Does this sound familiar?
- You feel like a stranger to yourself: tearful one day, furious the next, flat the day after.
- Sleep has fallen apart, often with 3 a.m. waking and night sweats.
- Words go missing mid-sentence and you worry it’s something worse.
- Your doctor says your labs are “normal,” and you still feel anything but.
- Pain from endometriosis, adenomyosis, or PCOS has shrunk your life, and nobody seems to take the emotional side seriously.
Why this needs its own page
Perimenopause can start in the late thirties and last for years. Mood and anxiety symptoms are more common in this stretch than at any other time in adult life, and they are often dismissed, by doctors and by women themselves, as stress. Conditions like PCOS and endometriosis carry the same double burden: a body that hurts or misbehaves, and a mind that has to make sense of it. Therapy doesn’t replace your gynecologist or a menopause-informed physician. It works alongside them, on the part they can’t treat.
How I work with this
We start by sorting what is hormonal, what is situational, and what is the story you’ve been telling yourself about both. Then we work on the pieces therapy is good at: anxiety and irritability, grief for the body or fertility you expected, sleep (I use CBT for insomnia, which works even when night sweats are part of the picture), and the identity shift that midlife brings. I’ll ask about your medical care and, with your permission, coordinate with your physician.
What a first session is like
Fifty minutes, online. You tell me what’s been happening and I ask a lot of questions about sleep, cycles, pain, and mood, because they’re connected. You’ll leave with one or two things to try before we meet again.
This may not be the right fit if
You’re looking for hormone therapy, supplements, or a diagnosis. I’ll help you find the right medical care and we can work together while you get it.