Hi,
I'm Tania Alfersi and I'd love to help you have a smoother journey through midlife change.
Let's look at perimenopause,
Menopause and mental health.
Many women experience a level of emotional turmoil during perimenopause and menopause.
Some find themselves facing intense mental health challenges for the first time.
The dominant narrative around midlife change suggests that increased rates of depression,
Anxiety,
Panic attacks and more are caused by changes in a woman's hormones.
Yet through my work with women in perimenopause and menopause,
I've witnessed women's mental
Health challenges fall away without them needing to fix their hormones or another
Supposed chemical imbalance.
I know the dominant narrative is untrue.
Deep and lasting inner peace of mind is reached through understanding the human experience.
No pharmaceutical product can deliver that understanding.
If mental health challenges in midlife change were caused by hormones,
We would see a correlation
Between levels of hormones and mental health.
But there is no such correlation.
Women can have the same fluctuations in hormones but experience very different
Levels of well-being.
The hormones are not the variable we should be measuring.
Instead,
We should focus on our state of mind and our awareness of our innate mental health.
While hormone levels do not determine our mental health,
Hormone fluctuations do create a sensitive
Time.
Women journey through sensitive times during adolescence,
Pregnancy,
Postpartum and during
Midlife change.
If our lives are out of balance at these times,
We can quickly experience intense
Feelings and symptoms.
Feelings and symptoms are the only way that the body can alert us and wake
Us up to changes that we need to make in our emotional and physical lives.
Perhaps we need
To examine stress,
Diet,
Movement,
Slowing down,
Sleep,
Exposure to sunlight and other lifestyle
Factors.
If we carry perceived trauma through perimenopause and menopause,
If we live with
A misunderstanding of how we can innocently create stress and let it snowball into chronic distress,
Then we may well experience a drop in our sense of well-being.
Some women claim that taking HRT
Has helped them feel more emotionally stable.
Since no studies have succeeded to confirm a causal
Relationship between hormone levels and mental health,
We can assume that since HRT sometimes
Helps reduce night sweats and hot flushes,
Which can interfere with a woman's sleep and day-to-day
Activity,
Perhaps better sleep and reduced stress from fewer night sweats and hot flushes are
Causing some women to feel better in general.
It's dangerous,
However,
To make false claims about
Hormones,
Mental health and HRT.
Such claims wrongly forecast by logically determined doom and gloom
For women who are in perimenopause and menopause.
The majority of women don't go on HRT.
There are
Women who choose to journey through perimenopause and menopause naturally.
There are also women
Who can't take HRT because of the side effects or because of their personal or family medical
History.
When claims are made in the media that the occurrence of mental instability is due to
Hormonal changes,
It can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Oh,
I must be depressed because of my
Crazy hormones,
And if I can't take HRT,
There's no way out.
Can you see how that can lead to
Disaster?
So how have so many become convinced that it's our hormones that create mental health
Challenges?
Is the female body innately designed to throw us into ill health?
The womb was once
Considered to have the ability to wander,
Just like a living thing inside a living thing.
According
To some ancient Greek writers,
Whose influence continued over centuries,
Just like an animal
With a mind of its own,
The womb could supposedly travel through your body,
Interfering with organs,
And cause,
Among other maladies,
Female hysteria.
Although the word hysteria derived from hyster,
The Greek word for womb,
Hysteria was an umbrella term for a wide range of symptoms and behaviors
Labeled as abnormal.
It wasn't until the 18th century that medicine associated hysteria
With the workings of the brain rather than of the womb,
And made the claim that men could
Experience it too.
In the first half of the 20th century,
A bout of hysteria could swiftly get you
Sectioned in an asylum,
Where you would likely meet many other post-menopausal women.
But today,
Who needs costly asylums when women can be offered such a wide range of medicines to supposedly
Restore their sanity?
The modern woman is no longer afflicted by a wandering womb animal within.
Instead,
She has her hormones that apparently behave with a similar spirit of their own.
Although a woman's body is intelligent enough to allow her heart to beat,
Her lungs to inhale
And exhale,
Her eyes to blink,
Her gut to digest food,
And so much more,
Her female hormones,
We are told,
Act as if they are a living thing inside a living thing,
On their own crazy path.
Can you see how we have come full circle?
The ancient and persistent mistrust of women's bodies
Keeps the false crazy hormone story alive.
In turn,
The story drives the profits of a multi-billion
Dollar hormone industry and a growing number of private menopause clinics.
If we recognize that
Women's hormones can't actually wander and disconnect themselves from the body's divine
Intelligence,
And if we placed our trust in the magnificence of the female body,
We would
Understand what is actually happening to women in perimenopause and menopause.
We would become aware
Of the imbalances that we have innocently created in our lives.
We would see that the discomforts
That we experience arise from the chaos that we surround ourselves with when we fall off the
Harmony of nature's path.
When challenges on the emotional and physical level appear during our
Life cycles,
Women don't need to go it alone.
Support and compassion for women in perimenopause
And menopause can ease our journeys,
And discovering that the female body holds innate
Brilliance that can guide us during these sensitive years is transformative indeed.
