114. Mood Swings, Midlife, and Grown-Ass Men

Are mood swings running the show lately—and leaving you feeling like a stranger in your own life? If you've ever cried over a commercial, snapped at your partner for simply breathing, or found yourself thinking “Who even am I right now?”, you’re in good company. In this episode, we’re diving into the emotional whirlwind that so often comes with midlife—and unpacking what’s hormonal, what’s situational, and what’s actually a powerful wake-up call.

Yes, estrogen and progesterone are shifting—but so are your boundaries, your priorities, and your willingness to carry everyone else’s emotional weight. This conversation will help you reframe the chaos and find clarity in the middle of it all.

In this episode:

• Why mood swings during perimenopause aren't “just hormonal”—and why that matters
• How hormonal changes amplify (but don’t invent) deeper emotional truths
• The surprising wisdom behind your midlife rage, tears, or numbness
• The essential questions to ask when everything feels “too much”
• What estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and cortisol are doing behind the scenes
• Why gut health and adrenal balance are key to emotional stability
• How to turn midlife mood swings into a map for real, sustainable change

Resources Mentioned:

Meadow Hill Wellness Concierge Program (for Maryland residents): https://www.meadowhillwellness.com/renewher 

FREE RESOURCE: Download your guide to thriving in midlife: risingwomanproject.com

Connect with me, Dr. Sara Poldmae:

Website: https://risingwomanproject.com

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/drsarapoldmae

Have an idea for a future episode? I’d love to hear it! Send me your thoughts at hello@risingwomanproject.com

Transcript

Sara Poldmae: 0:01

Sarah, welcome to menopause. Rise and thrive. I am Dr. Sarah pulled me and this podcast is your go to guide for navigating perimenopause and menopause. If you are feeling a little overwhelmed, trust me, you are in great company. Each week, I'll bring you expert advice, raw, honest conversations and simple tips to help you stay grounded and maybe even find some humor in the process. Let's rise, thrive and tackle this wild ride together. Hi ladies, welcome back to menopause. Rise and thrive. I'm Dr Sarah, if you don't know me already, and today we are diving into the hormonal roller coaster that can be there for midlife, right? So listen, if you've recently cried over a silly commercial wanted to bite your partner's head off for perhaps breathing too loudly, or you're just really finding yourself wondering, who am I even anymore? Like, what is this? This episode is for you. Yes, we're going to talk about hormones. They are definitely a part of it. There's no denying that. But we're also going to talk about something bigger. How about midlife? It's really just sneaked up on you. It doesn't just shift your estrogen, it shifts your tolerance. It shifts your patience. It really starts to shift your willingness to carry other people's emotional backpacks while your own is busting at the seams and and listen, I get it again. There is a hormonal component. I am not denying that, but I just want to say, you know, just because there is a hormonal component doesn't mean that there's not other things going on, right? So let's talk about this. So my husband gets a kick out of one of my favorite phrases. He quotes me all the time. He says, Sarah always tells me I am a grown ass man. And it's true. I tell him that, because, honestly, I don't always need to be the one making the sandwiches in the house. If he wants a sandwich and he asks me nicely, he's a sweetheart, but if he asks me for a sandwich a lot of times, I'll be like, You are a grown ass man. And it's kind of funny, because I think somewhere around the age of 45 right around perimenopause, we start to, like give ourselves permission to be tired of taking care of everyone else, right? So we stop apologizing, and we all know that, but we don't make the connection sometimes to the fact that that could be a part of our foodiness During perimenopause and menopause. And just because we stop apologizing for, you know, not wanting to make a sandwich, it doesn't mean that those things aren't still coming at us all of the time, and it gets freaking annoying. I don't know about you, but like, you know, just because I tell people No, I'm not playing that game, that doesn't mean that the game automatically ends, right? So midlife rage isn't just about the hormones, that's a part of it, but sometimes it's finally just the wisdom to, like, know when enough is enough, and finally, we have the message of, I get to take care of me screaming louder than our to do list, right? So let's give the hormones their moment, because they are a part of it, but we will move on from there. So estrogen, when estrogen was playing nice, and we had, like, they quote, unquote, perfect amount of estrogen. She used to keep your serotonin and dopamine levels nice and cozy, and now she's basically ghosting us, right so mood swings, anxiety and just that sense of feeling off progesterone. Progesterone is definitely a big player in keeping us calm and soothing us, helping us to sleep. But progesterone starts to basically exit the chat, insomnia, irritability, crying over small things, and then testosterone. Testosterone is like our Spark, our motivation, our boundaries, and if you feel like you've lost your edge, it may be that testosterone is taking a deep dive, right? So what can we do? Certainly, we want to make sure that our hormones are in check, and we haven't even gotten to cortisol. Cortisol is our stress hormone, and it can be really, really high from, you know, the chronic drive of like, taking care of everybody, checking off the to do list, making sure that everybody's taken care of. And we're stressed out all the time. But eventually the cortisol levels will take your adrenals will tap out, and that's where you go from being wired and anxious to basically flat out exhausted. And so cortisol is a hormone as well. It's not a reproductive hormone. It's our stress hormone. So yes, they are at play, and they will make things seem bigger, but I'm 52 and I skipped a period and got really excited that maybe I would basically be in menopause soon. But that wasn't the case, and I had a week where I was literally ready to divorce my husband, and I'm using this as an example, because I was really, really kind of overblowing some of my feelings about our relationship, and so yeah, that definitely because I got my period right after that week of feeling that way, and it was a complete surprise. I didn't have any physical symptoms, and I wasn't completely regular with my cycle, so I didn't know to expect it, but I definitely knew, Oh, wait. Now I understand why I'm so hormonal, but I think that the danger there is that we don't want to brush off the feelings. They may have been bigger because of the hormones, but those feelings were valid. So I think we can take those moments where we're like, Oh, it must have been the hormones, but then maybe journal about it, because some of it was the hormones, and maybe it made everything seem louder and more pressing. But is there something in the relationship that actually needs to have a voice when you're feeling less emotional? So sometimes the anger and the sadness and the I don't want to do this anymore. It's not a symptom, it's a signal. So the hormones are helping you to know that something is off, right? Maybe it doesn't feel like help at the time when your hormones are going crazy, but your nervous system might be say, also saying this relationship isn't working anymore in the way that we are working. I'm not saying this relationship's over, but it helps us to question, like, what about the relationship? Was it just silly hormones, or was it, oh, the hormones made it crazy. But it's still that doesn't work for me, that doesn't fly. What do I need to evaluate when I'm feeling more at peace. It could be I'm tired of playing most of the parenting roles in the house, or it could be this career is really, truly draining me, and I think that one of the problems is that we get these really big rushes of hormones that help us to see that things may not be working in our favor or might not be exactly right. But then we need to take the moments when we're feeling a little more clear and say, Okay, what were those big feelings? And do I need to act on them, rather than just finally feeling like, okay, that hormonal surge is over. What can I do with it? The hormones didn't create the problem. They just ripped the filter off. So by stepping back and regaining some composure, we can realize that, what if those tears and those the feelings of rage and sadness, what if they're actually doing this a favor and getting our attention, they're saying, hey, you've spent decades being there for everyone and being everything to everybody. What about you? So midlife is when we try to, you know, make peace with the fact that we have certain roles in our lives, but we can stop trying to fix ourselves and start asking better questions. So some of the questions that we can ask ourselves, whether in the moment when we're feeling really crazed, or whether it's after we realize that some hormones have been taking control and we might have some messages that we need to work out, some of the questions are, what do I need? What would feel really good to me? What am I ready to let go of? What do I need to change in order to make this work in my favor, this relationship, this career, all of that. So it's just an opportunity to start sorting things out. So as a practitioner, I don't try and numb those feelings. I help women to really listen to them, to decode them, to support the body so that the mind and the soul could actually breathe, so to speak. Because if we're in a lot of physical discomfort, emotional discomfort, it's really kind of hard to see the forest through the trees, and we definitely need to smooth out that hormone roller coaster, if it is driving a lot of your mood swings, your anxiety, your depression. We don't want you to be uncomfortable, but give yourself permission to understand that some of those feelings are valid, even if they are bigger than they should or shouldn't feel so when women come to me with mood swings, depression, anxiety, I don't just throw a supplement or a prescription at it. We need to look at things carefully, whether we look at hormones with blood, work, saliva, urine. I want the full picture. I want to talk about the stresses that you have going on in your life, whether it be you know you're not sleeping at night because you're worried about your kids, your teenagers, whether you're in a relationship that's not serving you. I want to talk about and make sure. Sure that we have an action plan for true wellness, because you really need the whole kind of circle of wellness. And I'm going to give a throwback. I do have a circle of life, a balance wheel from one of my first episodes. I'd like to say that it is the first episode of this podcast, because true wellness isn't just about fixing symptoms or hormones. It's about really cultivating all the different aspects of your life. It's everything all together. Like in order to create true wellness, we need to be fulfilled, or at least mostly fulfilled, in all aspects of our life. So we look at all things, between the hormones, sleep, relationships, all the stuff we can help to figure out which tools would make sense for you, whether it be hormone replacement therapy or acupuncture to calm the nervous system down, sometimes we bring in herbs. Sometimes we bring in, let's say, magnesium for sleep or gut health, gut health, I could go into a whole nother topic on this, but gut health is directly related to mood, so we have to make sure we're supporting your mood, not just from a hormonal perspective, but we have to look at all of our bodily systems, not just our hormones, but if your gut health is really compromised, it's going to be hard to keep your mood stabilized, because your gut health can really affect your moods. So I just started a concierge program for women in midlife. If you are in Maryland, I would love to work with you through all of your mood issues, anything related to midlife. We can definitely do that in clinic, which is super exciting. I have some acupuncture protocols specifically for women in midlife. My goal is to create a space for healing, whether it is through functional medicine, lifestyle medicine, acupuncture. We've got so many tools here. And if you're in Maryland, I would love to work with you directly. However, if you are not in Maryland and you want to learn more about working with me, you can follow along at Dr Sarah pulled me. You can look at my website, rising woman project.com, because I have an opt in where I can give you lots of good information about the foundations that you should be setting that you don't need my help with. But then there is an opportunity to work with me, one on one with some lifestyle coaching. But if you're in the thick of it right now and you're feeling ragey or weepy or just numb or maybe a little tired, I see you, and I want you to know that you are not broken. You are not crazy. It may be hormones. It may be more than hormones. Usually is a bit of both, and you do not have to pretend that everything is fine. It's not always fine. Sometimes we have to switch up our lives. Sometimes we have to change the things that are not working for us. Midlife really provides a great opportunity to do that. It's a powerful place to be and to recreate ourselves. And I want to give you permission, if you haven't given it to yourself already, to really look at things carefully and take the time when you're not in a heightened state of emotional being to look at things. You know, it's not always just the hormones. I want to keep saying that because, you know, we're too easy to blame, estrogen, progesterone. I'm in perimenopause. That's great. That's great, and it's true, but it can also be true at the same time that you may just need to mix things up. You may need to start strengthening those boundaries. You may need to be telling your husband he's a grown ass man, or, you know, telling your kids to figure things out. Sometimes, I think in this age of helicopter parenting, we are micromanaging our kids well beyond the age that they need micromanaging, and that's doing a disservice to them and to ourselves. So in the meantime, I want you to remember to take care of you and remember that you are a grown ass woman and act accordingly. All right. So thank you so much for tuning in again. If you want to learn more about the concierge program for women in midlife, you can hop over to meadowhill wellness.com, backslash, renew her, r, e n, e w, her, H, E, R, and learn more about the concierge program. It's only for women in Maryland. Unfortunately, follow along on Instagram. Dr Sarah pulled may reach out whenever you would like hello at rising woman project.com I want to hear from you. I would love to hear of any. The episode ideas that you would like more information on and until next time again, take care of you. You