Why Women Feel More Fear in Midlife - Episode 302

Many women experience rising anxiety in midlife as menopause and hormonal brain changes reshape fear circuits, confidence, sleep, motivation, and emotional resilience. In this episode, I explore why women often feel more fear in midlife - how biology, culture, and lived experience quietly rewire the nervous system - and how to expand again instead of shrinking.

This science-meets-soul episode unpacks the menopause brain, nervous system conditioning, and the emotional load women carry, including the effects of estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, dopamine, blood sugar, vision changes, and sleep disruption on anxiety, cognition, and confidence.

I also explore how trauma, grief, chronic responsibility, and cultural scripts shape risk sensitivity over time, often creating the feeling that you’re “pulling back” from life even when your true capacity is still there.

This episode includes a grounded, practical roadmap to rebuild emotional safety and confidence, including:

• Menopause brain changes and midlife anxiety
• Dopamine shifts, cognition, and eyesight changes affecting confidence
• Cultural load and narrowing tolerance
• Trauma, grief, and nervous system conditioning
• Hormones and fear circuits: estrogen, progesterone, testosterone
• Sleep, blood sugar, and hormone-support foundations
• Micro-exposures to safely expand capacity
• Specific breathwork, EMDR, and BEAM Therapy
• Strength training, novelty, identity reinvention, and community
• A daily, weekly, and quarterly protocol for personal expansion

If you’re in midlife and wondering why fear feels louder, and how to turn this chapter into power instead of contraction, this episode brings both the biology and the path forward.

Please share this episode with a woman who needs it.
Follow Sandy K Nutrition on all platforms, and if this resonated, leave a rating or review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts as it truly helps the show reach more.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Show Focus
• 1:27 Naming The Midlife Pullback
• 3:07 Travel Story And Facing Fear
• 5:24 What The Research Reveals
• 7:38 Menopause Brain And Fear Circuits
• 11:04 Cognition Shifts And Confidence
• 12:47 Psychological Load And Culture
• 16:05 Trauma, Experience, And Caution
• 18:05 Health Changes And Risk Perception
• 20:04 Evidence On Estrogen And Anxiety
• 22:06 Beyond Estrogen: Progesterone And Testosterone
• 25:10 The Roadmap: Physiology First
• 27:10 Rewiring Fear With Micro Steps
• 30:00 Processing Grief And Identity
• 32:20 Strength, Novelty, And Community
• 35:10 Control, Capacity, And Empowerment

Transcript

Sandy Kruse: 0:02

Hi everyone, it's me, Sandy Kruse of Sandy K Nutrition Health and Lifestyle Queen. For years now, I've been bringing to you conversations about wellness from incredible guests from all over the world. Discover a fresh take on healthy living for midlife and beyond. One that embraces balance and reason without letting only science dictate every aspect of our wellness. Join me and my guests as we explore ways that we can age gracefully with in-depth conversations about the thyroid, about hormones, and other alternative wellness options for you and your family. True Wellness nurtures a healthy body, mind, spirit, and soul. And we cover all of these essential aspects to help you live a balanced, joyful life. Be sure to follow my show, rate it, review it, and share it. Always remember, my friends, balanced living works. Today is the long-awaited episode where I'm going to talk to you all about why women pull back in midlife. Many of you probably have friends who say, I can't drive at night anymore. I don't like to drive at night anymore. I don't like to drive in bad weather. I don't like to drive long distances. Oh, I don't go on roller coasters anymore. What else? I don't like to travel. It gives me anxiety. You know, and then and then it gets worse as you get older. If you have aging parents or had aging parents, maybe they came became really risk adverse. Well, there are many reasons why this happens. And I decided I would break it down and provide some insight and some help so that you don't feel like, you know, all of a sudden you're this hermit that doesn't do anything anymore, doesn't go anywhere anymore. And you know what? The fact is, is that fear is a lot of the reason why. I'm gonna be reading you some research and I provide a lot of context in this podcast episode, and then you have to see like where does this apply to you? Because if there's one thing I do know, so last year, okay, no, now because this is gonna be coming out in 2026, it was in late 2024. I went on the trip of my life with the love of my life with my husband, and we went to Croatia, to the UK, and to Ireland in, I think we were there for 11 days. It was a whirlwind because think about it, three countries in 11 days, and actually we flew from Zagreb, Croatia to Split. So I can't remember how many planes, but it was a lot, and I was there for it. I was there for the experience. I actually had no fear whatsoever. Whereas a lot of people would be like, oh my god, that's too much, that's too much travel. Am I gonna sleep? I'm you know, sure, I came ready and equipped to make sure that I could be as well rested as I could in that 11 days. But you know, it was very, very special. And then when I landed, I was like, wow, that was a trip of a lifetime. That was a trip where really I did not let fear take over. I mean, we even rented a car. I can't remember the last time my husband drove stick. Okay, so he drove standard. This was on an island just outside of Split. We had to take the ferry there. It was called Bull, and we went to a place called Poster. We were going up the steepest hill you could imagine. Okay. I'm sure a lot of you have done a trip like this where you're basically like driving almost beside a cliff and watching because the water's right there. Then we we we got to the other side of the island. We sat by the water, had prosciutto, had some homemade, they made their own olive oil and ate by the Adriatic, and it was such an amazing experience. Why do we stop? Why do we slow down? There are many reasons for that, and that's what I'm gonna get into in this podcast. Let me give you a little bit of the research. So this isn't always about fear, it's not about laziness. Um, often it's the biology, it's the culture and the life experiences all colliding together. So, this is why it happens a lot with women, and the biology is something that I'm gonna explain for you. So, studies show that women avoid night driving, long distances, highways, and eventually reduce social and adventurous activities decades earlier than men. That's one research study. Midlife women are also more likely to drink alcohol for false courage, reacting to anxiety, hormone shifts, and mood fluctuations. This pullback isn't personal failure, it's a predictable intersection of hormones, brain changes, life stress, and social messaging. I'm gonna add to that experiences because a lot of times if we have an experience that created a lot of fear, if we don't work on limiting beliefs and negative beliefs, they'll stay there. You guys know I'm all about science and soul, and the fact is that we store this stuff, and I have talked about Brenda. Probably for some of you, you guys are like, what's with her and Brenda? Brenda helps with this. So brilliant.ca. I'm gonna start segment by segment to talk about this. And yes, I did use AI to help me organize my own thoughts. So I want to make that clear because I think it's important that people call out when they use AI and how they use it. So I put in all of my thoughts, ideas, and asked for AI to help me organize them so it's more seamless for you. The number one thing I'm gonna talk about is the menopause brain shift and why risk feels scarier. A big thing that happens to us at menopause is that lovely hormone we call estrogen. Well, it comes into play in a lot of areas. So estrogen is actually like the brain's fear buffer. It interacts with serotonin, dopamine, and the amygdala, which is in the brain, and it supports emotional regulation, executive function, cognitive flexibility, and during perimenopause and menopause, estrogen fluctuates, right? And perimenopause, you're up, you're down, you're up, you're down, you're all around, and then menopause, you get the drop. And so the amygdala, it becomes more reactive, and then the fear circuits fire more easily. So this biological shift can actually increase anxiety and more of that catastrophic thinking. You know, all of us, especially if you're a mom, oh my god, like I know you got that. Uh, lower frustration tolerance, difficulty making decisions, feeling unsafe doing things that you did easily before. Dopamine and motivation. So that dopamine decline with age reduces reward sensitivity and novelty seeking. So the risk feels less enticing. Then there's the cognition shifts. Okay. So there's that slight dip in the working memory that you had before. There's um a dip in attention, in spatial awareness, and word recall. Can it can reduce confidence in driving, multitasking, and navigating new situations? This is not dementia, my beauties. It's not. Cognition often will stabilize a couple years post-menopause. So don't worry. So when estrogen drops, the fear centers of the brain become louder, and parts of the brain that calm fear become quieter. And another thing I am going to say is I welcome you to do some research on how much estrogen impacts eyesight at menopause. I did a lot of research here a few years back. You would be amazed at how estrogen has a major impact on our eyesight. So there's that factor too. It is, you're not going crazy. Okay. This is physiological. So segment two is the psychological and cultural overlay. So here's the other thing that I don't know if a lot of wellness people out there talk about. Around midlife, a lot of women juggle aging parents, children, some having children later in life. So your children may still be younger and need you. Or there's adult children. Then they have their careers, then they have the household. Um, you know, it takes a lot. So if you look at chronic stress plus cortisol dysregulation, a lower threshold for the overwhelm, chronic fatigue, the shrinking window of tolerance, avoidance ends up becoming survival. I don't want to drive, I don't want to travel, I don't want to try anything new. It's all just too much, right? And then add in that little piece about alcohol. What often does alcohol do? It gives us that liquid courage, right? So this is why you often will see a lot of women will drink more just to just to be able to numb all of these feelings that we're feeling. And I'm gonna tell you, um, it's hard to go through the things that are hard, but when you go through them, it's pretty amazing. And alcohol or numbing is just it's not the way, my friends. So then there's the cultural conditioning. Be small, be safe, right? Social messaging across life reinforces caution, avoid mistakes, avoid danger, stay polite, midlife confidence, dips biologically, and there are cultural scripts that fuel that fear. Those are the facts. And what are we seeing all the time? We're watching things on social media and that just in just kind of make this dig a hole in us. That, you know, I don't know if dig a hole is the right word, but you get where I'm coming from. We're watching a lot on social media that shows this, and then it ends up being sort of created in our brain that this is reality. Then we can't forget life experience and trauma. So by 50 and over accumulated trauma, we have losses, betrayals, um, health scares. It tightens up that nervous system as well. And then there's the awareness of consequences increase. So I know what could go wrong because I've seen it. Listen, I'm definitely in that category. Most of you who follow me know that I've had a lot of health challenges in myself and my family, so it's there. Women in midlife don't fear because they're weak, they fear because they've lived. And so I'm gonna take a pause here for a second and I say there is a way, so stick with me, where you can actually turn that story around as something to empower you instead of something that keeps you completely locked up in anxiety in your life until the day you leave this earth because nobody wants that. So then there's health and aging contributions. So this is segment three. So migraines, joint pain, metabolic changes, so you're gaining weight, sleep disruption, then there's cardiovascular shifts for a lot of women. These amplify fragility and further reduce that risk taking risk taking. So the example of driving, women self-regulate driving sooner, overestimate the risk, internalize societal messaging, and feel more responsible for safety. And it's often starting in their 50s, not in their 70s. So fear often rises before actual physical decline. The nervous system becomes cautious long before the body does. So that can also hold you back. Segment four menopause specifically increases fear and risk sensitivity. So here's some research highlights, okay? Estrogen modulates fear circuits. So low estrogen equals impaired fear extinction, threats feel persistent. That's an actual research article. You can look that up. Menopausal women show heightened startle reflex and threat sensitivity. I definitely startle easily, but I think I've always been like that. Sleep disruption worsens amygdala reactivity and it amplifies anxiety. If you've ever been in that state where you're just not sleeping well and you're just anxious like all day, there's a real physiological reason for that. Perimenopause increases generalized anxiety, catastrophic thinking, and health anxiety. That's also in a research article. Fear in midlife isn't a flaw, it's a signal, and signals can be retrained. How powerful is that? Segment five hormones beyond estrogen. Everyone's always talking about estrogen, right? So I'm going to give you more insight into the other hormones that also decline. Progesterone. So progesterone supports that GABA calming. Okay. Better sleep, reduced night anxiety, nervous system soothing. Like for me, obviously, I take progesterone at night. It actually helps with my sleep. It helps lengthen the amount of time that I sleep. It's a very powerful hormone. And most of you who are, you know, know you know a little bit about menopause and hormones, you know that progesterone actually starts to decrease way before estrogen. Like, you know, there's some research out there that says it's around 37 is the average age. I think it might even be earlier. Testosterone. Testosterone supports motivation, drive, confidence, cognitive sharpness, and reduces that freeze response. So testosterone is usually a little bit later in that it drops significantly. Like you'll see progesterone first, then estrogen when you get into menopause, and then testosterone around the same time or soon after. But again, everybody's different. Here's an important nuance declining ovarian function reduces all sex hormones. So the effects on fear risk taking track strongest with estrogen, but overall hormonal harmony matters. So this is where I'm going to say that, you know, you have to speak with your practitioner, but the ratios of these hormones is really important. Even if your ratios are off, that can cause anxiety and all sorts of issues. So not all women experience these changes. Genetics, lifestyle, and psychosocial factors modulate the outcomes. We are all so bio-individual that you know you really need to work with a practitioner who it understands hormones and understands all this. And then on top of it, you have to tap into what feels right for you. And only you know your traumas to what extent it had an effect on you. Now remember, you know, a traumatic experience lived by me and somebody else who had a similar one may not have the same physiological or or psychological, I should say, effects. So we are all entirely bio-individual. Research can't explain everything. Segment six. So what can we do? Reclaiming power, risk tolerance, and wisdom. Here is your roadmap. But again, this is a roadmap that I created. You're going to have to decipher resonance for you in your situation. So number one is we want to kind of play around and fix the physiological side first. So hormone support. Not everybody wants to do bioidentical hormones. I am a big believer in it. I use in Canada, I use science and humans. I don't even know if I have a discount with them. Sandy Kay, maybe. I don't know. You can try that. Um, but that's what they do. All they do is hormones and they test every three months through blood. And I found them to be probably the most knowledgeable I've worked with. And I I know in Canada, you'll have to check out who is a hormone specialist in your area. So fix that physiological physiological aspect first and sleep restoration, blood sugar regulation, and stress management. So fix that part first. Then number two, you want to go to rewire, rewire the fear circuits. Remember, our brain can change all the time. And we can rewire so much of what's going on in that beautiful brain of ours. So what we can do is controlled microdosing. I'm not talking about drugs here, people, um, of risk. So you want to take small daily challenges, maybe drive a little farther, maybe try a new route, maybe try driving at night, but do it in a short distance. And and just do these little micro steps to eliminate or reduce that fear. So then there's nervous system repattern, repatterning. So you can do, let's say, if you're a person who's had severe trauma in your life, you can try EMDR. I've done this on my own because there have been certain situations where I have relived something that's gone on in my brain over and over again. And I didn't want to do that anymore because every time I relived it, it was like traumatic. I wanted to become more numbed to a situation. So I did EMDR on my own. You should probably work with a practitioner trained in it, but I kind of knew a lot about it. You can try EMDR. Um, you can try breath work. There, you know, I've always told my kids anytime you are anxious to use 478, I think it was Dr. Andrew Wheel who first said this, said this so many years ago. And there are some forms of breath work that can actually make you more anxious, it's more of a release. So, you know, choose something that's light and that's gonna work for you. But try 478, look it up, Dr. Andrew Wheel. And then I'm gonna say, try beam therapy because beam therapy is not breaky, it's not like any other kind of therapy that you've done. Brenda Farouja does this. I've had numerous beam therapy sessions, and I'm gonna leave that there because I've recorded about this. If you want to learn more, please do so. So then there's fear extinction retraining. So repeated exposure. And what that does, it helps to calm that nervous system when you do it repeatedly, then you're not as scared anymore. It's kind of like I'm gonna give you my own little theory here, like I'm gonna call it the roller coaster theory. You go on one roller coaster and you are terrified to go on that roller coaster. That first roller coaster, you're like, oh my God, I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. And then you go on the roller coaster, you come off and you go, that's kind of fun, kind of had a good time. And so then you go on another roller coaster, and then you go on another one. So that's what that means. So the third one is address unresolved grief and trauma. That is grief integration, boundary repair, betrayal trauma, rewriting worth. Um, you know, all of that can also be helped with that internal work. I've recorded so many podcasts about that. You can also work with Brenda, do beam therapy, do more meditation. Then there's number four, reinvent identity. Ask, who am I now? What have I outgrown? What rules no longer apply? And I know that that's probably easier said than done. You're like, okay, yeah, whatever. That's a big loaded question. Who am I now? But the way that you do that is to do all that work to kind of rediscover who you are now. For me personally, I unfortunately had to go through some traumatic experiences with health with my family to kind of start forging this path that I've been on now ever since 2010. And it's been a long, arduous path. And I've never really veered from that ever since then. And it's been a lot of baby steps. But the way that you do that is to get quiet and to become more introspective. Turn in to yourself, stop giving everything away outside of yourself because all of it comes from within if you're willing to listen. Number five, expansion practices, novelty. So weekly new experiences, neurogenesis, reduced fear. Then you can do more things like physical stuff. Like you want to increase your physical power. Like if you're that person who's like, oh, I'm so scared, it's like snowy, I'm gonna slip, I'm gonna fall. Like, do some squats, build some strength because you can do that at any time, right? And then there's community. You want to find mentors, supportive women's circles, connection. And I'll tell you, this world has a lot of community where women are supportive. Often we'll find that we'll be in this friend group, and then we start to see these weird clues. And you know, there's this quote, and I'm gonna probably mess it up, but your body starts to give you signals well before your soul is like, oh, damn, I gotta leave. So listen to those signals. If you're with a group of friends and you always feel depleted, you never feel supported. First, do the work, internal work, to make sure it's not coming from your own limiting beliefs and your own negative beliefs. But when you're doing that work, you kind of get to know and go, hmm, damn, these girls are not supporting me. And that's when you put up boundaries. You know, you might say this this friendship has fizzled out. I've done that a few times in my life. I don't do that very often. So when I do it, I mean it and it's goodbye. And I'm really good with that. So you want to address the root causes of avoidance. So fear isn't normally about the driving or the trips, it's about control. That's another thing. I struggle with that all the time. Giving up control. Um, it's also about cognitive load, sleep, trauma, depleted hormones, chronic stress. And when you work to repair those things, the fear starts to evaporate. It's pretty amazing. Then you want to tap into empowerment and wisdom. Don't ever belittle yourself because you're aging. You are more powerful than you give yourself credit for. So, what often happens because of all of those things that I mentioned is we start to shrink, we start to get smaller, our worlds become smaller, our brains become smaller, our community is smaller, our confidence is smaller, but you forget the one important thing that you've got that you didn't have when you were 30, and that is some deep lived wisdom. Don't ever forget that. So, midlife is not a period of loss at all. Maybe you know, my skin is not as beautiful as it used to be, maybe my body is not as fit as it used to be, but damn, I am rich with experience. I have decades of knowledge, insight, practical life lessons that our younger generations need. So be that, be that however it feels right to you, be that for the younger generation. So historically, elders held cultural, emotional, and survival wisdom. And today, we're often sidelined in old-age homes or socially invisible, but our voices, our guidance, and our experience still hold so much value and always have. We just seem to forget it. So sharing our wisdom through mentorship, storytelling, teaching, leadership doesn't just help others, it reinforces your own confidence, agency, and purpose. So I actually recorded a podcast, and I hope more people who are in a place of business, listen to this podcast. How many people do you know? Women or men who have been laid off in their late 40s, early 50s, can't get a job, aged out, or maybe they're in the workforce and are not being supported for the stages that their life is going through, like hormones and aging parents, all of that. And then they're told, you know, damn, girl, you're too old. Okay, they're not told that. But my point is there has to be more support in our lives, in our community for us to thrive, but we a hundred percent can make that happen because our worth is extremely valuable. Here is a simple take back your life protocol that I'm gonna leave you with daily. You're gonna want to eat protein, real food. Don't listen to those influencers who tell you to eat freaking 200 grams of protein. Please don't, please don't, please don't. Eat what makes sense for you, eat the right amount of protein for you and your needs. But the key is eat whole real foods. Focus on cooking at home. Do a little bit of resistance training. Don't be like me. Don't wreck your foot or wreck your wrist like I did trying to push through pain. Don't do that. Just because you know, all these influencers are telling you to lift heavy. Do what makes sense for you. Five minutes of four, seven, eight breathing. Try that every day, a few times a day, even. Two tiny risks, and then an estrogen-optimized lifestyle. So research a little bit how you can eat to optimize your adrenal health. So that is, remember, your adrenal glands are the glands that are going to make that estrogen. We don't run out of hormones just because we're in menopause. It's just that we want to optimize our body so that we still make a decent amount of estrogen. And then, if it resonates with you, get on with a practitioner who understands hormone replacement therapy, bioidentical, of course. Now, weekly, take on a new challenge. It says solo time, and that's what's weird in my little script that I created. I'm like, solo time is daily, my friends, not weekly, okay. Um, do some some sort of internal therapy work. And I'm not talking about talk therapy. I am not a big believer in talk therapy. I think that, you know, if you have a close circuit of friends, or, you know, maybe if it's something really traumatic, you want to talk it out, you might do it for a short period of time. But really, you need to go a lot deeper than talk therapy because often you get to a point where it's just an enabling conversation, enabling that victim consciousness, which doesn't really help us. You want to connect monthly at least with women who are in an expansive position, women who are really owning themselves, their stage in life. Maybe, you know, I'm gonna say this, and this isn't this isn't to shame anyone who does drink, but you know, women who are true to who themselves, who they are, to themselves, that don't need to go out and get hammered at every event and drink bottles and bottles of wine, because that's not it. That's not it. That's a mask. So I I like this one. Self-date. Do something that makes you feel so good. Like go to a farmer's market, go do some therapy, shopping, shopping therapy, whatever you want to call it. So quarterly, a major challenge. Take an adventure, go on a trip. Um, you know, maybe upgrade your environment a little bit, move your furniture around, do some, buy something new, make it look great, like change things up. So I'm gonna close with a quote: midlife isn't the end, it's a turning point. Fear is not weakness, it's recalibration with understanding, support, and action. The second half of your life can be bigger, braver, and bolder than the first. You're not shrinking unless you want to, but you're stepping into your next evolution if you want to, but your experience, wisdom, and perspective are your superpowers, and the world still needs what only you can give. Every single person on this earth has a gift or gifts. It's up to you to discover it and follow those breadcrumbs, follow the trail. And when you do that, you can kind of follow that path. Sometimes the path isn't easy, sometimes you'll get all sorts of clues and you'll think I'm on the wrong path. And then you come to the other side and you're like, okay, I get it. I get it, I get why I'm here and why I had to go through what I went through. So if this resonates with you, please share it with a friend. Please share it on social media. Follow me on any social media platform. It's Sandy K Nutrition everywhere. And also, I'm going to ask you to rate it and review it wherever you're listening. Typically, that's on Spotify or Apple. That helps me to get new guests and uh be discovered more. If this resonates, please do that for me. And happy, happy new year. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to share it with someone you know might benefit. And always remember when you rate, review, subscribe, you help to support my content and help me to keep going and bring these conversations to you each and every week. Join me next week for a new topic, new guest, new excited conversation. Help you live your fast life.