Navigating perimenopause can be a bit of a rollercoaster. At the same time as you’re juggling increased work responsibilities, ageing parents and potentially caring for children on top, you’re also dealing with hormonal fluctuations that can affect everything from your cognitive function to your bone health. And the combination of these two stresses can lead to a unique symptom that often goes unaddressed – joylessness.

If you’ve found yourself feeling a bit flat, deflated or just a bit ‘meh’ recently, then joylessness might be to blame. While joylessness can creep in at any time in your life, it’s particularly prevalent during perimenopause due to several factors, says Kate Codrington, a therapist, menopause mentor and author of The Perimenopause Journal: Unlock Your Power, Own Your Wellbeing, Find Your Path.

“Less severe than depression, joylessness can creep up quietly in a busy life, so that one midlife-day you turn around find that your va-va-voom has driven off and left you in the dust,” she says. “While from the outside it looks like life carries on as usual, inside life can feel utterly barren; the absence of joy flattens what should be ‘peak moments’ into grey hollows, an emotional flatline that puts life’s highs and your purpose out of reach.” 

To put it simply, joylessness is a sense of exhaustion and emptiness that tends to creep up during the perimenopausal years. It may not be a medical diagnosis, but it’s something that can happen when you’re moving at a million miles an hour and don’t take time to support your body and mind – like a cross between burnout and languishing. The good news, though, is that there are ways to fix joylessness – you just have to know where to start. We asked Codrington to explain all.  

Codrington says the root causes of joylessness are twofold. Firstly, there are the physiological factors. “The hormones that fluctuate during perimenopause make for a sensitive time,” she says. In particular, the fall in oestrogen that occurs during this time can lead to issues ranging from severe mood swings to depression.

All of this can make coping with the things that you’d usually be OK with feel a lot harder, Codrington adds. “Stress that feels manageable in your 20s and 30s can become untenable, and the allostatic load, which is the cumulative effects that chronic stress has on mental and physical health, starts to show,” she says.

Outside influences can add to this load, leading to the sense of ‘flatness’ associated with joylessness. “Perimenopause is a time when we naturally start to sift through our life’s journey,” Codrington says. This can lead to grief, both over the things we’ve longed for and not achieved and the general passing of time. There is also the pressure to live with purpose, where we might question what we’re doing and what we want from the future, she adds.

Joylessness isn’t a permanent state, and it isn’t all bad. With a few simple changes you can not only shake off any overwhelming feelings of meh-ness but use the questions you’ve started to ask to guide the next period of your life.

The best way to do that, Codrington says, is simply to look for more joy in your life. There’s no ‘one size fits all’ formula but taking a moment to think about what makes you feel good and make a conscious effort to bring more of those moments into your day-to-day can make a massive difference to how you feel.

Some techniques Codrington recommends trying include:

• Finding a community or friends who feels similar and explore joy together
• Prioritising joy by setting aside time in your diary to visit new places, eat new food or look at new things
• Allowing space to express longing, grief and sadness, whether with another person or in a journal
• Connecting with nature and letting yourself go wherever you feel drawn to
• Reconnecting with your childhood interests – eg going back to a team sport or getting creative with no end goal in mind
• Being curious and open to new experiences
• Staying away from the things that bring you down, whether that’s people, places or social media

The Perimenopause Journal: Unlock Your Power, Own Your Wellbeing, Find Your Path by Kate Codrington is out now.

Images: Getty