When Life Feels Like An Itchy Jumper – The First Sign Of Perimenopause

There's a shift in consciousness that slowly creeps in at midlife. It doesn't announce itself dramatically. It arrives as a background whisper — a gradual sense that the life we've been living, perhaps quite happily, no longer quite fits. Not because anything is wrong with it. But because something within us is fundamentally changing.

That feeling — of being slightly unattached, energetically out of sorts, like wearing someone else's itchy jumper — is often the very first psychological sign that perimenopause has begun.

In this episode, Melanie shares her own experience of this disorientation, what's actually happening beneath it, what makes it harder, and what genuinely helps.

In this episode:

— Why the first sign of perimenopause is often psychological, not physical
— What's really happening when we feel detached, distant and out of sorts
— Why this shift is slow by design, and why that matters
— How early attachment trauma mixes with the genuine unknown of perimenopause — and why it matters to unblend them
— What acceptance really means in perimenopause (and what it definitely doesn't)
— Why trying to fix, skip, or medicate this process makes it much harder
— How to stay present with the discomfort without collapsing into it

Melanie also reads aloud, for the first time since writing it, a poem from her forthcoming book Poems for Perimenopause — written at the very beginning of her own perimenopause journey, at the edge of the lake, just before acceptance arrived.

A note if this is where you are right now

If you're reading this with one toe in the old and one in the new — energetically out of step, quietly wondering if something is wrong — you're not broken. You're not in crisis. You're at the beginning of one of the most significant transitions of your life, and your whole system is doing exactly what it should.

Stay with the process. Keep breathing. The emergence will come.

But first — the detachment, the composting, and the completion.

Free Resources & Further Support

🎧 Free 10-minute perimenopause guided practice — create more capacity and internal space during this transition.

Navigating Perimenopause as an Initiation — Live Online Workshop

Work with Melanie 1:1

If you want the depth of connection of one-to-one support, Melanie works with women individually online worldwide. The entry point is a Soul-Deep Clarity Session — one hour, trauma-specialised, womb-centred. Melanie will see what's happening in your system and make a bespoke recommendation for the work ahead.

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Transcript

The Itchy Jumper Feeling

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, hello. So when life starts to feel like an itchy jumper. So this is generally the first psychological sign of perimenopause. So there's a shift in consciousness that slowly starts to creep in at midlife. It's usually about 40 to 46, maybe 47. It depends. But it's it's a slow burn of this one. And it signals that perimenopause has definitely begun. So it it doesn't come generally at a dramatically defined point in time. It's more that we start to get like a background whisper than a gradual feeling that our life, the one that we may or may not have been quite happily living, no longer seems to kind of fit. And it may not be because anything's wrong, or maybe something does need to change, but something within us is fundamentally shifting. And so when I mean, when I say fundamentally, I really mean like our axis seems to shift. And it commonly produces a sense of kind of disorientation, not in a traumatized way, not in like a really dramatic, oh my god, I can't find my feet weight. It's more, well, for me anyway, it was more like okay, everything in my world is the same. And I really love the life that I've created. I love where I am, love what I'm doing. And yet I feel I started to feel more detached, more, it was just a different orientation, and it kind of felt like a bit of an itchy jumper. Like, did I want to take it off? Did I not want to take it off? And yeah, it was just the real, real start of uh deep perimenopause for me. So yeah, perimenopause doesn't have to come with like a diagnosis or a blood test, or you although you can do that if you want, it comes as a feeling because it is a rite of passage, it is a transition from our fertile years to our wise woman era. So this feeling of being slightly unattached, kind of energetically out of sorts, that we're no longer in a younger sort of age bracket, and really everything's changing, but it's really hard to put uh a name to it or language up our finger on. So yeah, it can feel like we're in someone else's itchy jumper. Uh, and that can feel kind of odd. And what's really important is that we understand that that is normal and that we talk to each other about it, and that we don't try and fix, we don't rush to try and fix or therapise it or pathologize it because it's it is natural. And that was my first question to myself is is something wrong? Do I need to address something? And and really what I kept coming back to was no, I I don't think so. So it was an odd one, but I did feel kind of energetically detached and distant from people I'd socialized with, from ways of being and my own beingness, from my work, from everything really. Um, and they they weren't bad or no longer aligned, but really, I can't emphasize this enough. My relationship to myself, my inner axis was like started to move and change and shift. So things felt a little bit off kilter, even though they weren't necessarily. So, what's really happening? Um, so yeah, it's important to understand that we can't separate this hormonal shift that happened, this physiological shift from the emotional and physical psychological changes, my words out, that accompany it. It's a

Why Everything Shifts At Once

SPEAKER_00 4:30

whole shift. It is not one thing, it is not all the other, it's a whole experience of life changes, and they don't necessarily happen in sequence, hormones first, feelings after. It's a whole integrated mechanism. So that's why it can feel quite overwhelming because everything is happening all at once, and that's why it can feel so strong, because it can seem like it's come out of nowhere once we experience it, but it has been building up very slowly. So, yeah, this shift is is underway like way before we're consciously aware of it, and it's slow by design. Nature doesn't make this kind of change all at once, it's physiologically, biologically, that that would just be too much for us to cope with. It would be too quick. So it activates slowly and it amplifies gradually. And yeah, the first emotional territory tends to be this detachment and disorientation. So we are in the most literal sense completed the first half of our lives. The attachments we've had to who we are, how we operate, what we do, who we spend time with, those attachments are beginning to loosen and complete, not because they were wrong at all, but just their time is ending. It's just over. And in Buddhist teachings, attachment is suffering. Connection is something altogether different. But what perimenopause I've I've experienced does, it unwinds attachments to things, people, and ways of being. And it tries to help us end suffering. Sometimes we cling, but if we know that that's what it's meant to do, it's a lot easier to put the torch down, basically. And it's so that we can move into those this wise woman era, something that's more true and wise and more mature. And there has to be a transition. We can't just go from one thing to the other. So basically that's what Perry is, and it lasts about seven years, so it is quite the process. So I was struggling to put to words or to describe with

Unwinding Attachment Into Midlife Wisdom

SPEAKER_00 6:55

friends uh what was going on, and so I started writing poetry, and I'm actually writing a book that charts the whole process, but um, I wanted to share one of those poems today, and it is called The Last Chapter of the Menstrual Cycle. So I I did write this when I was at the beginning of Perry

A Poem On Completion

SPEAKER_00 7:16

and it expressed my experience just before I'd accepted. So here goes. I'm standing at the edge of a lake, the warm water lapping at my feet. My menstruating years on the bank on which I'm standing. There's something in the air, a gentle breeze, a sniff of completion. At forty-four, I relish this ease. It's gentler than I thought. No drama, no resistance, just nature taking her course.

unknown 8:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

Whispers the wind. Yes. Rustle the trees. Yes, yes, yes. There's a smidgen of reflection, the ghost of what was. And as the noise of the last chapter fades, there's this feeling. Love. Yes. It's love. Quietly emanating, gently, strongly, softly. There's absolutely nothing to do. I don't need to dive in. I can just be. My body will change, my womb will transform. All of this I know. And then there's this. The unknown. The deep, rich ground of not knowing. The erotic silence. An open invitation from the all and everything. Yes. I whisper from deep inside. Yes. And the warm water gently laps my toes. Wow. I hadn't read that out loud since I'd written it actually. And that was five nearly six years ago. So yeah, that's great to look back on. Okay. So I want to talk a bit more now about what makes that process harder and what actually helps. So the most common thing women do with this disorientation is to try and fix it. In an attempt to cling to youth, cling to energy levels, roles, pace,

How Fixing Makes It Worse

SPEAKER_00 10:20

and their life, really, which I really understand. I totally get it why we can be questioned and how can we carry on with our current lives with all these changes that are going on? And the answer really is that we need to change our lives to accommodate what's going on, to make space for it, not the other way around. So the added, the added difficulty is we haven't got our new wise woman, clear consciousness, vivacious, rooted, grounded wildness yet. The old is ending, the new hasn't arrived. That middle place, the transition, is the initiation into our truth. It's where the composting and the completion is happening, but the emergence hasn't begun. It can be really deeply freaking uncomfortable. And we rarely have examples of how to live in not knowing, genuine slowing down, and to also know that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Because we're we're taught from an early age to solve, to move forward and to make progress. And Perry just demands that we drop all that. So the genuine natural unknown also mixes with early attachment trauma. And this is where it gets a bit sticky. Because not knowing if we'd get connection or not, that inconsistency of attachment mixes with the unknown, the genuine, like the genuine unknown, the juicy unknown that's pregnant with potential. So it that's why perimenopause triggers old deep, deep attachment patterns. And again, it's meant to, and it's okay. So with insecure attachment templates, the unknown is unbearable. Because if we don't get connection, we might die. So it initiates this sense of survival terror, and that needs processing. And peri's going to bring it up. And if we don't process it, it sits in the body and it sits in our nervous system driving us. So please know there's nothing wrong with you. You haven't failed in therapy or personal development. It's just perimenopause is meant to bring up the deepest roots so that we can grow. So it's really important to unblend these two that unknowing if I'm going to get connection and attachment, and therefore, will I live or will I die? That's very primal. And while I'm facing the great unknown where I can really expand my beingness into something greater, different. But yeah, unblending them is key. And then processing the survival terror that's sitting in the system. But fundamentally, we need to really accept that the old has to end first. Trying to skip it or fix it or medicate it or push through into something new too quickly or go back to the old, that's what makes Perry much, much harder. And we can skim it. We can skim Perry. I've known women that aren't particularly in their bodies or are taking a myriad of stuff. And it's okay, they need to, they need to experiment, they're on their own uh trajectory, but it makes it much, much harder. Okay. So here's what actually helps. This is the best bit. So what actually helps is to know there's nothing wrong, to know what we're feeling is is natural, it's intelligent, and it's a complete process. So we have all the pathways and wisdom within us to go through this, but we do have to be in touch with our body. So, yeah, as I said, identifying what's natural from what's

Acceptance Practices That Actually Help

SPEAKER_00 14:20

trauma and knowing, okay, I need to process that, but I just need to stay with this bit. And then adjust our lives in a way that supports the process to gradually happen. And that generally means we need more space. But full acceptance of what is happening right now, what is happening within us, brings us into being more present with ourselves rather than trying to change something that is essentially it's a force of nature, like it's inevitable, we can't stop it. And why would we? So, and I don't mean acceptance as this, I know this like the social media surrender, and it's it's all kind of glamorized and romanticized, and we just need to surrender, and it's bollocks, what a load of bullshit. Acceptance is really being able to tolerate our own sensation, our own unknowing, our own being, being in our body without kind of collapsing and submitting to it. That's not what I'm saying, or gritting our teeth and tolerating it, it's being present with it, and that I mean, we can do that by just putting a hand on our body and breathing. That's that's a really easy step to just start. Oh, what am I experiencing right now? So, yeah, this this real acceptance that comes when we are present with our sensation and our emotion. We can we can say to ourselves, okay, I accept I'm in a transition. The first half of my life is complete and I don't know what's coming yet, and that's okay, and I'm not gonna know for a while. So the key to moving through disorientation naturally is stop requiring ourselves to know what next, know what's next, to not try performing our old lives. And you know, we might do this. I, you know, I've experimented with this a lot because I didn't know where I was and I didn't have a guide. Uh, there was a human, I am my womb and my psyche, and of course, all the women that have ever gone through this have access to that wisdom because it comes through our womb, it comes through our whole beingness. So, yeah, do try not to perform the old life that doesn't quite fit anymore. Let these things just be that don't fit and and leave the space open for something new. And yeah, that can be uncomfortable, but it's essential. I know it can be a big ask, but it really is the very thing that advances and matures our consciousness because we develop more patience, more ability to be present with something without fixing it. So when I came to a fuller acceptance, everything's just started to settle. And by the way, this wasn't just like one day or two months, and then I accepted. It kind of came in waves because we we work in spirals, our psyche works in spirals. So whenever I'm talking about perimenopause, it is not linear. There's no seven stages that we can follow. Of course, there's a beginning, a middle bit, and an end, but within that we spiral through different states, and that spiral is designed to take us deeper and deeper. Of course, most of us are still cycling in peri. So our cycle is changing, and that is that is moving through us as well. So, yeah, so I basically stopped resisting the process, stopped questioning it, and just let myself be. And then I began to relish in it. I loved it. I've actually really enjoyed Perry for the most part, but it has been challenging. And so the detachment that felt a bit disorienting and felt a bit like uh what am I gonna do? It became liberation. I I really feel complete with the first half of my life, and I feel at peace with that. And I could feel even then when I wrote that poem that something new was coming, but I had no idea what. But I do have a general trust in myself. And after years of living in harmony, let's say mostly, mostly harmony with my menstrual cycle, I have a trust in the process of my nature. Because something new always comes, a new day always comes, a new phase, a new thing, a new planet, and whatever. It's just the process of creation. We do, it's really important that we accept this death process first. So if that's where you are, you have my deepest support, my deepest understanding and compassion. Um, you've probably got one, two in the old and one in something new, maybe, or nothing. You probably energetically have to step or quietly wondering if something's wrong, but really you're not broken. It might feel like you're in crisis, and it maybe it is a mini crisis, but it's okay. It's stay present with it and it will move through you. So this is this is one of the most significant transitions in our life, and our whole system is really trying to do exactly what it needs to do. So try and stay with the process, keep breathing, and keep talking to women who are going through this in a similar way to you, because it's been so key for me to just like chew the fat and just talk and write poetry and share it and talk to my sisters, and you know, the emergence will come. It is coming for me, and again, it comes in waves, but first the detachment, the composting, and the completion has to happen in several waves. Okay. Okie doke. So if you want further support, I've recorded a free guided practice to help you get create more capacity in peri. It's about 10-15 minutes. I didn't want to make it too long. I don't want to make anything too long or arduous for women in perimenopause. Um, and yeah, if you want to go deeper with other women who understand, I'm running regular

Free Support And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 20:56

workshops on navigating perimenopause as an initiation. Again, two hours, experiential, let's get into it. And um, no nonsense, no fluff. Or if you do want the depth of connection of a one to one support, then I am here. And all those links are in my show notes. Okay. All right, well, I wish you lots of love and a deep and juicy transition.