I need to tell you about the day I screamed at a sock.

Not at my kids. Not at my partner. At an actual sock, on the actual floor, that had been there for approximately seven minutes. And in that moment, the fury that rose up in me was so disproportionate, so fast, so completely unhinged that I genuinely frightened myself.

The rage was gone within about ninety seconds. Poof. Like it had never happened. I stood in the hallway feeling shaky, confused, and deeply, deeply ashamed.

That was the moment I knew something was going on that was bigger than "just being stressed, and overwhelmed by motherhood"

If you know, you know. One second you are fine. You are making packed lunches, loading the dishwasher, answering emails, mentally running through the school pick-up logistics. Normal life. Then someone asks you a question, or the dog barks, or a child says "Mum" for the forty-seventh time in three minutes, and something inside you just snaps.

Not a slow build. Not a simmer that you can catch in time. A switch. Zero to volcanic in under a second. And the rage is physical... Your jaw clenches. Your chest tightens. Your hands ball into fists. You feel like your skin is too small for your body.

And then, just as quickly, it passes. You are left standing in the wreckage of your own reaction, wondering who that person was. Because it certainly did not feel like you.

I started calling it the Incredible Hulk feeling, because that is honestly the closest thing I can compare it to. A transformation you did not choose, did not want, and cannot control.

We hear about hot flushes. We hear about irregular periods and night sweats and brain fog. But the rage? The sudden, blinding, terrifying anger that appears from nowhere, often triggered by who knows what, and vanishes just as fast? That gets whispered about in group chats and deleted from social media posts because we are too ashamed to admit it.

Here is what I have learned since: it is one of the most common symptoms of perimenopause, and it is massively underreported. Fluctuating oestrogen and progesterone directly affect the parts of your brain that regulate emotional responses. When those hormones swing wildly (which they do, constantly, for years during and post peri), your ability to manage your emotional reactions swings with them.

If you are neurodivergent, the impact can be even more intense. ADHD already makes emotional regulation harder. Autism can mean sensory overload tips into meltdown more quickly. Layer hormonal chaos on top of that, and you have got a nervous system running on empty with no brakes.

It is not a character flaw. It is not bad parenting. It is your brain chemistry doing something you did not sign up for.

For me, the turning point was not the sock incident. It was watching my boys flinch.

My twin boys are neurodivergent too. They have their own sensory challenges, their own emotional worlds to navigate, their own moments of overwhelm. And they needed a mum who could hold space for that. Not a mum who was adding to the noise.

I looked at them and thought: if I do not figure out what is happening to me, I am going to damage the relationship that matters most. Not because I am a bad mum. But because I am a mum whose brain is on fire and nobody has given her a fire extinguisher.

So I started tracking. I started paying attention to when the anger spikes happened, what triggered them, how long they lasted, and where I was in my cycle. And patterns started to emerge. It was not random. It was not me failing. It was hormonal, predictable, and once I could see it, I could start to manage it.

I went to my GP with my tracking data. I said: this is what is happening, this is when, and this is how it is affecting my family. Having that evidence changed the conversation completely.

I am not going to pretend I have cracked it. Some days are still hard. But here is what has made the biggest difference:

💜 Tracking my cycle religiously. Once I could see the pattern, the rage lost some of its power. Instead of "what is wrong with me," it became "ah, this is day 18 again." That shift from shame to understanding is everything. I created my Cycle Tracker specifically for this reason, so I could take real data to my medical professional rather than just saying "I feel angry sometimes."

💜 Naming it out loud. I started saying to my boys: "Mum is having a big feeling right now. I need a minute,." Not a perfect solution. But it models emotional honesty, and it gives them information instead of leaving them to fill in the blanks with "Mum is angry at me."

💜 Leaving the room. Simple. Unsexy. Wildly effective. When the Hulk feeling arrives, I walk to a different room. I do not try to push through it. I do not try to be reasonable. I just remove myself for sixty seconds until the wave passes. Because it does pass. It always passes.

💜 Telling my partner. This was hard. Admitting that sometimes I cannot trust my own reactions felt like admitting I was broken. But having someone who understands that "I need you to take over for five minutes" is not a failure, it is a strategy, has been transformative.

💜 Dropping the guilt. Or trying to. Mum guilt is its own beast, and perimenopause makes it louder. But the anger does not make you a bad mum. Recognising it, seeking help, and finding ways to manage it makes you an incredible one.

This is the bit I did not expect.

Going through this, really going through it honestly, has made me a more compassionate parent. Because my boys have their own big feelings. They have their own moments where the world is too much and they cannot regulate and they lash out or shut down. And now I get it. Not in a textbook way. In a "I have literally been there" way.

When one of my boys is mid-meltdown, I do not panic the way I used to. I think: I know what it feels like when your brain hijacks your body. I know the shame that comes after. I know that what you need right now is someone to stay calm, stay close, and not make it worse. I come at them with compassion and curiosity, not shame or judgement. 

Perimenopause forced me to understand my own nervous system. And in doing that, I got so much better at supporting theirs.

So if you are in the thick of it right now, please hear me: the rage is not who you are. It is something that is happening to you. And you can get through it, and you might just come out the other side a little softer, a little more honest, and a whole lot more connected to the people you love.

Go gently with yourself.