If you're Gen X and you're sitting across from me, there's a good chance something else is happening in your body while we're working through what's happening in your mind. Gen X — born between 1965 and 1980 — is now somewhere between 46 and 61 years old. That means almost every Gen X woman walking into my office today is perimenopausal, menopausal, or postmenopausal. Not some of you. Nearly all of you.

And yet this piece of the picture so often gets left out of the room. Here's what I see when it isn't.

The link between estrogen and anxiety is real, even if it doesn't get talked about enough. Whether your anxiety is tied to your cycle, perimenopause, or you're wondering if hormone therapy could help, know that what you're feeling has an explanation. Hormone therapy helps some women, but it's not necessarily going to provide a complete fix on its own, anxiety usually responds best to a broader approach. There are real ways to deal with it, you don't have to just push through it.

Hormone therapy can address the physical side of menopause, but midlife often brings a bigger question too, what's next. Here's how therapy can help you navigate this chapter.

Ever catch yourself reacting in a way you'd rather not, and think, why do I keep doing that? Chances are, it's not random. Our nervous system has a handful of go-to responses, fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, that we start using early in life, often before we even have words for what we're feeling. The tricky part is, these responses don't retire when we grow up, they just get more sophisticated.

Hormone therapy can ease the physical symptoms of menopause, but many women find themselves asking a bigger question underneath, why doesn't this feel like enough? Here's where therapy can help.