Are You In Menopause?
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Speaker: [00:00:00] You know, most women don't wake up one morning and say, I'm in menopause. That's not typically how it begins, right? What I hear far more often is things like, something feels off, or my body doesn't feel the way that it used to. And then of course the questioning begins, is this. Is it aging? Is something else seriously wrong with me?
Or is this menopause? And if you've asked yourself those questions before, either out loud or sometimes at two in the morning when you're scrolling on your phone, this conversation is definitely for you. And not because you need to be convinced that menopause is real and not because you need another list of symptoms either.
But because what you're experiencing deserves context, clarity, and validation, and I'm addressing the struggle that many women experience when their bodies no longer feel familiar. I'm gonna explain why this happens during menopause, and how understanding it can reduce self-doubt and [00:01:00] restore trust. I'm Tafiq Akhir, Mr.
Menopause here. Your go-to source for reliable menopause and healthy aging support, and welcome to the Mr. Menopause Show.
One of the biggest mistakes women make during this transition is just assuming that menopause announces itself clearly and that you'll know as soon as it happens. Well, it does not, and most likely you will not. Menopause rarely shows up as one obvious thing. It doesn't tap you on the shoulder and say, hello, this is what's happening now.
Instead, it tends to show up sideways through changes that feel disconnected, like the rough sensations that don't match what you're taught, that menopause looks or feels like through symptoms that feel too small, too strange, or too inconsistent to mention out loud. And that's why so many women miss it at first.
And it's also why so many women [00:02:00] end up blaming themselves instead. You assume that you're failing at stress management. You assume that you're not taking good enough care of yourself, and you may even assume that you're overreacting. But what's actually happening is much simpler and much more important.
Your body is changing in ways that you were never taught to recognize. See, menopause is not just about hot flashes. If the only sign that you were taught to look for was a hot flash, then of course what you're actually experiencing won't make sense at all because menopause is not a single symptom. It's a whole body hormonal transition.
And when hormones change, well, they affect far more than just your body temperature. They affect your brain, your nervous system, your gut, your joints, sleep, mood, energy, memory, even your emotional regulation. So when women say, I feel like multiple things are happening at once, well, you're not imagining that, and that's often exactly [00:03:00] what's happening.
Now one of the most common things that I hear is women sharing that they don't recognize their bodies anymore. And that sentence really does matter because it tells me that the issue is not one isolated symptom. It tells me the body's behaving differently across multiple systems. And when that happens, it can feel deeply unsettling.
When your body no longer responds the way it used to, confidence often takes a hit. You start losing trust in yourself. You second guess sensations that you used to understand, and without context, the mind tends to fill in the blanks. Women assume the worst. You assume something serious is being missed or that you should be able to just push through.
Well, what's missing though is not resilience or effort. What's missing is understanding and explanation. Now, this is where I wanna slow things down a bit, because you don't need to figure everything out at once either. You don't need to label [00:04:00] yourself or diagnose anything today. What you do need is a different way of looking at your body and what your body is doing.
So instead of asking what's wrong with me. A more helpful question is what patterns am I noticing? Are multiple systems changing? Are symptoms showing up that never used to be there before? Are things that used to be manageable, suddenly harder to tolerate? See, those questions matter more than any single symptom on its own because menopause often reveals itself through patterns, not singular events.
For example, a woman may come to me worried about anxiety. But when we dig deeper, we realize that she also has poor sleep. She's experiencing heart palpitations and feeling unusually sensitive to noise and stress. Another woman may come in concerned about weight gain, but she's also dealing with fatigue that doesn't improve its rest joint pain that she never had before, and brain fog that makes her doubt herself at [00:05:00] work.
Individually, those symptoms might seem unrelated, but together they tell a different story, and menopause is often the thread that connects them all. Now, another thing that's important to understand is that menopause doesn't mean that you'll experience all possible symptoms. And in fact, most women will not.
Most women experience somewhere between five and 15 symptoms. Now, the problem is not the number of symptoms though. The problem is that many of them were never associated with menopause in the first place. So women experience them without a framework. You experience them in isolation, in silence, or even being told that nothing's wrong.
And that's why education matters so much at this stage of life. Not fear-based education or overwhelming education, but clear, practical information that helps you recognize what belongs to this transition and what deserves further support. And that [00:06:00] distinction is critical because menopause doesn't mean you ignore your symptoms.
It means that you understand them better and understanding changes everything. See, when women understand what's happening in their body. Several things begin to shift. Fear decreases, self blame dissolves, and confidence returns. And instead of reacting to every new sensation with panic, you begin responding with curiosity and clarity.
That is the goal here, not to tell you that everything is menopause, and not to tell you that you should just accept what you're feeling, but to help you understand what menopause can look like so that you are no longer guessing. And that's why this conversation matters, because the question is this, menopause is not a sign of weakness.
It's a sign of awareness. It's a sign that you're paying attention and that you're noticing change, and also that you are ready for better information. [00:07:00] And if this question has been lingering in the background of your mind, here's what I want you to take away from today. You are not too late, you're not broken, and you're not failing at taking care of yourself either.
You're navigating a transition that most women were never taught how to properly recognize, and in the conversations ahead on this show, I'm gonna be focusing on specific differences one at a time, not to overwhelm you, not to label you, but to help you recognize what belongs to menopause and what deserves attention.
Some of the symptoms I'll share about are well known, but many are not. Some are physical, some are emotional, and some even affect how you feel, think and even show up in the world. And all of them are valid and all of them deserve explanation. And if you've been wondering if you experience counts, well, if it's affecting your quality of life.
Then it absolutely matters. [00:08:00] And if you want an accurate, non-biased and objective place to look up what you are experiencing, well, that's why the book decoding the 80 symptoms and side effects of menopause exists. It was written intentionally so that you don't have to read it, cover to cover. It was written so that you can go directly to what's happening in your body right now so that you can.
Stop guessing and you can start understanding because when you understand what your body is doing, you are far better equipped to decide what to do next, and that's where confidence begins. To get your copy of decoding the 80 symptoms and side effects of menopause, click the link in the bio for this video.
