Over these past few weeks, I sat down with two groups of women in their late 30s and 40s. Technically, we were there to talk about careers, business, and leadership. But that’s not what we talked about. Instead, we found ourselves circling the same truth over and over again:
“I feel like I’m unraveling.”
Memory slipping.
Focus scattered.
Exhausted even though they’re sleeping.
Work, that something they could once do with their eyes closed now feels impossible. None of them expected perimenopause to show up in a networking event. And yet… there it was, sitting in the middle of the room with us. What struck me was how many of them wondered if it was burnout. And how many wondered if it was perimenopause. And how many whispered, “What if it’s both?” Because here’s the hard part, career burnout and perimenopause can look almost identical. And in the overlap, it’s easy to lose yourself.
Where burnout and perimenopause blur
Cognitive fog
Hormonal shifts can make your brain feel thick and uncooperative.
Burnout can do the same — stress drains the part of you that normally feels sharp.
Exhaustion that doesn’t lift
Perimenopause brings night sweats, disrupted sleep, and the kind of tired that lives in your bones. Burnout brings an emotional emptiness that no nap touches.
Irritability and emotional swings
Hormones can amplify everything. Burnout can flatten everything. Either way, you don’t feel like yourself.
Questioning your purpose
Burnout makes you ask if you’re in the wrong job. Perimenopause makes you ask if something deeper is shifting. Sometimes the questions blend together into one big… “What is happening to me?”
So how do you tell what’s really going on?
A few gentle checks:
✔️ Has this been a slow drift away from your career… or does it feel like your whole body and brain have changed?
✔️ Do you feel even a little restored after a real break (a real one — no phone, no performing)… or does the exhaustion follow you everywhere?
✔️ Are there new physical symptoms showing up alongside the emotional ones — irregular periods, hot flashes, joint pain, sleep changes?
Sometimes the answer is clear. Sometimes it’s tangled. And sometimes, the truth is that you are standing in the middle of more than one life transition at the same time — which is normal, human, and far more common than we talk about.
You don’t have to figure it out alone.
A small next step
If you’re not sure what’s burnout, what’s perimenopause, or what’s simply being a human in a demanding world… tracking your symptoms gently and honestly can help you see the patterns.
I created a free Menopause Clarity Journal for exactly this.
It helps you gather everything in one place so you can start making sense of it.
You can download it here: