“I Don’t Feel Like Myself”
One of the most common and unsettling experiences of peri/menopause isn’t physical at all, it’s the questioning of identity. Many women are surprised to find themselves asking: Who am I now? What do I really want?
Even women who feel they’ve already done deep personal work can find old questions resurfacing. This doesn’t mean the work was wasted it simply reflects the unique combination of hormonal change, midlife stressors, and the new perspective that comes with age and wisdom.
What Identity Shifts Can Look Like
Feeling disconnected from your old self
Questioning long-held roles or responsibilities
Loss of confidence or self-belief
Re-evaluating career, relationships, and lifestyle
Desire for more authenticity and less compromise
Grief for younger selves or past roles
Why This Stage Is Designed to Disrupt
Just as adolescence and becoming a mother reshapes identity, peri/menopause acts as a psychological rite of passage. The decline in oestrogen reduces the biological drive to accommodate others at all costs. What once felt tolerable may suddenly feel impossible. This disruption can be deeply uncomfortable but it’s also the gateway to greater authenticity.
A Different Lens
With age and lived experience comes wisdom. Many women describe a clearer sense of what really matters, alongside a reduced tolerance for what no longer serves them. That’s not failure or loss, it’s growth.
Moving Through the Transition
Navigating identity shifts in peri/menopause is not simply about getting through a difficult stage, it’s about engaging with a profound psychological process. The hormonal changes act like a disruptor, stripping away the old scaffolding that once held you together. At first this can feel destabilising: the roles and responsibilities you once carried with ease may suddenly feel impossible or even meaningless.
Psychologically, this mirrors earlier developmental stages, like adolescence or matrescence, when our sense of self undergoes a radical reworking. In peri/menopause, the task is not to build an identity from scratch but to reassess, refine, and reclaim. This often involves:
✔️Grieving what’s been lost - youth, fertility, certain roles or identities that no longer fit
✔️Questioning long-held patterns - especially those shaped by external expectations or the “good woman” script
✔️Recognising the cost of self-silencing and beginning to voice what you need and want
✔️Realigning with values and purpose rather than just meeting obligations
✔️Reclaiming boundaries that may have been eroded over years of caregiving and people-pleasing
This inner work can feel uncomfortable, even messy. Yet, as many women describe, peri/menopause is less about losing who you were and more about unveiling who you really are. With age and lived experience comes wisdom, and with wisdom often comes a refusal to tolerate what no longer serves you.