DR GINNI MANSBERG: Sudden bouts of rage at work? Snapping at your husband? This is why women get angry in their forties – and what you can do about it

You’re angry, irritable and feel like you’re going crazy – and you never used to be like this. If this sounds familiar to you, you may be suffering from ‘peri-rage’.

Perimenopause rage refers to bursts of anger associated with the hormonal changes a woman experiences during the transition to menopause.

During ‘the change’, estrogen naturally declines which affects the production of the mood-regulating, happiness-boosting chemical serotonin.

As a result it’s normal to feel off-balance, and this can continue until your body has adjusted to the lower levels of estrogen.

Just like hot flashes, migraines, insomnia and low libido, peri-rage is caused by hormones and intensified by hormonal spikes – and the key to surviving it, according to Dr Ginni Mansberg, is by empowering yourself with knowledge.

‘The most important thing is for you to get educated. Women don’t realise their anger is caused by hormonal spikes and not stress at work,’ says Dr Mansberg, who is the author of The M Word: How to Thrive in Menopause and the co-founder of perimenopause education hub Don’t Sweat It.

The moment you realise the mood swings that are sabotaging your relationship and making your irritable at work are actually caused by hormones – and are treatable – is the moment when you take back control of your life.

It’s an important realisation for the spouse of a perimenopausal woman, too. They will stop taking those snappy moments so personally.

‘We don’t want women in their thirties and forties changing careers because of their anger,’ Dr Mansberg adds. 

‘And we don’t want relationships breaking down because you are raging again.’

Sometimes anger during perimenopause is misdiagnosed as depression and anxiety and a woman is needlessly diagnosed antidepressants.

Dr Mansberg says women experiencing mental health issues during their perimenopause years – usually their forties – are often led down the wrong path by doctors when, in fact, dedicated menopause treatments ‘are 76 per cent more likely to work’ for them.

These treatments include hormone replacement therapy (HRT), testosterone, estrogen-based creams and supplements.

‘People are shocked when it works. They come in crying a week or a month later because they finally feel like themselves,’ she tells me.

Dr Mansberg’s friend and colleague Shelly Horton suffered from huge mood swings and depression when she first started perimenopause.

The usually chirpy redhead opened up to Dr Mansberg about her feelings and was able to get the help she needed to ‘get back to normal’.

Together, the two women went on to create Don’t Sweat It, an educational hub that advises workplaces on how to help their female staff through the change in life. 

Many women with perimenopause already feel at odds in the workplace due to their other symptoms, making peri-rage all the more uncomfortable.

Dr Mansberg says it isn’t unusual to see women abandoning their careers because they are sick of the struggle.

Perimenopause can last anywhere from 12 weeks to ten years with most women experiencing symptoms for about four years. It usually happens after a woman turns 40 but can occur as early as her mid-thirties.

One in five women get away without any negative symptoms; another one in five suffer from severe symptoms that impact their daily lives; and three out of five experience mild to moderate symptoms.