How Managing Stress Can Help Ease Menopause Symptoms

Midlife is often marked by significant life events: health scares, kids leaving home, the passing of parents and other loved ones, divorce, and changing workplace demands. These events are stressful on their own and, when combined with the menopause transition, can be even more overwhelming.  

Menopause can bring its share of stress, but did you know that stress can actually worsen your menopause symptoms (Arnot, 2021) (Arnot, 2021)? The good news is that learning effective stress-management strategies can help counteract those effects (Stute, 2022) (Stute, 2022)!

Read on to explore how stress influences your body during menopause, and how tracking your symptoms can be a powerful tool for finding relief. 

How stress affects menopause symptoms  

If you’re feeling more stressed since entering the menopause transition, you’re not imagining it. Data from the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (SWAN) found that women report higher levels of stress in both early and late perimenopause than premenopausal people (Falconi, 2021) (Falconi, 2021).

On its own, feeling stressed is, well, stressful! However, stress can also make your vasomotor menopausal symptoms worse: hot flashes, night sweats, and palpitations. Data from the same SWAN study found that vasomotor symptoms were 21% more frequent in women who still felt upset after a stressful life event than in those who didn’t (Arnot, 2021) (Arnot, 2021).

Why does stress make menopause symptoms worse? 

Stress can make menopause symptoms worse because it directly affects the neuroendocrine system, specifically the HPA axis, which controls the body’s stress response (Arnot, 2021) (Arnot, 2021).

When you’re under stress, your adrenal glands release cortisol and adrenaline. When these hormones stay elevated for too long, they can disrupt the balance of estrogen and progesterone, which are already fluctuating or declining during menopause (Phumsatitpong, 2021) (Phumsatitpong, 2021).

Stress can cause the following effects: 

• Lower tolerance of discomfort: We know that stress can lower your pain threshold—what used to be tolerable is no longer bearable. Stress reduces our body's resilience to other symptoms. Physiological stress heightens sensitivity to pain and discomfort, making symptoms such as bloating, breast tenderness, or headaches feel worse (Arnot, 2021) (Arnot, 2021).

• Cortisol dysregulation: Your adrenal glands make both cortisol (your main stress hormone) and small amounts of estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. When you’re under constant stress, your body focuses on producing more cortisol to cope, leaving less capacity to make those important sex hormones. In turn, cortisol elevations are associated with certain health consequences, including cardiovascular disease, depression, and cognitive decline (Logan, 2025) (Logan, 2025).

• Hormonal fluctuations: Changes in hormones, such as estrogen, can impact how your brain regulates your mood and behavior. These hormonal fluctuations can increase your perceived stress levels, which starts the cycle all over again (Falconi, 2021) (Falconi, 2021). 

Your response to stress is highly individual; it’s often not the stressful event itself, but how deeply it affects you that can influence your menopause symptoms and overall well-being (Falconi, 2021) (Falconi, 2021)(Arnot, 2021) (Arnot, 2021).

Keep stress at bay with tracking  

While it’s not possible to avoid stress completely, taking a proactive approach to stress can benefit your long-term health and quality of life (Logan, 2025) (Logan, 2025). Tracking your stress levels can put you in the driver’s seat, as you learn what causes your stress and what relieves it.

Consider trying and tracking the following stress-management techniques (Stute, 2022) (Stute, 2022):

• Schedule time for yourself: Try a new hobby, take an exercise class, or just say “no” to an event you’d rather not attend. 

• Delegate or outsource: When the situation and finances allow, take responsibility off yourself and ask someone else to complete a task.

• Build new mental skills: Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can help you recognize if automatic thoughts exacerbate your stress levels and how to modify those patterns to more helpful thoughts.

• Practice mindfulness: Prioritize your long-term mental health by “filling your cup” with mindfulness techniques such as breathwork, meditation, or going for a walk.   

DISCLAIMER

This article is intended for educational purposes only, using publicly available information. It is not medical advice, and it should not be used for the diagnosis, treatment, or prevention of disease. Please consult your licensed medical provider regarding health questions or concerns.