Perimenopause and Public Speaking: How to Present With Confidence
Perimenopause can make presenting and public speaking feel daunting. Learn practical strategies to manage brain fog, hot flashes, and anxiety in front of an audience.
Why Presenting Can Feel Harder During Perimenopause
Standing up to present was already high-stakes. Add in the possibility of a hot flash mid-sentence, forgetting your thread, or feeling a wave of anxiety as you approach the podium, and it is no wonder many women dread it. Perimenopause does not end your ability to present well. It does mean you need to adjust how you prepare and how you manage your body on the day.
Prepare Differently Than You Used To
If you once relied on knowing your material well enough to wing it, now is the time to have more structured notes. Bullet-pointed speaker notes rather than full scripts give you a safety net without making you sound like you are reading. Rehearse out loud at least twice, not just in your head. Familiarity with your own material reduces cognitive load on the day, which means more mental bandwidth to deal with anything unexpected.
Managing Hot Flashes During a Presentation
Wear layers so you can remove something without it looking odd. Choose breathable fabrics and avoid synthetic blends. If a hot flash starts, slow your pace slightly and take a deliberate sip of water. Most audiences cannot tell the difference between a brief pause for emphasis and a pause to collect yourself. Knowing you have this plan in place reduces the anticipatory anxiety that often makes hot flashes worse.
Handling Anxiety and Nerves
Perimenopause can heighten general anxiety, and public speaking anxiety can spike alongside it. Before you go on, slow your breathing intentionally. Box breathing works well: inhale for four counts, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four. Do this three or four times backstage or in a quiet moment beforehand. It activates the parasympathetic nervous system and physically reduces the stress response, not just as a distraction, but physiologically.
Work With the Audience, Not Against Your Nerves
A conversational tone is more forgiving than a formal one if you lose your thread. Asking a brief question of the audience, or pausing to let a point land, gives you a moment to reorient. If you do lose your place, say calmly that you want to make sure you cover this well, glance at your notes, and continue. Audiences are almost never as aware of your internal experience as you think they are.
Build Confidence Through Repetition
Confidence in presenting is built through experience, not through waiting until everything feels perfect. Take lower-stakes opportunities to speak: team meetings, smaller group presentations, casual updates. Each one builds familiarity with managing symptoms in a public setting. Tracking symptom patterns with the PeriPlan app can also help you identify which days tend to feel clearer, so you can schedule high-stakes presentations during your better windows when possible.
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