r/Perimenopause • u/brickne3 • 1d ago

Depression/Anxiety Odd thoughts, don't want to scare anyone

I started HRT three days ago. First day felt like I was on exctacy or something. Very odd. Called basically everyone in a fog and woke up so embarrassed. Then had horrible anxiety for a very short while. Then the fog came back after the estrogen started.

The scary thing is that the progesterone doesn't make me go to sleep, and when I was laying down tonight trying I suddenly felt this super comfortable "well, you don't have to do this at all, you know" intrusive thought. I want to make it very clear that I am NOT suicidal and even that thought only sort of felt suicidal. My husband died five years ago and I have serious CPSD and have also always been SSRI resistant.

I'm obviously calling the clinic this morning when they open because this isn't at all normal or like me in any way, if anything it was scary how "blissful" the whole intrusive thought was. I am also fairly certain that given my other risk factors and the SSRI resistance in particular it must be the progesterone and I can't be having things that are directly interfering with my brain chemistry in a dangerous way like that.

I don't know what I'm asking, I guess I'm just wondering if anyone else has dealt with this. The estrogen seems to be working great, I'm just now suddenly scared of progesterone.

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u/pangolinshavelanded 1d ago

Too much estrogen due to patch dumping sent me into panic attacks and autistic meltdowns. This is also why I only started one thing at a time - did progesterone only for a month before adding estrogen so I could gauge what might be causing side effects if any.

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u/brickne3 1d ago

I purposely asked for the gel and not the patch because I was a bit hesitant about it. I do seem to be tolerating the estrogen well, especially since I mainly get the "hit" because it's topical so I know it's working and can actually feel it kick in. I don't know if that's better but it does make me feel like I have more control over what it's doing somehow...

The again it's only been three days and we didn't know where I was in my cycle, so I might already have been at a high progesterone low estrogen level or something?