Not so long ago, Paula Kennedy was a vice-principal at a school in London, enjoying the buzz of the classroom and the challenges of management.

In September, she will return to school as a part-time teacher, the symptoms of the menopause having forced her to step back from a role she loved.

“By the time I hit my 40s I was back in full-time work and was working in leadership positions in schools … I had experience of teaching and I had life experience, which made me a good manager,” she said. “Then suddenly I thought: ‘I can’t do this.’”

“My confidence just completely went. Whereas before I would have stuck up for myself and been more assertive, I felt unable to. Nobody said: ‘You’re doing a bad job,’ the pressure was coming from me. I couldn’t get any perspective.”

Q&A What is the menopause and how does it affect women? Show The menopause is a natural part of ageing and usually occurs between 45 and 55 years of age after levels of the hormone oestrogen have declined to the point where ovulation and menstruation stop. It is defined as a woman going 12 months without a period. In the UK, the average age for a woman to reach the menopause is 52. However, about one in 100 women have their menopause before the age of 40. Common symptoms can include hot flushes, night sweats, vaginal dryness and discomfort during sex, a reduced sex drive, low moods or anxiety and difficulty sleeping. Memory and concentration can also be affected. Symptoms can begin months or years before periods stop – this time is called the perimenopause – and can last around four years after the last period. However, some women have them for much longer, with 10% experiencing symptoms for up to 12 years. About 25% of women experience such severe symptoms that they can be diagnosed with mental health problems. The principal treatment is hormone replacement therapy, which can control symptoms well, but does increase the chances of breast and ovarian cancer.

Instead of walking the corridors with confidence, she said she would sometimes find herself feeling tearful. “That’s not a good look. Nobody wants to look in and see a deputy head crying in her office.”

Kennedy, who plans to start an MA in counselling, said she hoped to support other women going through the same thing.

Women such as Lisa Williams, from Dalton, Cumbria. After spending 30 years working in high-pressure jobs, Williams is signed off sick as a result of symptoms of the perimenopause, the time leading up to when a woman’s periods stop.

‘I want people to know’

“When I was about 45 I started to feel really stressed with work – I felt quite anxious and overwhelmed by it,” she said. “I put it down to workplace stress. There were a lot of changes: I was working in a new team, then my manager went off sick and was replaced, then the replacement went off sick. They were stressed and I thought I was too.”

She was signed off for a couple of months, and returned on a reduced basis, working alongside the person who had been covering for her.

“I did not even have half of my old job to do but I still felt overwhelmed,” she said. “I had always been very good at organising things but I couldn’t organise myself. My memory had gone and I felt confused.”

Worried she had dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, Williams saw several GPs. Antidepressants were recommended, but she did not feel depressed.

Williams eventually realised what the issue was after finding a group of women sharing their symptoms online. She and her husband decided to pay for private doctor, who prescribed hormone replacement therapy. This solved some of the symptoms but has not helped with the feeling of being overwhelmed.

“I’m the first in my workforce to say that I’m off because of the menopause – that’s what it says on my sick note. As much as it was embarrassing, I want people to know what has happened.”

Williams’s employer has been understanding and is trying to identify a new role for her, while her managing director responded to a letter she wrote by asking her to join a steering group to work out how things could be improved.

However, Williams is worried other managers will not want her and the couple are moving house to reduce their costs in case Lisa is unable to work as much in future. “I miss what I used to be like,” she said.

‘I woke up a completely different person’

Dozens of other women got in touch with the Guardian about their menopause experiences, the vast majority requesting anonymity about their cases in a sign that it is still considered a social taboo.

One, who experienced the menopause in her 40s after an operation, is facing disciplinary action for her work attendance. She said she was warned to expect some symptoms, but the impact on her health and her work in a hospital had been devastating.

“I wasn’t prepared for any of it. I was told I would go into surgical menopause within days or weeks of the operation,” she said. “I woke up one morning about five weeks later a completely different person. I looked in the mirror – I felt that different. All of the night sweats, anxiety, I was crying – I couldn’t stop crying.”

This was during her time off to recover from the operation, but she was still suffering when she returned to work.

“Since I went back I’ve felt pressure to be functioning at 120%. I’ve tried to work at the same level as everybody else, and I was before, but I’ve been unable to do so.”

She said her employers knew she had been going through the menopause but had done little to support her.

“My boss’s response was to move my desk to the window and give me a fan … Sometimes when I was having a hot flush I’d need 10 or 15 minutes before I could face anyone. Going out on the wards was awful – I’d be dripping with sweat, I couldn’t go and see patients like that.”

She has faced two attendance panels, one for time off taken for a gallbladder operation, and is on probation.

She has just gone part time and she and her husband plan to sell their house to reduce their outgoings.

“I love my job; I really enjoy what I do. I have lost everything because of this. It’s been made really clear to me that I can’t move up,” she said. “Before, I was a rising star, within a year it’s gone because of these symptoms.”

Another woman told how she was still suffering from the fallout of resigning from her job 15 years ago.

The woman, who worked as a nurse in Scotland, said the NHS made no adjustments for the physical and medical effects of her menopause and disciplined her because she was forced to take time off sick.

“When I asked for shifts to be changed I was treated with contempt – it was almost as if I wasn’t capable of doing the job any more,” she said. “It was as if I was slacking … There was no sympathy. The message was to get on with it, or you knew what you could do.”

In their own words

The GP made me cry with his kindness

One night, I woke up at exactly 4am boiling hot. It was just as if my internal thermostat had broken, in an instant. From then on, for the next six years the heat would come over me with no warning. Like a whoosh, like a flare, like a furnace. Slowly, confusingly, I stopped feeling like ‘myself’. I couldn’t pin it down or put it into words, just a feeling that I was outside of myself or just not in touch with my old self. Then I put a layer of chunky fat on around my waist in almost no time at all. From then on I felt I had become old and (worst of all) invisible. I couldn’t work out what was real or imagined but I knew for sure that I really disliked my new self. Grumpy, short-tempered, anxious. The best GP I saw told me I was coping extremely well with a very difficult set of symptoms and made me cry with his kindness. I was never dismissed or belittled. I tried a mild tranquilliser (gave me tummy ache), HRT patches (brought back bleeding) and black cohosh (pointless). Then in a period of revelation and enlightenment, I joined the gym and upped the aerobic exercise. Over the next few weeks the flushes stopped, my mood lifted, I dropped a couple of pounds and the ‘old me’ gradually came back. Rachel, 59, Kent

I took early retirement

My main sense is of embarrassment, but I am most interested in the shame attached to it, which is a deeper emotion than simply embarrassment. Physically, the sleep disturbance has been the most debilitating, waking sometimes nine times a night with a rush of adrenalised dread or panic with no cause as such, making going back to sleep difficult. After 18 months of this I started low-dose HRT on the advice of my GP, which definitely has helped but has made the symptoms milder rather than non-existent. Working as a senior teacher, at school from 7am often until the same time at night, the fatigue was really hard to deal with and was coupled with short-term memory issues, especially with names. I felt increased panic through my day, too. Taking students on a trip I noticed how heightened my anxiety was even though I was doing things I had done 100 times before. For a number of reasons, but not least these, I took early retirement at 55 and returned to work part time in a teaching role in another school without all the weight of other responsibilities. Pippa Marriot, 57, Devon

I had an affair

Menopause is a long old process. It started about eight years ago when out of the blue I started getting unexplained surges in adrenaline at the most benign of situations. The thought would enter my head, say, to go and buy milk from the shop and I would get a massive surge of adrenaline. I thought I was losing my mind or suffering from some undiagnosed condition; it didn’t dawn on me that this could be the start of the big M. When that subsided, the periods went haywire. Heavy, light, late, early, you name it, it happened. The heavy ones were really not pretty, and often forced me to stay home for the first day or two because I would often leak through to my clothes. I hate the lack of control. Brain fog – I refuse to accept that one. I keep reading and thinking and writing and that seems to keep it at bay. Oh – I had an affair. And right after it ended (badly), I had my last period ever. I like to think it was my body’s last hurrah, its hormones scurrying about and making themselves known for a final time. I had never been so horny in my life. Have I mentioned thinning hair? I understand that oestrogen – or a lack of it – is to blame. I’m rudderless. I’m also more able to cope with stuff, definitely a bit wiser, less likely to topple at the first hurdle. I still want to live and love and have fun. I’m just having to fight a bit harder to get there. Caroline, 51, London

The ‘post-menopausal zest’