Countryfile presenter and broadcasting powerhouse Anita Rani took to Instagram during a morning run - her reliable reset button for mental health - to drop the glossy celebrity persona and share a strikingly candid video with her followers.
Wearing a hoodie and a cap, she looked straight into the camera and opened with a direct admission: "Hello gang. I wanted to share something deeply personal with you, which I don't often do, so this in itself is weird. I have been experiencing something that I have never in my life experienced before, and it has taken the wind out of my sails, actually."
© Getty ImagesFor millions of women navigating the tumultuous waters of perimenopause and menopause, her words resonated with terrifying precision.
She continued: "I am suffering crippling anxiety. I am overwhelmed, I'm unsure. And for somebody who has dealt with life like this, with the power of a first-born Indian daughter who bosses life, also just copes—copes! I'm fucking great at it—this is like, 'what the hell is going on?' Every mechanism I have in place to just deal with stuff that's just come easily for way over 40 years to me is crumbling beneath my feet."
Sound familiar? Most of us have spent decades perfecting the art of spinning plates: managing demanding careers, organising households, caring for growing children and ageing parents, and putting everyone else’s emotional needs ahead of our own. We are the doers and the fixers.
Then midlife hormonal shifts arrive, quietly pulling the rug out from under our feet.
Menopause isn't just about hot flushes or brain fog; it's often the sudden, inexplicable onset of crippling anxiety that erodes decades of hard-won confidence overnight.
In the middle of her run, Anita posed the exact existential question that so many women wrestle with in doctors' surgeries and late-night internal monologues:
"Obviously it's hormones, but here's the thing... Do I take hormones or do I feel the feels? Am I supposed to feel this? Am I supposed to go, 'Oh, okay, something is naturally going: well, we're not tolerating bullshit anymore. We're not taking that from that person. Maybe I don't need to spin all the plates at once?' Is that what I'm supposed to do? Maybe I'm meant to feel my feelings."
She went on to describe a physical symptom that felt entirely foreign to her lifetime of stoicism: "Also, I get teary! I've never got teary. I've been brought up to just boss and do and feel for other people, but not for myself."
When a woman whose entire life has been defined by strength starts tearing up on a morning jog, it isn' Manuel or a sign of weakness. It's a sign that her emotional bank account has been running on empty for far too long.
© Getty ImagesPerhaps midlife anxiety and emotion aren't just biological glitches to be fixed - they're our bodies demanding a complete renegotiation of how much pressure we are willing to carry.
Towards the end of her message, Anita got to the heart of why she felt compelled to record her thoughts: "And so right now, we're in a situation, gang. Why am I telling you this? Because I just don't think Asian women talk about it. I don't think women talk about it, but brown women, we don't talk about shit, do we? So that's why I'm telling you. Can anyone else relate? Send me your tips."
Anita Rani gave voice to what millions of women experience when the midlife hormonal shift takes hold.
Dr. Louise Newson's toolbox for a racing mind
Menopause expert Dr. Louise Newson recently spoke to HELLO! about her project Balance: A Perimenopause Journey, sharing how she manages her own symptoms when midlife anxiety and overthinking take over.
To tame a racing mind and sudden anxiety spikes, Dr. Newson advocates for simple, powerful tools:
- Control Your Breathing: "I'm very into breath work - breathing is one of the few things you can control and it can help with anxiety and lots more so it's really important," she notes.
- Ditch the Rules of Meditation: If anxiety keeps you up at night, don't overcomplicate it. Dr. Newson shares: "My brain is quite busy, whether it is good or bad stuff, and I can wake up at 3am worrying. So I always meditate myself to sleep which is amazing... I read a few books, but then I got so worried I wasn't doing it right that I would end up worrying about that and then I could never meditate. So I just sort of taught myself."
- Low-Barrier Daily Habits: Managing system overstimulation doesn't require a total life overhaul. Simple shifts - like getting outside for fresh air and swapping morning coffee for hot water with lemon - can help soothe a hyper-reactive nervous system.
If you are sitting there today feeling overwhelmed, teary, or wondering why your usual resilience has abandoned ship, remember this: you aren't failing. Whether you choose HRT, targeted breathwork, low-barrier habit changes, or simply step back to "feel the feels," doing it with a little self-compassion might just be the best medicine of all.
