Things came to a head on tour, where her stage fright went into overdrive and she suffered “just terrible, terrible anxiety”.
“I become sensitive to sound, so it feels like you’re screaming at me if you’re talking normally,” she says. “I can’t process questions very well. I act twitchy and weird, and it seemed to get worse with perimenopause.”
She says her behaviour became a “nightmare” for her team. Pressed for an example, she explains: “If you asked me whether I wanted still or sparkling water, I’d say, ‘That’s a question, and I can’t answer questions right now’.
“How diva is that?”
Well, it’s not exactly Mariah Carey demanding baskets of puppies and forbidding eye contact, but Imbruglia was shaken up.
The day after one concert, she told her co-writers David Sneddon and Anu Pillai, “Guys, I think I’m going to have to quit my job because I can’t cope with how I’m treating people before the show.”
They helped to talk her down, putting her fight-or-flight instincts into context.
“What they helped me realise is that I was trying to stop the behaviour with willpower, and if I just relaxed into it and said to myself, ‘You know, you’re about to perform in front of a lot of people, it’s natural that you’re nervous’, maybe I wouldn’t be resisting it as much.”
The impromptu therapy session inspired a new song, Upside Down, external – but Imbruglia is understandably frustrated that perimenopause isn’t more widely understood, saying many women are rejected by their GP when they seek HRT treatment.
“My mum never talked to me about it,” she reflects, “but looking back, I know she had a really bad one.
“Her anxiety was off the charts, too, and I have a lot more compassion now, because she had four kids. I’ve only got one.”
