Why Am I Crying at Everything During Menopause | You Are Not Falling Apart

August 05, 2026

Marsha was in the cereal aisle at the grocery store when she just started crying.

Not because anything was wrong. Not because she was having a bad day. It was simply a song that came over the store speakers. One she had heard a hundred times. And without warning her eyes filled up and the tears just came.

By the time she got to the checkout she had pulled herself together. But on the drive home a commercial came on the radio and she was gone again.

She had been crying at things for months. And she started to wonder if something was seriously wrong with her emotionally.

What nobody told Marsha was that she had not become more fragile. She had become more hormonally vulnerable. And those are two completely different things.

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Get your copy of: Decoding the 80 Symptoms & Side Effects of Menopause here: https://www.tafiq.com/80-symptoms-book

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In this episode, Tafiq Akhir (Mr. Menopause), Certified Menopause and Healthy Aging Educator, explains exactly why frequent crying spells happen during menopause, what estrogen and progesterone have to do with emotional regulation, and how to stop the shame that makes it so much worse.

Tafiq has been committed to women's health for over 20 years. As a teenager, he witnessed his mother standing at an open window during a Cleveland snowstorm, drenched in sweat, silently battling hot flashes with no explanation and no support from anyone. Years later, while building a career helping women with fitness and nutrition, he kept seeing the same struggles repeat in his clients. That realization changed everything. He became one of the few men in the country dedicated to menopause education and has made it his life's work to be the resource for women today that his mother never had.

📌 WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:

Why frequent crying spells are symptom #65 of the 80 symptoms of menopause
How declining estrogen and progesterone reduce your brain's ability to regulate emotional responses
Why fighting the tears and judging yourself for them actually makes everything worse
How this symptom shows up at home, at work, and socially and what it costs you in each
Three starting points including self-compassion, trigger management, and telling someone
Why sleep, exercise, omega-3s, B vitamins, vitamin D, and magnesium all directly affect emotional stability
When to bring it to your healthcare provider and what support is available

❓ PEOPLE ALSO ASK:

Can menopause cause frequent crying spells?
Yes. Frequent crying spells are symptom #65 in Decoding the 80 Symptoms & Side Effects of Menopause. Estrogen influences serotonin, the neurotransmitter responsible for emotional stability. Progesterone has natural mood stabilizing properties. When both decline or fluctuate during perimenopause and menopause, emotional regulation becomes significantly harder and you feel things more intensely with less capacity to manage your response.

Why do I cry so easily during menopause?
Declining estrogen and progesterone reduce the brain chemicals that help you manage emotional responses. Things that would have given you a warm feeling before now send you into tears. You have not become more fragile or more emotional as a person. Your hormonal support for emotional regulation has temporarily decreased making you more reactive in situations that would not have affected you the same way before.

Is crying a lot during menopause a sign of depression?
It can be but not always. Frequent crying spells can be directly hormonal, driven by declining estrogen and progesterone affecting serotonin. They can also be a symptom of depression, which becomes more common during the menopause transition. If crying is persistent, accompanied by hopelessness, withdrawal from things you care about, or any thoughts of self-harm, bring it to your healthcare provider for proper evaluation.

What helps with crying spells during menopause?
Stopping the self-judgment is the first and most important step because fighting the tears and the shame that follows actually amplifies the intensity and duration of the emotional response. Identifying and reducing triggers during this period when your threshold is lower is smart not avoidant. Telling someone you trust that what they are seeing is hormonal rather than situational changes the environment around you and takes significant pressure off. Prioritizing sleep, consistent exercise, and nutritional support through omega-3s, B vitamins, vitamin D, and magnesium all help stabilize emotional regulation.

Should I see a doctor about crying spells during menopause?
If crying is constant and interfering with your ability to function, if it is accompanied by hopelessness or withdrawal, if self-care strategies have not made a difference after several weeks, or if emotional volatility is significantly straining your relationships, bring it to your healthcare provider. Hormone therapy, antidepressants, and cognitive behavioral therapy are all effective options worth discussing. You do not have to be at a crisis point to ask for support.

📖 Get the full book: www.tafiq.com/80-symptoms-book

🌐 Website: www.tafiq.com

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#MenopauseCryingSpells #WhyAmICrying #MrMenopause #MenopauseEmotions #PerimenopauseSupport #MenopauseMadeSimple #MenopauseRelief #WomensHealth #HormoneHealth #MenopauseEducation #MenopauseMoodSwings #EmotionalMenopause

ABOUT TAFIQ AKHIR - MR. MENOPAUSE
Tafiq Akhir is a Certified Menopause and Healthy Aging Educator, 2024 Menopause Specialist of the Year, and Amazon bestselling co-author. One of the few men in the country dedicated to menopause education and creator of the MenoMade Simple Method. His book covers all 80 symptoms so nothing happening in your body ever feels like a mystery again.

Episode Transcript

Why Am I Crying at Everything? Menopause and Frequent Crying Spells
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[00:00:00] Marsha was in the cereal aisle at the grocery store when she just started crying. Not because anything was wrong, and not because she was overwhelmed or having a bad day. It was simply a song that came over the store speakers, a song she liked, one that she had heard 100 times, and without warning, though, her eyes filled up and the tears just came.

She stood there trying to compose herself, looking down at the box of cereal, hoping that no one noticed. By the time she got to the checkout, she had finally pulled herself together. But on the drive home, a commercial came on the radio, one of those sentimental ones, of course, and she was gone again. She had been crying at things for months.

Commercials, songs, a kind word from a stranger, a photo of her kids from years ago, and things that would've maybe given her a warm feeling before were now sending her into full tears, and sometimes without any warning at all. She started to wonder if something was wrong with her [00:01:00] emotionally, if she was depressed and didn't know it, if she was just becoming someone who couldn't hold it together anymore.

She was embarrassed to bring it up to her doctor because she was afraid of what it might mean. Well, what nobody told Marsha was that she had not become more fragile. She had become more hormonally vulnerable, and those are two completely different things. And this is frequent crying spells, which is symptom number 65 in the book that I wrote on Decoding the 80 Symptoms of Menopause.

I'm Tafiq Akhir, Mr. Menopause here, your go-to source for reliable menopause education and healthy aging support. And welcome to the Menopause Made Simple show. Now here's the connection between menopause, because estrogen influences the neurotransmitters that regulate emotional stability, and most notably, serotonin.

Now, when estrogen fluctuates wildly, which ex- is extremely common during [00:02:00] perimenopause or when it drops significantly during menopause, well, emotional regulation becomes much harder. You feel things more intensely, and you have less capacity to modulate your response to them. Progesterone is also part of this because progesterone has a natural mood-stabilizing property, and when it declines, emotional volatility increases.

So you're dealing with two hormones that both support emotional steadiness, both declining or fluctuating at the same time. And then layer on top of that the fatigue that comes from broken sleep, the stress that comes from navigating a body that feels unpredictable, and the emotional weight of a transition that nobody fully prepared you for.

All of those things lower your threshold, not because you're weaker than you used to be, but because your hormonal support for emotional regulation has decreased. And the basic translation is this: declining estrogen and [00:03:00] progesterone are reducing the brain chemicals that help you to manage your emotional responses, making you more reactive and tearful in situations that wouldn't have affected you the same way before.

You haven't changed, but your hormonal environment has What makes this symptom so hard to carry for many women is the shame that's attached to it. See, crying is one of those things that women are often made to feel they need to control, especially in professional settings, especially in situations where being seen as emotional could affect how people perceive them.

So when the tears start coming more easily and more unpredictably, the response isn't just frustration anymore. It's embarrassment, it's self-criticism, and it's that quiet internal question of, "What's wrong with me?" At home, it can show up at the most unexpected moments: a memory, a conversation that goes slightly sideways, something your [00:04:00] child or grandchild says that catches you off guard.

You find yourself emotional at things that wouldn't have moved you to tears before, and the disproportionate response makes you feel out of control in your own house. Now, at work, it can be one of the more isolating versions of this symptom because you're in a meeting, someone says something that hits a nerve, and you feel a heat behind your eyes and have to spend the next five minutes focusing on staying composed instead of being present for what's actually happening in the meeting.

Some women start avoiding difficult conversations at work entirely just to protect themselves from the risk of crying in front of colleagues. And socially, it creates withdrawal in its own way. See, when you don't know when the tears are gonna show up, well, being out in the world starts to feel riskier than it used to.

The most important change is to stop fighting the tears and to stop judging yourself for them. That sounds simple, I [00:05:00] know, and I know that it's not. But what the research and clinical experience shows is that fighting tears and the shame that spirals from those tears actually amplifies the intensity and duration of the emotional response.

And when you add self-judgment to an already low regulatory threshold, well, you're just working against yourself. But by accepting that your emotional regulation has temporarily changed and that crying is a release and not a failure, well, it reduces the suffering that's layered on top of the symptom itself.

And the second thing to do is identify and reduce your triggers where you can, because this isn't about avoidance for the long term. It's about being strategic during a period when your threshold is lower than it usually is. Now, if certain music, certain types of content, or certain conversations consistently trigger tears at the worst times, well, give yourself permission to step back from [00:06:00] those things temporarily, right?

You can re-engage when your hormones are more stable. But right now, protecting your threshold is a reasonable thing to do. The third is to tell someone, not everyone, but someone. See, when people around you understand that what they're seeing is hormonal rather than situational, well, they respond differently.

The compassion that comes from understanding, well, that changes the environment around you, which takes so much of the pressure off. A simple, "I'm going through some hormonal changes that are making me more emotional right now," is enough. You don't owe anyone a longer explanation than that one. And listen, I know that you hear all of these all the time, and I'm gonna continue to share them until people actually do them because I can't tell you how many times a woman has told me she can't sleep, but when I ask what her sleep routine is, she says that she doesn't have one.

So I'm gonna share this again, that poor sleep is one of the most direct [00:07:00] levers that increases the frequency of crying spells and other menopause symptoms. Exhaustion dramatically increases tearful and emotional reactivity as well. And if your sleep is being disrupted by night sweats or insomnia, addressing those is not separate from addressing the crying.

They're all connected. Regular exercise helps to regulate the mood neurotransmitters that declining hormones are affecting, and even a consistent daily walk makes a meaningful difference over time, but the key here is consistency. Omega-3 fatty acids, B vitamins, particularly B6, vitamin D, and magnesium all support emotional stability from a nutritional standpoint.

But let me say, over 75% of the women that I've taught over the past two decades were actually deficient in most or all of those when I recommended that they get their levels checked. Then after supplementation, most of them said they felt better and even had more energy and [00:08:00] drive just through supplementation.

Now, you need to also look at alcohol, which many women reach for when they're emotionally depleted. But even that glass of wine that makes you feel warm for a moment actually worsens emotional volatility and is worth reducing or cutting out during this time of life. Now, on the medical side, if the crying is persistent and severe, hormone therapy and non-hormone medical support are worth discussing, as they can significantly improve emotional regulation by restoring some of what declining estrogen and progesterone have taken away.

Now, if crying is part of a broader depression, antidepressants can be genuinely effective. And therapy, particular cognitive behavioral approaches, well, they can help to build the coping framework that supports you through the hormonal fluctuations. Now, be sure to bring this to your healthcare provider if crying is constant and interfering with your ability to function day to [00:09:00] day.

Now, if it's accompanied by hopelessness, withdrawal from things that you care about, or any thoughts of self-harm, if self-care strategies have been in place for several weeks and haven't moved the needle at all, and if emotional volatility is straining your relationships in a significant way, or if you simply wanna explore your options, you don't have to be at a crisis point to get the support that you need.

See, Marsha was not falling apart. Her brain was working harder to regulate emotions with a fraction of the hormonal support that it used to have. And you're not becoming someone who can't hold it together either. Your hormonal environment has changed in ways that nobody explained, but having an explanation changes everything, right?

Now, it doesn't stop the tears immediately, but for many of my students, it stopped the shame and confusion. And look, I hope that learning this has done the same for you. [00:10:00] Now, this was just a snippet of what you get from how I decode all 80 symptoms and side effects in my book. And one of the readers even said that not only were her questions about menopause symptoms addressed in the book, she even got answers to questions she didn't realize that she had.

The link is in the show notes if you wanna get a signed copy or learn more Listen, menopause is a life transition, not a life sentence. And the more you understand it, the more manageable it becomes. I promise you that. And I promise you're gonna get even more value from this next video

Why Am I Crying at Everything During Menopause | You Are Not Falling Apart

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