Why menopause makes you more reactive and what's really happening inside your nervous system

In both personal development and therapy, we hear the phrase "wounded inner child" a lot.

I've spent years in this field, first as a music therapist, now as a transformative coach, and I've seen how much that concept can help some people. But I've also seen how many people it leaves cold. For some women, the phrase feels abstract. For others, it can feel subtly dismissive, as though what they're experiencing is somehow childish rather than deeply, physiologically real.

So I want to offer a different way of thinking about it. One that I've found resonates more deeply, especially for women navigating the menopause transition.

The nervous system vault

Imagine that every experience you have ever had is stored somewhere inside you. Not neatly filed and forgotten, but held in your body, your nervous system, your emotional memory.

This vault contains your past experiences and childhood memories. Your learned behaviours and belief systems. Your emotional wounds and the coping strategies you developed around them. Your relationship patterns, your conditioning, the stories you absorbed about who you are and what you deserve.

When something happens in the present, your nervous system doesn't immediately assess the situation objectively. It doesn't coolly evaluate the facts. Instead, it first scans the vault by searching for something familiar and asks a series of very fast, largely unconscious questions:

Have I felt this before? Was I safe? What did I learn from this? How should I respond?

Only then does it project a reaction outward into the world.

This is why two people can experience exactly the same situation such as the same words, the same tone, the same event and have completely different emotional responses. They are not responding to the same thing at all. They are each responding through the lens of their own vault.

This is not weakness. This is not irrationality. This is how the human nervous system works.

What the science tells us about menopause and the brain

Here is where it becomes particularly important for women in the menopause transition.

Oestrogen affects multiple regions of the brain, including the prefrontal cortex, responsible for planning and decision-making, the hippocampus, essential for memory and learning, and the amygdala, which regulates emotions and anxiety.

As oestrogen fluctuates and declines during perimenopause and menopause, it doesn't just affect the body. It directly changes how the brain processes emotion, threat, and memory. Oestrogen withdrawal alters the balance of serotonin and dopamine, increasing irritability and emotional reactivity.

Research presented at the 2025 Annual Meeting of The Menopause Society highlighted that menopause is associated with distinct structural changes in the brain - changes that connect directly to the cognitive, emotional, and behavioural symptoms women experience during this stage.

In other words, what you are feeling is not in your head. It is, quite literally, in your brain.

2025 Annual Meeting of The Menopause Society

When hormones open the vault

Many women tell me they don't recognise themselves anymore.

They're more emotional. More reactive. More anxious and sensitive, less tolerant, and deeply overwhelmed. Their confidence has dropped in ways that feel completely alien to who they thought they were. Their insecurities, which they had managed or suppressed, or outrun for years, are suddenly screaming. Their inner critic has found a microphone and turned the volume up to full.

And whilst hormones are certainly driving much of this, something else is happening at the same time.

The emotional and cognitive changes associated with the menopause transition, don't just create new feelings. They amplify what is already sitting inside that nervous system vault. Old fears. Old wounds. Old beliefs about ourselves that we thought we'd long since dealt with or buried deeply enough that they'd stopped mattering.

It is almost as though the brain begins highlighting every insecurity, every unresolved fear, every place where self-trust is still fragile. Not to punish us. But because the reduced regulation that comes with hormonal change means those things are simply harder to keep quiet.

The vault doesn't change. But the door becomes easier to open.

Why this matters, and what we can do about it

This is why I believe that preparing emotionally and mentally for the menopause transition is just as important as preparing physically.

For too long, the conversation around menopause has focused almost entirely on physical symptoms such as the hot flushes, the sleep disruption, the joint pain. These are real and they matter. But the emotional and identity shifts are equally real, equally significant, and far less supported.

The earlier women develop self-awareness, emotional regulation skills, and an understanding of how their nervous system works, the more anchored they become when the transition makes everything feel turbulent. Not because they become immune to reactivity or emotion, but because they have tools to work with their triggers rather than becoming overwhelmed by them.

Some of the most useful things women can build ideally before the transition is in full swing, but honestly at any stage can include:

Understanding your own nervous system responses. Recognising the difference between a reaction that belongs to the present moment and one that has been triggered from the vault. Asking yourself: is this actually about what's happening right now, or is this older than that?

Nervous system regulation practices. Things that help bring the body and brain back to a regulated state such as breathwork, movement, time in nature, creative expression, stillness. These are not luxuries. During hormonal transition, they are genuinely important tools.

Emotional processing rather than emotional suppression. Pushing through and pushing down can work as a strategy for a long time. But the vault doesn't empty itself. And during menopause, what hasn't been processed tends to rise to the surface anyway. Sometimes loudly. Working with a coach or therapist to begin gently unpacking what's in the vault, rather than waiting until it overwhelms you, can make an enormous difference.

A kinder relationship with your inner critic. The internal voice that gets louder during this transition is not telling you the truth. It is telling you what the vault learned, often a very long time ago, about your worth, your capability, and your safety. Learning to hear it without believing it is one of the most powerful things a woman can develop.

Not just a hormonal transition

Perhaps what strikes me most in the work I do with women navigating this stage of life, is how often they describe it as an identity transition rather than, or as well as, a hormonal one.

Menopause doesn't create our insecurities. It shines a light on them. And whilst that can feel frightening, even destabilising, I've come to see it differently. It is also an invitation. An invitation to finally understand ourselves on a deeper level than the busyness of everyday life has ever allowed. To meet the parts of ourselves we've been outrunning. To build a relationship with ourselves that is more honest, more compassionate, and more grounded than the one we had before.

Women who come through this transition with that kind of self-understanding don't just survive it. They emerge from it differently - steadier, clearer, and often more themselves than they have ever been.

That is the work I am here to support.

A note on the nervous system vault and your workplace

If you are a woman navigating this in a professional context (and many of the women I work with are) it is worth naming something directly.

The reactivity, the sensitivity, the moments of overwhelm that feel out of proportion, these are not signs that you are less capable. They are signs that your nervous system is working hard under conditions it was not designed to manage alone. Understanding what is happening - in your brain, in your body, and in your vault - can help you respond to yourself with the same compassion you would offer anyone else going through something significant.

And if you are an HR professional or people manager reading this: this is why awareness matters. Women in your workforce are not falling apart. They are navigating a transition that affects the brain itself, without adequate language, support, or understanding. That is something organisations have the power to change.

If this has resonated with you - whether you are in the midst of this transition yourself or beginning to wonder if that might be where you are - I would love to connect. I work with women to navigate the emotional, psychological, and identity shifts that can accompany perimenopause and early menopause, and I support organisations to build more informed, compassionate, and menopause-ready workplaces.

You can find out more at jorennie.com, or book a free discovery call to talk about where you are.

Jo 🦋