Licensed clinical psychologist specializing in women's health
A clinical psychologist of more than 20 years who turned toward perimenopause after going through it herself and finding almost no support on either the medical or mental health side.
In this conversation
Tera Lensegrav-Benson is a licensed clinical psychologist with more than 20 years of experience working with women navigating anxiety, OCD, chronic illness, parenting, and perimenopause. She earned her doctorate in Clinical, Counseling, and School Psychology from Utah State University with specialized training in health psychology, and she serves as adjunct faculty in the university's Department of Psychology. She provides telehealth therapy across 43 PSYPACT states and writes and teaches about the emotional side of midlife hormonal change.
Her focus on perimenopause began personally. When she started experiencing symptoms, she found few resources on either the medical or the mental health side, and reasoned that if a women's health mental health provider had not been trained in this, few others had either. That gap sent her toward more education and reading. Her practice integrates evidence-based therapy with neuroscience-informed and mind-body approaches, including biofeedback, and she also works with health anxiety, medical trauma, and the psychological weight of ongoing health conditions.
With Bree Allred, she talked through why so many women stop feeling like themselves in perimenopause: anxiety that appears or changes quality, the 3:00 a.m. wake-up and the cortisol and estrogen relationship behind it, brain fog and the fear attached to it, and nervous system regulation through mindfulness, movement, and biofeedback. They also discussed body image, intimacy changes, and why she encourages women to seek support before reaching a crisis point.
EP. 18 · Nov 12, 2026
Psychologist Tera Lensegrav-Benson explains perimenopause anxiety, 3 a.m. wake-ups, brain fog, and nervous system tools that can ease the transition.
Watch, listen, and read the episodeA few grounded takeaways from Tera’s conversation with Bree.
Lensegrav-Benson has seen this repeatedly, sometimes attached to specific activities like driving or hiking near an edge. As she put it, hormones are involved and psychology is involved, and working with both can be the solution.
Estrogen and cortisol work together, so as estrogen fluctuates the cortisol rise meant to wake you for the day can arrive hours early. Dipping progesterone also makes calming pathways harder to hold onto at night.
Lensegrav-Benson often works first with the fear beneath word-finding trouble and lost focus, framing this as a remodeling time for the brain rather than evidence of lost intellect or early dementia.
Modern life keeps the sympathetic branch switched on. She describes that flexibility as a learnable skill, built through mindfulness training, physical activity, and biofeedback that turns internal states into visible data.
She encourages women to notice poor sleep, new irritability, rising anxiety, or a dipping mood early, and to approach this transition preventatively rather than waiting until demand far exceeds reserves.
Explore more guest features or hear the full episode with Tera Lensegrav-Benson.
