Anxiety

There are many emotional factors particular to perimenopause that can contribute to anxiety. When perimenopause hits, a woman is likely to suffer from anxiety as well as depression. Anxiety is a mental state where you worry too much—sometimes persistently—are nervous and tense. You can’t seem to shake off your concerns and worries about everyday events even though you know that your anxiety is unjustified. You can have difficulty concentrating and feel restless and irritable, which can sometimes lead to panic attacks. Changes in oestrogen levels have a direct effect on the neurochemicals that regulate mood. Hence, fluctuations in them can lead to anxiety. Other social factors, like worrying about your child’s exam results, may worsen this condition. Managing this condition requires a lot of family support and understanding, lifestyle changes and sometimes also medication.

Even for those women who are essentially happy and upbeat, things may change quickly and drastically when perimenopause appears. It’s a time of emotional distress. Because of this, they have more conflicts than usual with the people around them and that creates tension. At this stage, some women even go through a difficult time with their husbands sexually, which further aggravates anxiety. The problem may also be aggravated by caffeine, stress, thyroid problems, or heart disease.

Anxiety leads to palpitations or rapid heartbeats. It is a good idea to visit a physician and have a thorough check-up done if the heartbeat is faster than 100 beats per minute. If all your tests are normal, try yoga and relaxation techniques and avoid caffeine, colas, smoking and alcohol—these steps will help reduce episodes of palpitations.

Depression

Women over the age of 40 go through a lot of changes that can give rise to depression in them. This doesn’t mean that every woman over 40 will get depressed. But if your life was already stressful, the physical and emotional changes that typically accompany menopause may send you into a full-blown state of depression.

Depressive illness can make you feel exhausted, worthless, helpless and hopeless, and sometimes you may just want to give up. Women often suppress their need of autonomy, neglect their health, and fail to equip with skills, competence and self-confidence.

They may experience sadness, crying spells, sleeplessness or excessive fatigue, lack of interest in surroundings, neglect of self and display other signs of depression which may be as serious as suicide attempts. Treatment consists of lifestyle changes, exercise, yoga, support from family and friends and often anti-depressant drugs.

Mood fluctuations

Frequent mood change is the most common symptom of perimenopause. As a teenager, some of you may have cried at the drop of a hat. As a woman in your 30s PMS made you bite your best friend’s head off when she asked you how your day went. Or remember-that feeling of wanting to punch someone because they just wouldn’t shut up when you told them to? Well, that feeling is going to come back to you when you least expect it, in circumstances that may at times be classified as volatile. We’d all like to keep these episodes to a minimum, but perimenopause can sometimes make that seem like an impossible challenge. Perimenopause shares many of these symptoms with PMS. The difference is that PMS lasts only for one week, once a month, but perimenopause can last anywhere from 1 to 10 years. It’s no wonder that the overriding emotion women in their 40s feel is that of being overwhelmed.

And because you have to train yourself to cope with these feelings, perimenopause also results in a pretty drastic change in a woman’s personality. There are days when you don’t really know what is happening with you. You’ll find yourself annoyed by things that you never even noticed. I have had patients who are very disturbed by the changes that are taking place because they’re shocked by the fierceness of their irritability and the sharpness of their mood swings. Wild mood swings and increased irritability are linked to the sudden shifts in hormonal balance. These fluctuations in the levels of oestrogen, testosterone, and progesterone can occur when your body doesn’t get the right kind of support to maintain a natural balance. Sometimes, mood swings can take you high and you feel intense joy in everything around you. At other times, however, they can take you on a downhill ride with emotions such as sadness, anger, despair, anxiety, or fear.

A mental shift

40s are a time when many women find themselves at the peak of their career. While the 20s were spent trying to climb the ladder of success, the 30s were about consolidating your presence in the workplace. But it’s in your 40s, that it all comes together for you. This also means added pressure and stress.

For homemakers too, this is the time when they begin to assert their independence. By this age, a woman realises that time has passed her by and that she now has to make some changes in her life. Many women show a lot more independence now than they ever did. When they were younger, they were dependant on their husband or parents. There’s the feeling that they couldn’t do much to change their situation because the kids were too young. So if they are not happy in their relationships, this is the time that they assert themselves.

But that assertiveness can have a dark side too. I’ve noticed that for certain women, this phase brings out a side of their personality that was dormant for several years.

Let me give you an example. My husband and I have been friends with a couple for many years now. Theirs was a love marriage and they have two children who are in their teens. Ever since we’ve known them, this couple has been very happy. But about three to four years ago, I noticed a change in the attitude of the wife. A woman who for so long was happy to just be known as someone’s wife, suddenly was coming into her own. She seemed more confident and was very focused on her appearance. Whenever the two of us would meet for lunch, she’d only talk about how it was important to be your own person and that now she was keen to do things her own way. She had always been slightly plump, but now she was an active member at her gym and exercised regularly. She had become a completely different person from the one I had known for so many years. I was glad that she was happy with the changes she had made in her life, but was also taken aback by the aggression behind those changes. Soon after, her husband told me that she had been having an affair with a man she met at the gym, and that they were on the verge of separation.

After years and years of making adjustments to live according to how their husbands and in-laws want them to, during their 40s women realise that there’s more to life. The realisation that the person they have moulded themselves to be is not what they started out as can be very crushing. And then they feel a need to rebel.

One of the reasons for this is that women in their 40s often have a lot of free time at hand and don’t know what to do with it. If you aren’t a working woman, you may have a  ‘vacuum’ in your life at this stage. That’s why I always encourage women to work. At 25, if you aren’t a working woman, you may feel empty when you are older. Starting work at 40, when you have no skills or experience, is not easy! 40s is also the time when women try to reclaim old friends. Indian women tend to lose touch with their school friends after they get married. But suddenly, in their mid-40s, they reconnect with old friends because they have time on their hands. So now, a woman has a social circle of her own that’s not dependant on her husband.

That’s probably why, as I have observed, a lot of couples experience trouble in their marriage in their 40s. Whether they divorce or not depends on their individual mindsets as well as what their social environment allows them to do.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead said, “There is no greater power in the world than the zest of a menopausal woman.” The symptoms you feel through perimenopause ultimately influence your actions and reactions. Don’t let these symptoms define you during this stage of your life. The power to help yourself during this time lies with the best person—you.

This was first published in the April 2015 issue of Complete Wellbeing

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Nobody wants to know his real face. That’s why down the centuries people have been escaping to the monastery. These are the cowards! They are avoiding relationships, because in a relationship they are reflected as they are.

Alone, they can think of themselves whatsoever they want to think; they can create any image about themselves. So the first problem with a relationship is that it reflects you and you reflect the other person. And your totality comes up; you are not just the surface.

The deeper you get involved in your relationship, the deeper feelings it will bring up. If you are really into a relationship it will shatter you. All your images will be shattered. All your faces will be torn.

All your masks will start dropping. And whenever this happens the person starts to take revenge on the other. That’s why your girlfriend goes on saying no. Behind her no there is yes. In fact, she wants to say yes, that’s why she says no, but she is afraid of her own totality.

People have cleared a little ground of their being and they try to live comfortably there. The whole is like a vast canvas. They don’t even want to remember.

And whenever you are in love your deepest feeling is stirred. With that feeling all other feelings are stirred. Love is almost like a backbone to the feeling-body. If your backbone is taken out you will be spineless…just a heap, a blob.

Your spine holds you together. Exactly in the same way the feeling-body is held together by the spine of love. If you are not in love you can control your anger very easily. In fact, if you are not in love at all, there will not be any opportunities to be angry. You can control your sadness very easily if you are not in love.

Your girlfriend can drive you crazy! But that is the beauty of this relationship: if you go with her, either you will go insane or you will attain to real sanity. Both are worth it, because to be just lukewarm and sane is meaningless.

If you fall in love, you also fall in anger, you also fall in hate, you also fall in jealousy, you also fall in possessiveness; you fall in a thousand and one things. Love is simply a door. With love, you open Pandora’s box.

You know the story of what happened when Pandora’s box was opened? Everything started coming out of it. The box was closed; only one thing remained in and that was hope…a beautiful story.

So when you love somebody everything comes up. Only hope remains deep down. If you can hope, there is no need to be afraid. If hope also disappears there is no point in the relationship. Then get out of it.

But again you will have to get into some relationship. Unless a person has come to know his total being he will again and again go into a relationship. Going into a relationship is just a way to find your soul.

To find who you are. I think your girlfriend is perfect. Don’t drop out of it easily, struggle. The sannyasin asks: What about when I’m attracted to other women? It makes for such a fight. It will be, it will be a trouble…it will be a trouble. One woman is enough trouble! If you are attracted to too many women, you invite trouble. Then accept it, and enjoy it. You are inviting it.

My feeling is this, that if you can stay with one woman for a little longer period, it will be more helpful. Otherwise the chaos will be too much and you may not be able to manage it. I’m not saying to be with one woman for your whole life, I’m not saying that if it happens, good.

If it doesn’t happen, there is no need to feel any guilt. But to be moving with many women at one time is bound to create much trouble. And it is useless. It will make you very, very anxious, full of anxieties, tensions, because each woman helps to bring out something in you, which no other woman can.

Each single woman arouses in you a different quality, a different facet. She reflects a different face of you. That’s why there is so much attraction for other women. One wants to know one’s many faces, the many varieties of one’s being. But then those faces will be too much and you will not be able to cope with it.

First, get settled with one woman and let one woman reveal whatsoever she can reveal to you. You help her also so that much can be revealed to her in her being. If you are moving with too many women, you will never go deep with one woman.

The relationship will remain superficial and you will start becoming split inside your being. One part will love one woman and another part will love another woman. You never love two women with the same part, no.

It is almost exactly like the mind. If you do mathematics, you do it from one centre. If you do poetry, you do it from another centre. If you become angry, you become angry from another centre. If you play a guitar, you function from another centre.

The mind has many centres—specialised centres—and the same happens in relationships… One woman will play on a particular centre; another woman will play on another centre. And it is so with man. Each is so unique, it has to be so.

So it is as if you allow many women to be around you and they all go on playing on different parts of your being. These different parts will start falling apart because there will be no unity. I will not suggest that you do that.

You move with one woman, with whomsoever you choose. Before choosing, think, meditate, and feel. Once you have chosen, at least for a longer period remain with one woman and forget about other women so that the relationship can go deeper.

Otherwise, it will be spread too thin and you will never become intimate, deeply intimate. And the most beautiful experiences happen only when the relationship becomes tremendously intimate…when two persons are so close that there is no privacy…when two persons are so close that trust is infinite.

If your woman can still doubt you, she will not allow you to penetrate her deepest core of being. If you still doubt your woman, how can you allow her your whole mystery? That’s not possible. And if you go on moving with so many women, nobody will trust you.

So at the most you can have some sexual variety, which is really meaningless; it does not make much sense. In the darkness of the night all women are alike and all men are alike. As far as sex is concerned there is not much difference; all bodies are alike.

The difference arises as you go deeper; on the surface there is not much difference. Then you start feeling different nuances of personalities. Love is really different. One person loves in his own way.

And prayer is absolutely different for each person; it is absolutely unique. Nobody can pray the way I pray. Nobody has ever prayed, and nobody will ever pray that way.

So my suggestion is, choose one, your girlfriend or anybody. And problems are going to be there, so face the problems. Love is not cheap, and it is good that it is not cheap.

The modern man is trying to make it very cheap; the modern man wants to make it at no cost. But then it will not give you much; maybe physical release but nothing compared to that which was possible. The possible is always the hard way. Your girlfriend can be a good challenge.

Take it as a challenge that she says no. Sometimes she says yes; sometimes she says no, take it as a challenge.

Love her so deeply that she has to say yes. And for a few months forget that any other woman exists. Let her be the only woman in the world, and then you will see that you are getting into it, deeper, more in tune, and one day suddenly it happens when two hearts meet in absolute trust, with no shadow of doubt, you have tasted for the first time what love is.

Excerpted from God is not for sale/ Courtesy: Osho International Foundation/www.osho.com

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