Luteal Lobotomy

Perimenopausal Brain Fog is real

Day 5 of my menstrual cycle, 5 days after my period starts, I know I had lost something because it comes back in a flood. A thought, like a train that has been stuck in a tunnel or outside the station at a red signal finally able to travel at speed. When the signal finally goes green, I wake up.

It’s not so much I can’t think in my luteal phase, but that I don’t.

My mind is paused. Quiet. I would say at peace but if it were a sick child with a temperature, I would be poking and prodding wondering why they didn’t want to play, and considering a trip to Urgent Care.

Unresponsive.

In those two weeks before my period, my Luteal Phase, I exist in the world rather than actively participate in it.

As my progesterone levels rise and my estrogen levels plummet, brain fog falls on me like a blanket of cotton wool. Thick, fluffy and hard to see through.

I go through motions but I don’t contribute, I don’t analyse and I don’t much consider alternatives. I am just living my life, passing through with the usual routines. I am on autopilot; no thinking necessary.

But as my period eases, and I start to feel myself again physically, the fog lifts and my mind switches back on.

I see patterns I didn’t see before, I notice things that had been there all along. I wake up.

I had always thought of it as a super power.

Around that time my body prepares to ovulate and I am on high alert to find a mate, both to seek them out and to be sought out. I can sense it, my usually fuzzy hair always looks glossy mid-cycle and that’s just one sign. I saw it as a super power that gave me oomph - an extra boost but now as I head into perimenopause I see it as my attempt to survive. Rather than turbo-boosting into the air from the pits of luteal hell, I am climbing up with whatever strength I have left, clinging onto whatever I can to survive. The glossy hair only lasts a few days too.

When brain fog hits, I long to have interesting intellectual thoughts – not so much that I see it as part of my identity, I don’t think I am that smart, but I would like to be. I don’t feel like myself if I am not thinking.

Without that acceleration of thought when the fog lifts, I wonder if my brain might just close off entirely and yet I have come to depend on the surge. (There would be no Substack articles without it!)

Perhaps this is a warning.

I could lose it if I let it go.

Estrogen is leaving me - by the bucket load, it is inevitable. But I can train my brain to work harder in my luteal phase, or at the very least I have to attempt to stave off brain rot through a doom scroll addiction. Dare I say I need to come off social media again?! Clearly, I am not helping something that is already happening to me biologically. I wonder if I could be speeding it up?

I feel a little silly for writing this, as surely anyone might read it and deem me unemployable, or scatty and perhaps if they already know me well enough, they will already know this about me. But I feel it is worth sharing because I can’t be the only one.

Does any one else feel like this?

Has anyone found any solutions or coping mechanisms?

A side note:

This piece spilled out my my head onto my notes app as I heard Karma Chameleon playing upstairs. The kids know it from the Despicable Me movie we had watched earlier that afternoon and my partner was playing it from his phone at bath time.

I galloped upstairs and called, “Are you listening to my George?!”

“Who’s George?” I heard my son ask from the bath.

My partner said, “Boy George – that’s who sings it.”

“Oh, I thought it was George Michael,” was my reply.

Perhaps I haven’t quite come out of my luteal lobotomy phase just yet, after all.

Come join me in the comments I would love to hear your stories.

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