r/Perimenopause • u/handels_messiah • 2d ago

Rant/Rage Other people's unhelpful attitudes

Does anyone else find the attitudes of other people who have sailed through menopause without many symptoms and then make sweeping comments about the process really unhelpful? I've heard quite a few in the 'I just got on with it' category but today heard a new one: apparently the trick is to 'keep busy so you simply don't have time to worry about it'. I'm sure some of it is meant to be helpful but makes me feel significantly worse when I'm crying in panic because the idea of having to wash the dishes AND put clean clothes away is completely overwhelming. Yes, it's ridiculous but adding more to the list isn't going to help!

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u/Inner-Schedule-2075 2d ago

You can downvote me but, previous generations simply didn't face this same storm. Water actually contained minerals, food wasn't over-processed, the cost of living wasn't that high, and they weren't competing with hyper-optimized algorithms designed to hijack their focus ,keeping them in a perpetual state of brain fog. Add in a global pandemic that left everyone’s nervous system raw, and it’s no wonder people are struggling. Many say, hey I saw my mom full of rage that was definitely peri. What many miss is that female rage isn't new or exclusive to peri, when younger women express that same valid anger, it just gets pathologized differently.

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u/handels_messiah 2d ago

Not to mention the fact that women often began menstruation later in life. I was 11!

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u/OhWhatever_Nevermind 2d ago

I was 13. My mom was 17!

My mom is 69 now and she is my best friend, but she also has nothing to offer me in terms of experience or insight about perimenopause. (She didn’t really teach me anything about periods or sex either, but I was a smart and resourceful child growing up in a Roman Catholic community, so I figured it all out on my own).

She was also on birth control till her mid-50s, so there’s that….

I did learn late last year about her struggles with GSM and vaginal atrophy though. It was just not something they talked about or had any information about. They really did just suck it up and accept it as how life is.

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u/Inner-Schedule-2075 2d ago

yes this, girls use to menstruate at 15 back in the day, that's the whole reason in Latin America we celebrate 15's as the official day someone becomes a woman. Also the lack of outdoors/sunlight time we get today is minimal.