A Realistic Reframe for Perimenopause: Beyond Toxic Positivity

The 'Just Be Positive' Problem

Someone in a comment thread tells you perimenopause is 'just a phase' and to 'look on the bright side.' A wellness account posts about 'embracing your wise woman energy.' An acquaintance tells you she barely noticed her perimenopause and you wonder what you're doing wrong. The pressure to feel positive about an experience that is genuinely, physiologically difficult is a particular kind of gaslighting.

This article is not going to tell you perimenopause is easy. It isn't. Night sweats are exhausting. Brain fog is frightening. Rage that arrives without invitation strains relationships. These experiences are real, they are biological, and dismissing them with gratitude journaling is not adequate. At the same time, something else is also true: for many women, this transition eventually becomes a turning point rather than just an ending. Both things can be true, and the second doesn't require pretending the first isn't.

The Research on Women's Wellbeing in Midlife

Despite the difficulty of the perimenopausal transition itself, research on women's wellbeing in the years following it paints a surprisingly consistent picture. Studies of subjective wellbeing across the lifespan show that life satisfaction for women tends to rise again in the 50s and 60s after the disruption of perimenopause. The 'U-curve' of happiness, which shows wellbeing dipping in middle age and rising again later, appears in women's data across multiple cultures and economic contexts.

Researcher Jonathan Rauch, writing about what he calls the 'happiness curve,' notes that the distress of midlife transition is often followed by genuine growth in satisfaction, meaning, and perspective. Sociologist Deborah Carr's work on women in the second half of life finds consistent themes of increased authenticity, reduced concern with others' approval, and greater clarity about what actually matters. These aren't just anecdotes from women who had easy perimenopause; they appear even in women who had significant symptom burden during the transition.

This matters not as a promise that things will definitely get better in a specific way, but as evidence that the suffering of perimenopause is not the final word on your experience of this life stage. The transition, not the permanent state.

Anger as Information, Not Pathology

One of the more radical reframes available in perimenopause is about anger. The perimenopausal rage that arrives, often disproportionate and disconcerting, is universally pathologized in medical and wellness contexts. It's treated as a symptom to suppress, a side effect to medicate, an embarrassing loss of control. What if it's also something else?

Some feminist psychologists and researchers have proposed that perimenopausal anger is partly a natural response to taking stock: decades of accommodating others' needs, suppressing one's own preferences for social harmony, and subordinating personal desires to family and professional demands. The neurobiological changes of perimenopause, including reduced progesterone (which has anxiety-suppressing, people-pleasing-facilitating effects) and less estrogen-driven social bonding, may allow pre-existing frustrations to surface more directly.

This doesn't mean every episode of rage is justified or should be expressed without restraint. It means the rage contains information worth attending to. What specifically is triggering it? What need is not being met? What injustice keeps recurring? Sitting with those questions rather than exclusively trying to suppress the anger can reveal something useful about changes that need to happen, even if the rage itself still needs to be expressed in manageable ways.

What Authenticity Can Look Like After 45

Many women describe perimenopause as the period when they stopped being able to sustain inauthenticity. The social performances that were manageable in their 30s, the white lies, the suppressed opinions, the relationships maintained out of obligation rather than genuine affection, all became increasingly difficult to maintain. This is uncomfortable in the moment and sometimes socially costly, but the long-term result for many women is a more honest and coherent life.

Saying no becomes easier for many women in their late 40s and 50s. Not because they've become cold or uncaring, but because they have a clearer sense of their actual capacity and the cost of overextending it. Setting limits, which felt like conflict avoidance required willpower in earlier decades, becomes more natural as the physiological drive toward social appeasement reduces. This is often experienced as relief by the women going through it, even if it initially surprises the people around them.

Professional authenticity also shifts. Women in perimenopause often describe a reduced willingness to work on projects that don't matter to them, to tolerate workplace dynamics they find genuinely toxic, or to defer to authority they don't respect. Some of this is circumstantial courage gained from tenure and financial stability. Some appears to be neurological, the same hormonal shifts that reduce people-pleasing behavior also reducing the anxious social monitoring that kept many women cautious.

The Post-Reproductive Clarity Some Women Experience

For women whose adult lives have been substantially organized around reproduction, the formal end of that possibility, marked by menopause, comes with a specific kind of liberation. No more pregnancy anxiety. No more period management. No more months of hope and disappointment if fertility was a struggle. No more contraception. The cognitive and emotional bandwidth previously occupied by these concerns becomes available for something else.

What occupies that bandwidth is different for every woman. Some direct it toward work that finally feels fully their own. Some toward creative pursuits that were perpetually deferred. Some toward relationships and experiences that were always interesting but never prioritized. Some toward health investments that now feel urgent and personal. The specifics vary; the sense of redirection is remarkably consistent in women's accounts of postmenopause.

This doesn't apply equally to all women. For women who deeply wanted children and didn't have them, or who are still mourning early pregnancy losses, the end of reproductive capacity can involve genuine grief that deserves full recognition. Both experiences, relief and grief, are legitimate responses to the same biological change, and they can coexist even within the same person.

Genuine Gratitude Practices vs. Toxic Positivity

There is a difference between a gratitude practice that honestly acknowledges what is hard while also deliberately attending to what is good, and a toxic positivity that demands you perform wellness you don't feel. The first has research support. The second is harmful and isolating.

The gratitude research of Robert Emmons and others shows that people who regularly record what they're grateful for show improved wellbeing, better sleep, and reduced symptoms of depression compared to those who don't practice gratitude. But the practice works when it's honest: small, specific, genuinely felt appreciations rather than mandated positivity. Noticing that coffee was good this morning, that your body carried you through a hard workout, that a friend texted at just the right moment, is real. Telling yourself that hot flashes are 'your body's wisdom' when you're soaked and exhausted at 3 a.m. is not.

A journaling practice that holds both, that acknowledges what's genuinely hard today alongside what is genuinely good, is more psychologically useful and more honest than either pure venting or pure positive thinking. The perimenopause experience contains both. Acknowledging the full picture is more truthful and ultimately more sustaining.

Building a Life That Supports What's Coming

The most practical reframe for perimenopause is treating it as information about what your life needs to look like going forward. The sleep disruption tells you that sleep is not negotiable and you need to build it into your life more seriously than before. The joint pain tells you that movement matters and the wrong kind of exercise has costs. The brain fog tells you that cognitive load management is a real skill to develop. The emotional volatility tells you that your nervous system needs more support, not more demands.

Many women describe perimenopause as the period when they finally stopped treating self-care as a luxury they'd get to someday and started treating it as a requirement for basic functioning. The specific things that support your health, whether that's adequate sleep, regular movement, specific foods, time in nature, creative outlets, or meaningful work, become non-negotiable rather than aspirational. This is a shift that serves women well in the decades following menopause.

PeriPlan is built on the belief that understanding your body's patterns, tracking what helps and what doesn't, and adapting your daily life to match your actual physiology rather than an idealized version of yourself, is the most practical form of self-care available. The data you collect about your own patterns during perimenopause gives you a map for building a life that actually fits you.

Medical Disclaimer

This article is for informational and reflective purposes only and does not constitute medical or psychological advice. Perimenopause involves real physiological changes that may require medical evaluation and treatment. If you are experiencing significant depression, anxiety, or other symptoms that affect your quality of life, please consult a healthcare provider or mental health professional. This article does not advocate against seeking or following appropriate medical care.