SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the Sleep Coach. I'm your host, Shelly Simpson. If you're exhausted, but your mind won't shut off at night, you're in the right place. Each week, we'll unpack the science of sleep, hormones, and the nervous system so you can understand what's happening in your body and finally get the rest you deserve. Here we quiet the 3 a.m. mind, calm the body, and help you finally get the sleep you've been missing. Have you ever reacted to something and then thought, okay, where did that come from? Maybe your husband asks you one innocent question and suddenly you're irritated. Or someone at work sends you an email with just the wrong tone and you're thinking about it for the next three hours. Maybe your kids need one more thing from you and you feel like you might completely lose it. Or maybe it's not even anger at all. Maybe you just cry more easily, or you take things more personally, or feel anxious over things you used to handle without much thought. And then comes the part I think is especially confusing for women in midlife. You just don't quite feel like yourself. You think, why am I reacting like this? Why can't I handle stress like I used to? Why does everything feel so big lately? Well, today we're going to talk about that. Because emotional reactivity during midlife isn't simply about having a bad attitude or becoming impatient or needing just to get yourself together. There are real changes happening in your brain, your hormones, stress response, nervous system that can influence how intensely you experience and respond to emotions. And once you understand what's happening, you can start responding differently. Before we get into midlife, let's talk about emotional regulation. Emotional regulation does not mean you don't get angry. It doesn't mean you never feel anxious. It doesn't mean you become the calm woman sitting cross-legged on a mountain while everybody around you is losing their minds. But actually, I would love to be that woman sitting on a mountain, cross-legged, looking out into just the beautiful scenery and letting everything get chaotic around me and just be like, I don't care. But that's probably not realistic. Emotional regulation is your ability to experience an emotion, understand what's happening, and choose how you're going to respond. There's a difference between feeling an emotion and being driven by the emotion. For example, let's just say something irritates you, like your body reacts, your heart rate might increase, your muscles might get tense, your thoughts speed up, you feel the urge to just immediately defend yourself. That's an emotional response. Regulation, however, is the space between I'm angry and I'm going to say the first thing that comes into my head. And during midlife, that space can sometimes feel a whole lot smaller. Let's get into what's actually happening. During perimenopause, as we've talked about before, estrogen and progesterone don't simply decline in a nice, predictable, straight line. Especially during the earlier stage of the transition, hormone levels can fluctuate pretty significantly. And estrogen isn't just a reproductive hormone. Estrogen interacts with systems throughout the brain. It influences neurotransmitter systems involving serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, all of which play roles in mood, motivation, attention, and emotional processing. So when estrogen becomes more unpredictable, some women notice changes in things like irritability, anxiety, mood, stress sensitivity, concentration, and sleep. This is one reason a woman can reach her 40s and suddenly say, I've never been an anxious person. Why do I feel anxious now? Or I've always handled pressure well. Why does everything overwhelm me lately? That experience deserves more curiosity than judgment. Your brain isn't operating in isolation, it's responding to a changing internal environment. Let's now talk about the brain. There's a structure deep inside the brain called the amygdala. You've probably heard it described as part of the brain's threat detection system. Your amygdala helps your brain rapidly evaluate: is this safe or is this a threat? Do I need to react? And here's something important: a threat doesn't have to be a bear chasing you through the woods. Your nervous system can respond to a physiological and social threats too. Say, an angry email or a conflict with your spouse, a difficult conversation with your teenager, maybe being late, feeling criticized, financial stress, a parent who needs your help, or your boss asking you, hey, do you have a minute to talk? Oh, honestly, those six words alone can get a nervous system's attention right away. When your brain detects a potential threat, your body can begin preparing you to respond before you've consciously decided what you think about the situation. That's why emotional reactions can feel incredibly fast. Your heart rate changes, your breathing changes, muscles tighten, stress hormones and neurotransmitters help mobilize the body. And suddenly you're not calmly evaluating the situation, you're reacting to it. Fortunately, we also have the prefrontal cortex. Think of this as part of your brain's management team. It helps with things like decision making, impulse control, attention, perspective, and evaluating consequences. So imagine someone says something that irritates you. Your alarm system says, threat, threat, threat. And your prefrontal cortex can help say, hang on, let's figure out what actually happened here. I know that's an oversimplification of a very complicated brain network, but it's a useful way to think about emotional regulation. Here's where stress becomes important. When you're under significant or chronic stress, the brain systems responsible for thoughtful, flexible decision making don't always function as efficiently. Your reactions can become faster, your thinking can become more rigid, and your ability to put things into perspective may temporarily decrease. Now, put that woman in midlife. Maybe she's managing a demanding career, teenagers, or adult children, aging parents, relationship changes, financial responsibilities, changes in her body, hot flesh, brain fog, and on top of that, she's sleep deprived. Then she wonders why one dirty coffee cup left on the counter feels like a personal attack. It's probably not about the coffee cup. The coffee cup may simply be the final demand placed on a system that's already carrying too much. There's another concept I want you to understand because I think it's incredibly helpful. It's often called the window of tolerance. Think of it as the zone where your nervous system has enough capacity to handle what's happening without becoming overwhelmed. When you're inside the window, you can experience stress and still think clearly. Something frustrating happens, and you think, okay, I'm irritated, but I can deal with this. When stress exceeds your capacity, however, you may move into a more activated state. You might feel angry, anxious, restless, panicked, maybe overwhelmed, or just extremely reactive. Some people move in the opposite direction. Instead of becoming activated, they shut down. They withdraw, they feel numb. They don't want to talk. They want everyone to just leave them alone. And here's the important part: your capacity isn't exactly the same every day. Let's just imagine you did sleep well. You've eaten, you've exercised, you're not under tremendous pressure, you're feeling pretty good, and your capacity to deal with situations feels pretty good too. So let's imagine you've slept maybe five hours and you skipped lunch, you've been in meetings all day, you're dealing with a hot flesh, your mother needs something, your teenager is texting you, and you've already made 700 decisions. Now somebody asks, what's for dinner? Suddenly, that question feels like an act of war. Same question, just a different nervous system capacity. Do you get me? Okay. Because this is the Sleep Coach podcast, we need to talk about sleep. But here's what I want you to understand: sleep isn't separate from emotional regulation. Sleep helps support it. I mean, think about it. Doesn't that make sense? Research consistently shows that sleep loss can affect emotional processing and increase emotional reactivity. After inadequate sleep, the brain can become more sensitive to negative emotional information, while the systems involved in regulating those responses may not function as effectively. So think about the cycle this can create for a woman in midlife. Hormonal changes may disrupt sleep, poor sleep reduces emotional resilience, you become more reactive to stress, stress activates the nervous system, then you get into bed and your brain starts replaying everything that happened. And now you can't sleep. Which makes tomorrow's emotional regulation even harder. It's a loop. That's why I keep coming back to a whole body approach. Sleep affects your emotions. Your emotions affect your nervous system. Your nervous system affects your sleep. Hormones interact with all of it. We're not dealing with separate little boxes, we're dealing with one interconnected human body. It's all connected. What do we actually do with all of this? I want to give you something very simple to practice this week. When you notice yourself becoming unusually reactive, don't immediately ask what's wrong with me. Think about that. That question falls under judgment. Instead, ask what's happening inside me right now. That is a question of curiosity. So rather than asking a question that falls under judging yourself, ask more curious questions. Get curious. Maybe you're angry. Okay. But what's underneath that anger? Are you overwhelmed? Are you hungry? Are you just exhausted? Maybe you're feeling dismissed or feeling underappreciated. That's a big one for moms and women in midlife. You do a lot, you wear a lot of hats. And while your family does appreciate it, maybe you just don't feel appreciated because maybe they don't say it. Maybe they just don't say it enough. And it's not that they don't appreciate you. They do. It's just that sometimes you kind of want to be like, hey, mom, or hey, from your husband or whoever. Just be like, I appreciate all the things that you do. I'm so grateful for you. But they just don't think about doing that. Maybe you're feeling anxious or overstimulated, or have you been running from one responsibility to another since six this morning? Is this really about what just happened? Or was this simply the final straw? The straw that broke the camel's back. You don't have to solve the emotion immediately. First, let's learn to recognize it. And that's where we are going to use the pause. We're going to practice creating a pause. And no, I'm not going to tell you that every time you're angry, you need to meditate for 30 minutes. Sometimes you only need 30 seconds. We're going to take one slow breath. Drop your shoulders, unclench your jaw, put your feet on the floor, or if you're standing, just feel yourself grounded down into the floor. Maybe you just need to walk into another room, or maybe just remove yourself from the situation completely and just walk away or get outside for five minutes. Walking out in nature is, oh my gosh, it does so much for your emotional regulation. I've always said that walking is my therapy. Tell someone before you react, tell someone, would you give me a minute before I respond? What's happening there is you're interrupting the automatic reaction long enough for the thinking parts of your brain to get back into the conversation. That tiny pause is emotional regulation. You're not suppressing the emotion, you're just allowing yourself to experience it without immediately handing it the steering wheel. This week, I want you to become a detective. When you notice a strong reaction, ask yourself, what happened right before this? Then look at what else was happening that day. How did you sleep? Have you eaten? Have you had enough downtime? How stressed are you? Or how stressed have you been? Are you overstimulated? Have you been saying yes to everything? Are you carrying resentment that you haven't addressed? Maybe expecting yourself to operate at 100% capacity every single day, you may start seeing patterns. Maybe you're much more reactive after poor sleep. Maybe late afternoon is difficult because you've gone six hours without eating. Maybe certain relationships consistently activate you. You know those ones. Maybe your calendar is so packed that you're living in a constant state of urgency. And maybe this is a big one for women, you're trying to regulate everyone else's emotions while completely ignoring your own. That's exhausting. Awareness gives you information, and information gives you choices. I want to end with this because I think it's important. The goal isn't to become less emotional. Your emotions are actually information. Anger can tell you a boundary has been crossed. Anxiety can alert you that something feels uncertain or threatening. Sadness can tell you something matters deeply. Frustration can tell you something needs to change. Emotional regulation is learning to listen to those signals without automatically allowing them to determine what you do next. Midlife can expose areas of our lives that we've been pushing through for years. Our sleep changes, our bodies change, our stress tolerance may change, our responsibilities change. And sometimes the strategies we used at 30 just don't work the same way as they do at 45 or 50 or 60. That doesn't mean you need to try harder. It just means it's time to understand your system better. All right, here's your homework. The next time you have a reaction that feels bigger than the situation, and there will be, don't judge it. Just notice it. Try to take a step back. Use that pause and ask yourself three questions. What am I feeling? What does my body need right now? How do I want to respond? Feeling, need, response. That's it. You're creating space between the trigger and the reaction. Once you start realizing what those triggers are and start becoming more aware of those triggers, over time, it will get easier. You'll know those triggers. And instead of reacting, you can respond. And every time you practice that space, you're practicing emotional regulation. If today's episode made you think, okay, this explains a lot. Send it to another woman who has been wondering why she doesn't quite feel like herself lately. And if you're enjoying the Sleep Coach podcast, would you take a minute to follow the show and leave a rating or review? It helps other midlife women find the podcast and lets me know which conversations you want me to keep having here. And remember, your emotional reactions aren't something you need to be ashamed of. They're information. Start paying attention to what your brain and body are trying to tell you. I'll see you next time. Thank you for spending this time with me today. Be sure to hit follow so you don't miss what's coming next week. And before you go today, would you do me a quick favor? Please leave a rating in review. Your support will help more women find the show. Remember, you're not broken. Your body just needs support. Until next time, keep calming the mind, supporting the body, and creating the conditions for better sleep. Sweet dreams.