseLee]

Yes I 100% recognise this awful feeling. I used to call it The Dreads. Just horrible. Horrible. Like clockwork, I also started walking at 4am feeling terrified for no reason. No racing pulse or sweats just an all encompassing sense of Doom and fear.

Only other time I had ever experienced something similar was when I had PND, and this revelation set me down the path of suspecting the culprit could be my hormones (and not that I had developed bi polar or was having a breakdown).

[GypsyRoseLee]

Feeling this level of constant fear and dread is incredibly draining. Just like you *racjen* I ended up involved with the Crisis Team because I honestly began to feel that death would be better. They were lovely but absolutely helpless to help me because they knew zilch about hormonal mood swings and anxiety.

My story started in the Autumn of 2012, with intermittent and inexplicable dread + depression. Everything else in my life was good. It came and went over the next 2 years, it was a terrifying roller coaster and the dread would descend out of the blue, ruin my life for a week or two, then mysteriously just disappear in a matter of moments.

 But in Feb. 2016 it didn't disappear and just stayed and stayed, and I thought I was losing my mind. Had to be signed off work for several months and my poor DH and Mum endlessly sitting with me in what was essentially a suicide watch. Over those horrific months it would very occasionally disappear for a couple of days at most.

This is NOT how 'normal' mental health issues work. In those rare days I didn't just feel better, I felt 100% back to normal and incredulous at how dreadful I had been feeling. This proved to me that it was something chemical buggering about in my head, switching back and forth at will and I was helpless to control it.

As others have said, diet, foods, breathing techniques, counselling, exercise, herbal remedies...NOTHING MADE A SINGLE BIT OF DIFFERENCE. NOTHING.

And, as others have so said the cruelty of this specialised hormonal anxiety is that it 100% tricks you into believing that it will never, ever end. So even when you experience the occasional good few days, the very moment the dread reappears you instantly forget how much better you had just been feeling and are 100% certain that you will never, ever feel anything but fear and dread for the rest of your life.

[CLKD]

Why a therapist suggested that I ought to recall the 'normal' feelings on days without anxiety I will never understand.  4 me it is physical.  After all, if someone tells me that they have a cold I know how they feel but can't represent those feelings ........ does that make sense?

Where's Tempest 

[racjen]

GypsyRoseLee YES YES YES, you've summed it up so well - it really is the most horrifying feeling, and yet as you say it can just melt away overnight leaving you feeling back to normal, and then cruelly without warning - it's back. I don't get those fluctuations from one day to the next because chemotherapy left me well and truly post-meno overnight, but I feel like a different person in the evening (ie normal) from the nervous terrified wreck I am in the morning. The Crisis Team have at least recognised that with me it's hormonal, and their psychiatrist recommended that I change GP to get a gynaecological referral, but even with that it's all guesswork how to proceed from here. I was a bit surprised that the 'expert' consultant i saw at Torbay hospital still didn't seem to ever have come across this kind of anxiety as a menopausal symptom before, but she did take it seriously and is trying to come up with possible solutions. In the meantime I just have to cope with the horrible symptoms. I'm was already on diazepam as nothing else works for me; have had to give in and increase to 8mg every morning which just about gets it under control, but I know that my tolerance will increase and I'll end up having to take more and more. Better that than taking an over dose though....To answer your question CLKD, I only take it in one dose first thing in the morning, because that's when it's really acute. By lunchtime it's pretty much gone so not much point spreading it out through the day or taking it the night before - diazepam doesn't hang around in your system for very long.

[GypsyRoseLee]

*racjen* my dreads/anxiety could lift (or descend) in less time than it took to make a coffee. It was that sudden. No one understood, I think some thought I was exaggerating? I think (hope) that some day, not so far away, the medical profession will recognise what an enormous affect hormones have on so many women.

[racjen]

Yes me too - 6.30am today I was fine, by 6.45 the dread was kicking in. Similarly it can just go in the time it takes me to load the dishwasher...What treatment did Prof. Studd put you on that made the difference? I know he advocates very high estrogen levels and as little progesterone as you can get away with, but I'm already doing that (estrogen level is now around 1000pmol, doing 100mg ustrogestan max 10 days a month). I get the impression from others on here that that's his standard treatment, but it ain't working for me, so although I sometimes think I should find the money to go and see him I'm not sure it'd be worth it.

[CLKD]

I recognise a lot of what is said here. 

Bugga .........

[GypsyRoseLee]

I am on 4 pumps of Oestrogel + blob of Testogel per day. Then take 100mg of Utrogestan for 7 days per month.

Bare in mind, it took months and months for it to fully kick in, and even then I would occasionally regress. Rather than it taking just a few weeks. I think by the time I found my way to Prof Studd I was at such a low ebb that it took a long whilel to 'cure' me. I know he doesn't really go by the exact levels of oestrogen in your blood because he says every woman needs a different level to feel good again. I know he has ladies whose pmol levels are well over 1000, and other ladies who are 'cured' by maintaining a pmol level of around 300.