Judy Greer feared she was showing signs of mental illness before learning she was going through what every woman experiences, but she was shocked at the lack of knowledge about her condition.
The 13 Going on 30 actress appeared on Tuesday’s episode of Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown, where she spoke out about perimenopause. The Mayo Clinic defines the term as “the time during which your body makes the natural transition to menopause, marking the end of the reproductive years.”
Greer told host Mayim Bialik that she wasn’t herself and felt like “everything was crazy.”
“I felt I had all these symptoms, and I didn’t know what they were. One of them was brain fog, not being able to be good at the same things I used to be good at,” she shared. “I just thought I was going through depression, actually. Like I thought that maybe I was starting to, like, toe-dip into mental illness.”
The 49-year-old also said she suddenly lacked “confidence” in the workplace and would struggle to remember “the word that I wanted to say.” As a result, she decided “not to engage in those conversations anymore,” which made her “sad.”
“I like to socialize at work, and I like to talk to people, and I like to make friends with the crew and all the people around, and so then if I’m limiting that because I’m afraid of just forgetting the word for ‘vacuum,’ that s****.”
Newsweek reached out to Greer’s representative via email for comment.
The Arrested Development actress said that before learning her symptoms were from perimenopause, her general practitioner recommended she take a “low dose of Prozac.”
Prozac, the brand name for Fluoxetine, is an antidepressant medication.
“I would say, ‘I’m feeling really sad,’ and my sweet GP, who I love—and I’ve been seeing him forever—he was like, ‘Well maybe we could do a low dose of Prozac,’ and I was like, ‘Ooh, am I that sad?'”
She added that when she told her gynecologist she felt “crazy,” she recommended she “get back on the pill,” seemingly suggesting she should take birth control.
“It is s****y that we go through this, that our medical practitioners that we see—whether it’s like gynecologists, OBGYNs, GPs—no one is educated in this,” Greer told listeners.
The Michigan native hinted she’s now taking hormones for perimenopause and said they’re “kick a**.”
“If you can take them, highly recommend,” she said.
Bialik, who is also 49, said she wished “someone would have told me a lot earlier” about perimenopause.
“There’s going to be 10 years of your life that’s just like kind of a c***shoot. Every organ system might just do something completely insane, and you will hate yourself for everything happening on the daily,” The Big Bang Theory star said. “No one told me these 10 years were coming.”
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