Perimenopause: it's not you. it's your amygdala.

parenting t(w)eens in perimenopause is a special kind of chaos

The rage showed up before I had a name for it.

Not frustration. Not irritability. Actual, full-body, where-did-THAT-come-from rage that shows up out of nowhere and usually lands on the people closest to you. Often your kids. Often your teens or tweens who are also going through their own hormonal chaos at the exact same time you are, which is… a lot.

If you’ve been feeling like you’re not yourself lately, like you’re white-knuckling your way through normal moments that never used to cost you anything, perimenopause doesn’t create the anger so much as it removes the buffer that was keeping it managed.  That’s the part nobody told us.

Here’s the unsexy science part... your estrogen and progesterone are shifting and those two hormones do a lot more than run your cycle. They’re directly connected to the part of your brain that regulates your emotions. So when they start fluctuating, your ability to absorb stress, shake things off, and respond like a reasonable person... takes a hit. Things that never used to land on you suddenly land hard. The threshold just drops and nobody warns you that’s coming.

And then add in the sleep situation. Because if you’re also waking up at 3am absolutely drenched and can’t get back to sleep... you’re starting every single day already depleted. Running on empty before anyone has even said good morning to you. Which means by the time your teenager uses that tone at 4pm you are genuinely working with nothing left in the tank.

It’s not a character flaw. It’s just really bad timing of several things happening at once.

This is also just the busiest your life has ever been. You’re parenting kids who need you in completely different ways than they used to. You might be helping aging parents at the same time. You’re probably in the most demanding years of your career. And you’re still the one keeping track of literally everything in the household that would fall apart if you stopped thinking about it for five minutes. The mental load alone is a full time job that doesn’t show up on any resume.

So now take all of that... and add a body that’s chemically lowering your stress tolerance without asking your permission first.

And then put a tween in the mix. A tween who is also hormonal, also unpredictable, also completely convinced that you don’t understand a single thing about her life. Two people in the same house both running low on emotional bandwidth, both triggered by completely different things, somehow expected to coexist peacefully before 8am.

It’s a lot.

The thing is the triggers are never really about the thing. It’s not the cabinet left open. It’s not the dishes. It’s not the tone of voice... except that it is, because that’s the thing that finally tipped you over after carrying everything else all day. And then comes the part I think is actually the hardest... the shame spiral after. The “why did I react like that” and “I shouldn’t have said that” and “what is wrong with me” that follows you around for the rest of the night.

Nothing is wrong with you. The conditions are just a lot right now.

I'm not going to pretend I have this figured out because I genuinely don't... but here's what's made a real difference for me personally.

Moving my body differently. For a long time I was doing a whole lot of nothing... and that nothing looked a lot like sitting on the couch hoping things would just even out on their own. At some point I decided to actually choose myself and that meant moving for me, not for how I looked or because I felt guilty, but because I genuinely needed it. I stopped defaulting to the occasional cardio session when I felt bad enough about myself and started lifting and doing pilates instead. The shift in how I feel physically and mentally was not subtle. Strength training in this window is not optional anymore, at least not for me.

Slowing down on purpose. This one was harder than any supplement or workout routine because it required me to actually look at my life and ask what's worth my energy and what isn't. What brings me joy. What pushes me to grow. What I've been holding onto out of habit rather than intention. That evaluation is ongoing and honestly it never fully stops.

Peptides. Specifically Retatrutide, Mots-C, and GHK-Cu. I've talked about these in a previous post so I won't go deep here but the short version is they've been part of how I'm supporting my body through this transition metabolically and cellularly. Do your own research, talk to your doctor, but if you're curious the post is in the archive.

Journaling and prayer. I know... but it works. Not in a “write three things you’re grateful for” way. More like... giving my nervous system somewhere to put things so it’s not just carrying them quietly all day. It’s the most consistent thing I’ve kept coming back to through all of it.

None of this is a prescription. It’s just what’s working for me right now, in this body, in this season. Your version might look completely different and that’s the whole point.

You’re not losing it. Your buffer just temporarily left the building. 🧡

xx, LJ