u/AddisonHenryC

I'm posting on behalf of my mum who is really struggling.

For the last few months she has had severe insomnia where she often feels fully awake for most or all of the night despite being exhausted. The biggest issue seems to be adrenaline surges, particularly in the early morning hours, where her body suddenly feels event switched on and alert. It’s self perpetuates as the less sleep she gets the worse the dumps are and then sleep never comes.

She's becoming increasingly distressed and is starting to lose hope that things will improve.

So far:

HRT has been trialled but she couldn't tolerate it, so it isn't an option.

Zopiclone helped for around 3 months before losing effectiveness.

Lorazepam wasn't helpful and caused side effects.

Diazepam helps with some of the distress but doesn't reliably help her sleep.

She has just started clonidine (25mcg first night, 50mcg second night, planned to increase to 75mcg). The first night was promising but the second night she barely slept and felt nauseous.

She's so exhausted and unwell from the sleep deprivation that even other therapies like CBT-I feel impossible right now.

She feels like everyone thinks it’s in her head. We are in a wait list to see a menopause specialist.

I'm wondering if anyone else experienced:
adrenaline surges/hyperarousal, feeling completely awake all night despite being exhausted, and whether you eventually improved.

If so, what helped and how long did it take?

Thank you.

I'm posting on behalf of my mum who is really struggling.

For the last few months she has had severe insomnia where she often feels fully awake for most or all of the night despite being exhausted. The biggest issue seems to be adrenaline surges, particularly in the early morning hours, where her body suddenly feels event switched on and alert. It’s self perpetuates as the less sleep she gets the worse the dumps are and then sleep never comes.

She's becoming increasingly distressed and is starting to lose hope that things will improve.

So far:

HRT has been trialled but she couldn't tolerate it, so it isn't an option.

Zopiclone helped for around 3 months before losing effectiveness.

Lorazepam wasn't helpful and caused side effects.

Diazepam helps with some of the distress but doesn't reliably help her sleep.

She has just started clonidine (25mcg first night, 50mcg second night, planned to increase to 75mcg). The first night was promising but the second night she barely slept and felt nauseous.

She's so exhausted and unwell from the sleep deprivation that even other therapies like CBT-I feel impossible right now.

She feels like everyone thinks it’s in her head. We are in a wait list to see a menopause specialist.

I'm wondering if anyone else experienced:
adrenaline surges/hyperarousal, feeling completely awake all night despite being exhausted, and whether you eventually improved.

If so, what helped and how long did it take?

Thank you.

I'm posting on behalf of my mum who is really struggling and our family is feeling quite lost.
For the last few months she has been dealing with severe insomnia. The main issue doesn't seem to be difficulty getting comfortable or poor sleep habits. Instead, she experiences intense adrenaline surges during the night, often in the early morning hours, where she suddenly feels completely awake and unable to get back to sleep.

The most difficult part is that on many nights she feels fully awake for most or all of the night. She isn't lying there feeling relaxed or sleepy—it's as though her body is switched on and alert despite being physically exhausted. She desperately wants to sleep but often feels unable to.
She is exhausted, becoming increasingly distressed by the situation, and is struggling to see an end to it.

She has tried a number of different medications with mixed results. Zopiclone initially helped for a few months before seeming to lose effectiveness. Lorazepam caused unpleasant side effects and didn't help much. Diazepam has helped reduce some of the distress around the insomnia but hasn't reliably improved her sleep.
Most recently she started clonidine. The first night she slept surprisingly well and the adrenaline surges seemed much less severe, but the second night she barely slept and felt quite unwell and nauseous. We're waiting to hear back from her GP regarding whether the dose increase was too fast or whether adjustments need to be made.

What I'm hoping to hear from others is:
Has anyone experienced insomnia that felt driven by adrenaline surges, hyperarousal, or a nervous system that wouldn't switch off?

Did anything eventually help?

Did treatments sometimes seem to work at first and then become inconsistent before things improved?

If you eventually improved, how long did it take?

Were there any treatments, therapies, or approaches that made a meaningful difference?

She's starting to lose hope that things will improve, so I'd really appreciate hearing from people who have been through something similar and what the outcome was.

Thank you.

My mum (49) has become really unwell during perimenopause and we’re completely stuck trying to understand what is going on and how people actually recover from something like this.
She is dealing with severe insomnia, and her body feels like it’s stuck in a constant fight-or-flight state with adrenaline surges, episodes of tachycardia, nausea, and very intense emotional lows and despair. She is now largely bedbound because her system feels too sensitised to tolerate normal activity or stimulation, and even very gentle input can trigger a full flare.

She’s also become extremely sensitive to medications and almost any kind of intervention, which has made things really difficult because we feel like we’re being passed between different healthcare providers without a clear plan, and we’re honestly feeling helpless watching her stay stuck in this cycle and trying not to let things reach a breaking point.

Looking back, this all started as perimenopause began and gradually escalated. She was started on HRT and had a very bad reaction, especially to progesterone, and we’ve tried multiple forms (patches, creams, suppositories), all of which seemed to make things worse rather than stabilise anything. She stopped this after a few weeks but has not become any better.

The insomnia was one of the first major symptoms, and for a while we managed it with Zopiclone, which initially helped. From around November to February there was a slow improvement and we genuinely thought things might be settling. Then in March she developed severe shoulder pain (now suspected frozen shoulder), had acupuncture for it, and after that everything seemed to crash again into a much worse state that hasn’t improved since.
Now Zopiclone no longer works, and if she doesn’t sleep her body escalates into full adrenaline mode, which then makes sleep impossible again. Even something as simple as massage can set her system off, and it feels like her whole nervous system is stuck in this overactivated loop.

We’re starting to wonder if this is a severe hormone sensitivity / PMDD-type response layered with perimenopause, because even normal hormonal shifts (especially around ovulation) seem to trigger big crashes. It feels like her nervous system has become completely sensitised and unable to settle.

We also wonder if there was an early trigger around the time she was given antibiotics she didn’t really need (she has tolerated antibiotics before without issue), but we don’t know if that’s relevant or just timing.

We feel really stuck because she is extremely unwell and unable to function, but not considered acute enough for hospital care, blood tests are all “normal,” and she’s now too scared to try SSRIs or anything new because she feels so sensitised and already at breaking point.

We just don’t know what actually helps when things get to this level, or what the right pathway is in NZ when HRT has clearly made things worse and even basic interventions seem to set her system off.

Has anyone experienced anything like this in perimenopause or hormone-related nervous system dysregulation and actually recovered? If so, what helped you get out of it?

Any guidance or shared experience would really mean a lot.

Hi everyone,

I’m posting because my mum (49) has become really unwell during perimenopause and we’re completely stuck trying to understand what is going on and how people actually recover from something like this.

She is dealing with severe insomnia, and her body feels like it’s stuck in a constant fight-or-flight state with adrenaline surges, episodes of tachycardia, nausea, and really intense emotional lows and despair. She’s now largely bedbound because her system feels too sensitised to tolerate normal activity or stimulation, and even very gentle input can trigger a full flare.

She’s also become extremely sensitive to medications and almost any kind of intervention, which has made things really difficult because we feel like we’re being passed between different healthcare providers without a clear plan, and we’re honestly feeling helpless watching her stay stuck in this cycle and trying not to let things reach a breaking point.

Looking back, this all started as perimenopause began and gradually escalated. She was started on HRT and had a very bad reaction, especially to progesterone, and we’ve tried multiple forms (patches, creams, suppositories), all of which seemed to make things worse rather than stabilise anything.

The insomnia was one of the first major symptoms, and for a while we managed it with Zopiclone, which initially helped. From around November to February there was a slow improvement and we genuinely thought things might be settling. Then in March she developed severe shoulder pain (now suspected frozen shoulder), had acupuncture for it, and after that everything seemed to crash again into a much worse state that hasn’t improved since.

Now Zopiclone no longer works, and if she doesn’t sleep her body escalates into full adrenaline mode, which then makes sleep impossible again. Even something as simple as massage can set her system off, and it feels like her whole nervous system is stuck in this overactivated loop.

We’re starting to wonder if this is a severe hormone sensitivity / PMDD-type response layered with perimenopause, because even normal hormonal shifts (especially around ovulation) seem to trigger big crashes. It feels like her nervous system has become completely sensitised and unable to settle.
We also wonder if there was an early trigger around the time she was given antibiotics she didn’t really need (she has tolerated antibiotics before without issue), but we don’t know if that’s relevant or just timing.

We feel really stuck because she is extremely unwell and unable to function, but not considered acute enough for hospital care, blood tests are all “normal,” and she’s now too scared to try SSRIs or anything new because she feels so sensitised and already at breaking point.

We just don’t know what actually helps when things get to this level, or what the right pathway is in NZ when HRT has clearly made things worse and even basic interventions seem to set her system off.

Has anyone experienced anything like this in perimenopause or hormone-related nervous system dysregulation and actually recovered? If so, what helped you get out of it?

Any guidance or shared experience would really mean a lot.