You’re standing in the grocery store. Fluorescent lights, a kid crying two aisles over, the beep of the self-checkout, someone’s cart wheel squeaking in a way that makes your teeth hurt. And out of nowhere, your chest tightens. Your heart is going. You need to leave. Right now.
Or it’s the overhead light in your own kitchen, suddenly too bright. Or your family all talking at once at dinner, and you have to leave the table before you say something you don’t mean.
Nothing happened. Nothing dangerous is here. But your body doesn’t know that.
You’re not imagining it. And you’re not the only one.
Look around right now and you’ll see it everywhere. Perimenopause has become a full-blown cultural moment this year, National Geographic has run multiple pieces on it, local papers are picking it up, and women everywhere are describing the same thing: finally feeling seen, some for the first time in years.
And the conversation has genuinely shifted. It’s not just about hormones anymore. Researchers have a name for it now: a neurological transition state. Not just reproductive. Neurological. The same brain systems that run your sleep, your temperature, and how your senses take in the world, all of it shifting at once.
That’s the missing piece behind the sensory stuff. Crowds that never bothered you. Noise that suddenly feels unbearable. Bright light that makes you want to close your eyes and disappear. Waves of anxiety or panic that arrive with no clear trigger at all. Anxiety and panic symptoms are well-documented as more common during this exact window. Even for women with no history of either.
Why this is happening
Your body is running a constant, background question — am I safe? — faster than you could ever consciously think it. Normally that question gets answered so quietly you never notice it happening.
But during this transition, your whole nervous system becomes more reactive. The filter that used to sort “background noise” from “actual threat” gets less reliable. A noise that used to register as nothing now registers as something. A crowd that used to feel like Tuesday now feels like too much information at once, with no gap to process it in.
That’s not you losing your grip. That’s a nervous system working harder than it used to, protecting you the only way it knows how.
Part of you knows there’s nothing actually wrong in that grocery store. And part of you is bracing anyway. Both are true at the same time. Neither one is broken.
One thing that helps, in the moment
When your body is in that state, it doesn’t need you to think your way out of it. It’s not asking for a thought, it’s asking for proof that you’re safe right here, right now, in a language it can actually feel, not just hear.
So instead of trying to reason with the panic, try orienting yourself in your actual physical space:
- Name three things you can see — really look at them, not just glance.
- Name two things you can hear — even quiet ones.
- Name one thing you can feel — your feet on the floor, your hands on the cart, the chair under you.
Say them out loud if you can, or slowly in your head if you can’t. Let a few seconds sit between each one.
That’s it. You’re not fixing anything, and you don’t need to make the feeling go away. You’re giving your nervous system evidence, this room, this moment, is actually safe, in the only language it fully trusts: what it can directly sense, not what you tell it. It won’t erase the wave. But it gives your system a foothold while the wave moves through, instead of you white-knuckling it alone until it passes.
That’s the in-the-moment version, something you can do standing right there in the checkout line. But naming what’s happening isn’t the same as changing it. The deeper layer, the one that actually teaches your nervous system it’s safe rather than just getting you through the next five minutes, is where tapping comes in. It’s not another explanation of the science it’s a way of working directly with your body, hands-on, in real time, so this transition doesn’t just get understood. It gets easier to live in.
For me, it shows up in the car. Driving home from somewhere, kids in the back seat, and the questions just keep coming, one after another after another, no gap between them. And somewhere around question twelve I’m just done. Not annoyed at them, exactly. Just tapped out. My body wants the noise to stop more than anything else in that moment, and there’s still more conversation to be had, more questions coming, and nowhere to put myself except right there in the driver’s seat.
That’s not me being a bad mom on those days. That’s a nervous system that’s already spent its quota of “incoming information” for the day, getting one more thing poured in when there’s no room left.
If grocery stores and group chats and family dinners have started to feel like more than you can hold you’re not broken, and you’re not alone in this particular year, of all years. This is a real, documented transition your whole nervous system is moving through, not something you’re imagining or overreacting to.
You don’t need to fix it today. You just need to know this isn’t a flaw in you. It’s your nervous system doing exactly what it’s built to do. And that’s usually where things start to shift.
If this is landing, I’m Ashley — a nervous system coach. This is exactly the kind of thing I work with clients on. You don’t need to have it all figured out before you reach out.
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