Was this the first time I forgot a dentist appointment that sent me over the edge? Or was it the panic that gripped my chest the day I realized I’d failed to wash one of the children’s uniforms for school that sent me into a ball of anxiety?
Instead of laughing at these little bumps in the road, they unexpectedly erupted into deep worry as they snowballed their way down a hill of gloom to a sense of overwhelm I had never felt before. I was used to being busy, managing a family with four children aged seven to eighteen, writing a book, editing a weekly magazine and co-hosting a podcast, so I wondered where this feeling came from ? I’m an organized, multitasking adult, but when one thing went wrong, I now illogically catastrophized that the rest of my to-do list was a disaster too.
If this sounds familiar, you’re probably middle-aged too. It seems there’s a new tribe in town: the inexplicably overwhelmed 40-somethings. So what’s going on and is there a way to avoid spiraling when that feeling of overload hits?
First, it’s worth knowing that we can certainly lay some of the blame at the feet of our over-scheduled, busy modern lives. Our forties and fifties bring additional burdens, and midlifers are often referred to as the backbone of society. We may face the sadness of an empty nest, the stress of caring for aging parents, serious health problems, the weight of our big jobs or layoffs from them, divorce peaks between the ages of 45 and 49, as well as female suicide rates.
It’s a lot, and according to neuroscientists, all midlife brains undergo remodeling, so it’s no surprise that they handle things differently. The weight of these increasing roles and changes in brain function means that we need to take more care of ourselves as we get older and the way we live from day to day needs to change.
I spoke to psychologist Dr. Emma Hepburn about why we seem to lose our ability to deal with stress after age 40, and she told me it has to do with the enormous cognitive demands we place on our already full brain. “Responding to the demands of midlife significantly increases our cognitive load at a time when we have limited cognitive capacity,” she says.
Leading neuroscientist Dr. Lisa Mosconi, the author of The menopausal brain, explains that male and female brains respond differently to the overwhelm of midlife. She says that chronic stress, which can be built up for us as a generation over the years, destroys our hormone production, which affects brain health and that men and women’s brains differ because of our different hormone production.
“It’s a complicated time of life,” she tells me. “Resilience to stress is decreasing at a time when we seem to have more of it. This is due to changes in hormonal concentrations in the brain as we age. Higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol are not good for the gray matter of the brain.” Our gray matter is the part of the brain that we need for almost all our bodily functions and emotions.
Why men and women in middle age suffer from stress overload
Our bodies depend on one molecule called pregnenolone to make both our sex hormones and our stress hormones. When we are under stress, the brain will steal pregnenolone from estrogen production in women to produce more cortisol to deal with any crisis. If we stay in stress mode for too long, our estrogen becomes even further depleted. For women, that can mean more symptoms of perimenopause (the decade before menopause, when all our hormones fluctuate before disappearing for good), including increased anxiety or mental health issues.
For older men, says Dr. Mosconi, the effect of stress overload can be even more negative. Women’s brains often produce oxytocin, the feel-good hormone, to cope with stress, giving our brain’s gray matter more energy to function properly.
Research shows that the presence of this calming hormone in women results in ‘faking and befriending’. Thus, women under stress are more likely to seek help from other women to reduce stress. But men go it alone, they don’t get oxytocin, and their gray matter can be more seriously affected by extra cortisol. According to Dr. Mosconi, their brains can freeze. They withdraw and their brain activity stops, energy is depleted. This means the brain absorbs less glucose (which nourishes it) and a range of health problems could follow in addition to mental anxiety. It’s a vicious circle.
Sleep is also affected, which in turn negatively impacts brain health and increases overall inflammation in the body, which is also bad for the brain. “The brain is a complex organ,” emphasizes Dr. Mosconi. “Menopause and perimenopause are an important renovation of the female brain. But while there is some cognitive slippage in women during this phase, the average woman’s brain still outperforms the average male brain in middle age.” This is impressive because studies worldwide show that stress levels are consistently higher in midlife women than in any other age group. This stress brings out both genders in what Dr. Hepburn calls an “exhausting state of hypervigilance.”
So what can we do about our midlife spiral?
Dr. Mosconi recommends lifestyle changes such as better nutrition, less or no alcohol, a look at the way we ingest chemical toxins into our homes, exercise and mindfulness; something Gen X still likes to roll their eyes at.
“Better sleep is the most powerful thing we can do to keep our brains working properly, but in middle age it can be harder to achieve that quickly,” says Dr. Mosconi. “So I recommend starting with more daily exercise or exercise to address cognitive decline, there’s a lot of science behind it. Many pathways to the brain are activated by exercise, which promotes better blood flow. It cleanses the brain of toxins, reduces cortisol and boosts brain energy, making it more efficient and reducing inflammation in the body.
“The body responds well to change, but the brain is its own show, it needs consistency to adapt and change. It is good at learning something new, but not so good at change. The brain’s hardware is not plastic, so be patient. It will take a while before you learn to deal with stress better at this stage of life.”
There is good news, however, as Dr. Hepburn notes, because once you realize that you are in a state of hypervigilance, you can develop coping strategies with relative ease.
“The midlife brain is packed with knowledge. Removing the threat warning is a great way for the brain to remind you that you have all these skills to solve problems and cope well with your increased mental load. You just have to give it the space to do that.”
How to Overwhelm Your Midlife Brain
Improve your social capital
Having a good support network is why some cope with the midlife brain spiral and others don’t. According to Dr. Hepburn, being able to “talk out” your problems is extremely helpful for brain health. One of the biggest predictors of a longer life is our social interactions with others, and connection also triggers the production of feel-good hormones that calm a spiral brain. Earlier this month, an American survey found that Britons aged 46 to 65 were the “loneliest” in Europe. In the magazine American psychologistthe researchers report that our lack of ‘social safety nets’ makes us vulnerable to loneliness, which is not good for brain health and may have led many of us to complain about this new inability to cope under duress.
Learn self-hypnosis
Dr. David Spiegel is a Stanford psychiatrist who has made it his life’s work to combat the medicalization of mental and physical health. I ask him about midlife overwhelm and he says that simple daily self-hypnosis switches the brain between alpha and theta waves and encourages it to ‘hyperfocus’ on one thing; for example, being calmer in certain situations.
“Increased threat arousal initiates a feedback loop between the brain and body. You get tense, your brain tells you what’s wrong, then your body senses that something is wrong and so it tenses up: we can break this loop with regular self-hypnosis and teach the brain to turn off these alarm signals. You tell the brain to tell the body that you can handle it, you will be fine.” On his Reveri app, he teaches soothing cyclical breathing techniques and guided self-hypnosis for better sleep, focus and stress relief.
Read more about MBSR (meditation and mindfulness-based stress reduction)
This area of wellness is often overlooked, but Dr Mosconi says coping strategies developed under the MSBR banner have been researched and shown to improve our quality of life as we age. Kirtan Krya is a 12-minute chanting meditation that has been shown to reduce stress. Dr. Mosconi also says that MBSR research shows that, when combined with cognitive therapy, it may prove as effective at preventing depression relapse as antidepressants in women. Practicing yoga for at least 12 weeks has also been shown to reduce fatigue (especially during menopause).
Schedule rest
Gen Productivity overload is a modern epidemic and if you want your brain to have more energy, you have to stop and give the brain and body a break.
What’s Wrong With Me: From Unraveling to Reinvention a Midlife Memoir by Lorraine Candy is now available in paperback
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