Image source: Merlina McGovern
The other day I was overwhelmed with a feeling of anxiety. This anxiety comes cyclically, especially as I get closer to menopause. According to the Cleveland Clinic, as women get closer to menopause, the variations in our estrogen and progesterone levels can bring on those feelings of anxiety. I recently read a fascinating book written in 2021 called The Menopause Manifesto, and the author, Dr. Jen Gunter, goes over in detail the rise and fall, and rise again, of hormone treatments for pre- and post-menopausal women. It’s a fascinating read, backed by many scientific references, so I highly recommend it if you’re also facing this particular life transition.
Given my own family history with breast cancer, I’ve opted not to look into hormone treatments. My anxiety is currently not all-consuming, and so I’ve been experimenting with journaling and with other small tactics that I can take throughout the day and use whenever these feelings of anxiety threaten to overwhelm me.
The journal that I’ve been using is The Anti-Anxiety Notebook. Cosmo has a nice little review of the journal. The notebook uses ideas from cognitive behavioral therapy. It directs you to journal an entry each time you’re feeling anxious. You document the negative thought patterns you might be having, like magnifying the negative to the exclusion of the positive or labeling activities, where you label a distortive value on something (“I replied all when I shouldn’t have. I’m so stupid). Of course, CBT is most effective when you work with a talk therapist, but I have found this little journal to be so helpful in getting me out of those negative mind loops in a nicely structured way.
Now, we come to the title of my post. The humble little Post-it. When I’m feeling overwhelmed about what I’m going to work on the next day, I grab my little yellow sticky piece of paper and start jotting down times and activities. You can see that I don’t write the time down for everything. I’m never sure what is going to come up throughout the day, so I leave those times out. I write down the things I want to remember to do, and I try to add enough small doable items so that I know that I will be able to accomplish a lot of them throughout the day. Writing each item down helps me to take them from my mind, where I can ruminate on them over and over as I try to fall asleep. I know that it’s not a super structured online calendar, but for me, it helps to soothe my mind before bedtime.
When the Post-it is full, I can feel the anxiety fade away. Thank goodness for Romy and Michelle for inventing them!
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