September 14, 2025|Tania Mullan

LIFE, WORK & BELONGING

I Don't Feel Like Myself Anymore

The Midlife Identity Shift Nobody Warned You About. When your old life still fits on paper, but no longer feels like 'you'.

SOMA Wellness Co. · September 2025 · 12 min read

Quick Answer

Not feeling like yourself in midlife can have two overlapping layers.

Perimenopause can change sleep, mood, concentration, energy and motivation. At the same time, long-held roles can begin to loosen, leaving a deeper question: who am I now, and how do I want my life to be?

This is not automatically depression or a dramatic "midlife crisis." It can be a real recalibration shaped by biology, nervous-system load, relationships, loss and the life you have already lived.

Someone asks what you want for dinner.

Thai? Pizza? Soup? You say, 'Anything.' Not because you are being easy-going. You used to have opinions about dinner. Strong ones. You simply cannot find one tonight.

There is nothing you particularly do not want. There is also nothing you want enough to choose.

Later, you are standing at the kitchen bench making food for people who may or may not appear when it is ready. You are doing the familiar things, saying the familiar words, keeping life moving. But it feels as though you are watching yourself do it from half a step away.

Your life technically belongs to you. It just does not quite feel like it does.

If that felt uncomfortably familiar, stay with me. This is not really about dinner.

The first layer: I don't feel like myself

We talk more openly now about hot flushes, brain fog, broken sleep and mood changes. How Do I Know If I'm in Perimenopause? covers that wider symptom pattern. This article is about the quieter question underneath it: where did I go?

For some women, this begins while life is still noisy. Children may be older but not gone. Work, caring and dinner still need doing. You keep functioning, which is part of what makes the change so hard to explain.

It can feel like a flat no-man's-land. You still love people. You still show up, most of the time. But the things that once lit you up do not land in the same way, and you cannot yet name what would make you feel better.

Then you finally get a Saturday when nobody needs anything from you. You have spent years dreaming of this. It arrives, and you put the kettle on twice because you cannot work out what you actually want to do with the day.

The old roles are still there. Partner. Daughter. Mother. Worker. Organiser. The person who remembers birthdays and knows where the spare batteries live. But they no longer answer the whole question of who you are.

This is not 'all in your head' in the dismissive sense. Hormonal change, poor sleep, pain and brain fog can make it harder to feel curious, creative, decisive or connected. Biology changes the conditions inside which you are trying to feel like yourself. [1][2][5]

"All of a sudden, I felt like I could handle nothing. I felt completely overwhelmed… I felt like somebody else had taken over my brain." — Gillian Anderson, describing perimenopause [6]

The second layer: I don't know who I am now

The second layer often arrives when a role loosens or changes for good. The question is no longer only, 'Why do I feel off?' It becomes, 'Who am I when nobody needs me in the same way, and what do I want the next part to be for?' Children leaving can create the quiet. So can retirement, illness, grief, a relationship ending or realising that the life you built no longer fits. Women without children can reach the same question through different doorways.

In a 2025 study of 509 Australian women aged 45 to 64, menopause did not arrive alone. It collided with extra caring roles, work, money, relationships, health concerns and ageism. A separate menopause identity study found women renegotiating their roles and the story they told about their lives. [3][4]

In other words: the body may begin the disruption or catalyst, but there is a psychological layer around what life means for you now. Hormones are part of the story. They do not explain your whole life, your grief, your relationships, your values or what everything you have lived through now means.

Your nervous system is carrying the whole life, not just the symptoms

Your nervous system does not file a hot flush, an ageing parent, a money worry, a friendship ending and a child leaving into separate folders. It receives the whole unfinished day.

When poor sleep, pain, grief and constant demand keep arriving, there is less room for play, imagination and the small signals that say: I like this. I want more of that.

It is hard to hear a preference in a body that is busy getting through the day. That does not mean the preference is gone. It may simply be drowned out with an overwhelmed nervous system, trying to support a body in flux. The wider connection between hormonal change, stress and capacity is explored in Why the Nervous System?

When time stops feeling endless

By midlife, time begins to feel different.

A parent becomes frail. A friend gets cancer. Someone your age dies. Your own body reminds you that it is not endlessly renewable.

That awareness can frighten you. It can also make old obligations less convincing. If time is not endless, who matters? What no longer deserves another five years?

Laura Carstensen's research helps explain why. When time feels more limited, emotionally meaningful people and experiences move higher up the list. [8] You become less willing to spend another five years at lunches you dread or smoothing over a friendship that only works when you stay quiet.

This is not a demand to call menopause a gift. It is a life review: what mattered, what still matters, and what you want to carry forward. [11] It's a recalibration of sorts.

This is not always a crisis. Sometimes it is an unravelling.

Research does not support an inevitable midlife crisis. When people do describe one, it is often linked to divorce, illness, job loss or another major event rather than age alone. [7]

What can happen is slower. Roles, coping strategies and performances that once kept life moving begin to feel too restrictive. They may still work on paper while quietly getting in the way of the woman you now want to be. [10] The We Do Not Care Club Goes Global goes further into why so many women are consciously putting those performances down.

The children may still empty the fridge and ask where the good scissors are. They just no longer need you in quite the same way. The quiet does not create the bigger question. It creates space for what has been percolating below the noise, probably for some time.

In one Australian study, many women reported better mood and wellbeing after the last child left home, although not everyone felt the same. [9] Relief and grief can coexist. A life audit does not mean leaving your marriage, buying a campervan or enrolling in ceramics by Friday. It may mean admitting that book club is the longest two hours of your month.

"Midlife is not a crisis. Midlife is an unraveling." — Brené Brown, researcher and author [10]

A Peek Behind the Curtain: When I went looking for a new self

"When I went looking for a new self…"

I wish I could tell you I opened a journal, discovered my purpose and emerged with a five-year plan. I did not.

My experience was less, "I do not feel like myself," and more, "I do not know who I even am anymore." It was a flat no-man's-land. Ask what I wanted to do or eat and I genuinely was not fussed.

I had kept functioning and showing up for my children. As they became more independent, a question rose in the quiet: what now? I was no longer the bright-eyed 21-year-old who arrived in Australia, but I was not done either.

So I tried things. Dancing and jumping off waterfalls were not accessible while illness and a wheelchair were part of my life, so I looked for what was. Pottery lasted three sessions. Album-making lasted a little longer. I redecorated the house, tried courses and kept noticing what held my attention.

Nothing arrived with a cinematic soundtrack and announced, "This is the new you." What returned were the old threads: curiosity, learning, creativity, people, nature, music, movement and the satisfaction of building something.

Ultimately, I am a creative. E-commerce gave me a business that could adapt when my health changed. SOMA Circle gave me the human connection I did not want to lose. SOMA became the place where those threads could meet.

That is what I hope for you too. Not a shiny new identity by next Tuesday. Just enough curiosity to notice what returns, and permission to follow one thread.

With warmth, Tarnia Mullan Founder, SOMA Wellness Co.

Does this land differently when you are doing it alone?

Sometimes. A good partner can offer shared plans, practical backup and someone who remembers the versions of you that came before.

But partnership is not proof of belonging, and living alone is not proof of loneliness. A woman can feel deeply alone inside a relationship. She can also build a rich, connected life while single.

The more useful question is: where am I known, supported and able to be fully myself? A 2024 study of solo-living adults in midlife found that people with diverse, active networks were less lonely than those with restricted networks. [12] If solitude and loneliness feel tangled together for you specifically, Why Do I Want to Be Alone, but Feel Lonely? unpacks the midlife paradox of both being true at once.

A life audit rarely arrives as one brave decision. More often, you try something, lose interest, laugh at yourself and try something else. Losing interest is useful information. Preference often returns through trial and error.

Follow the thread, not the old version of you

The answer is not to recreate the woman you were at 25. Your body, responsibilities and options may be different now. Do not begin with, 'What is my purpose?' That is too much pressure for a Tuesday. Begin smaller. What makes you lean forward? What do you keep reading about? Which conversation gives you energy instead of taking it? Look for the thread.

A small place to start. This week, write down one thing you miss and one thing you do not miss. Do not solve either. Both are information.

The midlife self-audit. This is not another personal-development worksheet to finish before dinner. Choose the one question that makes something inside you tighten, soften or go very quiet:

What has ended, changed or become impossible for me to ignore?
Which part of me has survived every version of my life?
Who do I want beside me, and what do I want to experience, contribute or create next in this life?

When this needs more than a life audit

Feeling unlike yourself is not a diagnosis. Low mood, loss of interest, fatigue, poor concentration and reduced motivation can also be signs of depression, and the risk is higher during perimenopause for some women. [1][2]

There is an important difference between asking, 'What is this next chapter for?' and feeling that you do not want to be alive. The first is a question about meaning. The second needs immediate support.

See your GP when symptoms last more than two weeks, are worsening or are affecting work, relationships, sleep or daily life. A GP can consider menopause, mental health, medicines and other causes such as thyroid problems or low iron. [1]

A menopause-informed GP can assess symptoms and other causes. A psychologist or counsellor can help with grief, identity and changing roles. Spiritual or community support may matter when the questions are about faith, death or meaning.

If brain fog or cognitive fear is the loudest part, What's Going On With My Brain? takes that concern seriously without treating one blank moment as a verdict on your future.

Australian and New Zealand support: Healthdirect Australia: Mental health and menopause. · Australasian Menopause Society practitioner directory. · Australian Psychological Society: Find a Psychologist. · Lifeline Australia: 13 11 14. · Beyond Blue: 1300 22 4636. · New Zealand: call or text 1737.

A ritual cannot answer the question. It can make room for it.

SOMA is not a treatment for identity change, grief, depression or perimenopause. It belongs in the support layer around the day because it is hard to hear your own preferences when every part of the day belongs to someone else.

The SOMA Duo is a morning and evening botanical ritual, not a new identity in a cup. The point is the pause: a repeated cue at the edges of the day that says, for a few minutes, I am here too.

The other side is not empty. It is unwritten.

You may not find one finished new self waiting at the end of menopause. You may let go of an old job, friendship, relationship, version of your body or something you once loved doing, then slowly begin choosing again.

The first signs may be small. You choose the restaurant. You pick up a book and lose an hour. You say no without preparing a full legal defence. You hear yourself laugh and recognise the sound.

You do not need to know who you are becoming while you are still letting go of who you were. Start smaller. Tonight, when someone asks what you want for dinner, notice whether an answer appears. Thai. Quiet. A walk. Music. The first thread back may simply sound like: actually, I know what I want.

SOMA Circle — a place to imagine the next chapter with other women. You do not need a polished answer about who you are becoming. Come for honest midlife conversation, practical nervous-system support and the relief of hearing another woman say, 'me too.' → Join SOMA Circle

Share this article. Send this to the woman whose life still looks full, but who has quietly started wondering where she went. Sometimes recognition is the first thread back.

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