# Anxious + depressed or… ##### Your Perimenopause Blueprint Workshop ---  --- ## Summary > - Anxiety and depression can be a result of hormonal changes. > - We may also be desperate for a pause and space to reconfigure. > - Our values may not be matching with what we are actually doing. --- ## Transcript So anxiety and depression? Yes, they can be a result of hormonal changes, absolutely. There is that. But is it a case that actually, you know, we're anxious and depressed because we are desperate for this pause and this space to reconfigure? So I think it was Lara Bryden that talked about our brain reconfiguring in perimenopause. Apparently, our brain reconfigures at certain points in our life — at puberty, if we've had children, and perimenopause is another time for it to reconfigure. And I think the big thing is that midlife is so pathologized. There is this belief that anxiety and depression are due to hormonal changes, and yes, they can be. But is it the fact that so much of this is related to this incongruency? What we feel on the inside, the person that we want to be, and the person that we are out in the world, they are not matching. Our values are not matching with what we're actually doing. This incongruency means we are not aligned with who we want to be, who we truly are. Is it now that we've got to the point where menopause, perimenopause — the clue's in the name — we need this pause? We need this chance to stop, pause, breathe, and decide how we want this part of our life to be. We want to address all this deeper stuff that's actually going on. So that's with anxiety and depression. But going on to depression a little bit more, I really love this quote by Jeff Foster. He says “we can view depression not as a mental illness, but on a deeper level, as a profound and very misunderstood state of deep rest entered into when we are completely exhausted by the weight of our own false story of ourselves. It is an unconscious loss of interest in the second-hand, a longing to die to the false”. Again, I think this is this period of our life where many women are living this false version of themselves, that feeling that we've got something in us that we want to put out to the world, and for whatever reason, we are not doing it or cannot do it. We need to stop and pause and figure out how we can be more aligned, how our external life can be more aligned with what we actually want, what we actually need, and what that deep cry within us is.