Mapping the madness

I’ve been doing some thinking and it seems to me that my periods of temporary madness (at least, the madness that is over my usual baseline) are hormone-related.  For about half a month, I am pretty much OK.  If I get anxieties I can, in the main, keep them under wraps. 

However, that doesn’t mean I don’t get them; it merely means that they are less troublesome.

For the rest of the month though, I am subjected to the anxiety avalanche, periods where I can get simply swept away by it.  I can’t bear that lack of control; there are other areas of my life where I have lost control in recent months and I am trying to get my head around them.  They are a sea-change but ultimately I think I am going to be able to handle them.

What to do about the anxiety, I have no idea.  I don’t know whether it is just caused by my own body, whether the HRT is making it worse or better.

I fret about the HRT, but I am in a bit of a cleft stick over this one.  As I am relatively “young” for the menopause, then I am at a high risk of osteoporosis and as my mother lost height in old age, my risk is even higher.  However, HRT slightly raises the risk of other problems but I just get lost in the numbers.

In any case, I don’t think I want to stay on HRT long term but it has been very instrumental in helping me function over the last 12 months or so as without it I would be suffering badly.  To this end, I may try discontinuing it in a month or two to see what happens to the rest of me.  If the symptoms are bearable, then I will try going without.

That is merely one thing to fret about; when I am in the full throes of anxiety there are so many more.

But there is always a surprise somewhere; out of curiosity I did some of those “state of mind” questionnaires and to my huge surprised I am neither particularly anxious or depressed, maybe just out of the “normal” range, nor am I a raging hypochondriac, which I had always thought I was.  Maybe I am not so mad after all, or else there are millions more that are worse than me.

However, I shall continue to map the madness, note whether it is worse at certain times and see if I can come up with anything else to deal with it.