I think its important to recognise the cause of the anxiety in order to try to treat it. You tend to have the initial cause (physical or emotional), the main symptoms (adrenal rushes, palpitations, sweating, etc.) and, in some cases, a secondary set of different or worsening physical symptoms caused by meta emotions (e.g. anxiety about the anxiety).
Dangermouse - thank you, easily the most useful info on anxiety / menopause that I have read.
To answer the OP, I also suffer from anxiety / low moods since reaching post-menopause. HRT is helping but I am not there yet, in that I still have an almost constant anxious feeling in my chest. I occasionally have a terrible day and then everything settles down for a while but the feeling never entirely goes away.
It can be tricky getting to the cause because things are complicated. I am post-menopausal and am therefore missing out on oestrogen. Replacing it helps, but I am not sure if I am taking too much or too little. Likewise with the progesterone. (For the record, my GP has no idea either, it will just have to be trial and error.)
There are also outside issues that can make me down and anxious - these have been around for a long time so I don't think they are the primary cause but they can kick off an anxious/depressive day if my hormones are out of kilter.
It's tricky. I think that comparatively speaking I am not too bad. I function OK, I work fulltime, I am sleeping OK, it could be a lot worse. I have done a Mindfulness course which helps if I remember to do it, need to work more on that. I find that the mindfulness helps to prevent the anxiety-about-the-anxiety that Dangermouse mentions. Also need to work more on other self-help measures to generally improve my health and wellbeing.
I am hoping that the horrible anxious-heart-feeling will subside over the next couple of months. If not, I will start to tweak my HRT dose to see if I can make things better. I do feel for others who have it a lot worse than me, because it's horrible.
![Sad :(](https://www.menopausematters.co.uk/forum/Smileys/extended/sad.gif)