Ep 79 How Perimenopause Can Resurface Historical Emotional Wounds: Navigating Trauma in Midlife

[00:00:00] Meegan Care: Hey my friend, welcome to the podcast. How is your week going? I’ve been reflecting a little bit around all of those products that are marketed to us as menopausal women, because we know that our health is going through a change, our physiology is going through a change, and we want to alleviate those symptoms.

And I reckon it’s like, it’s important to look at all of those things. health claims that are provided online with some skepticism. Like, I think some skepticism is helpful. And even with HRT, which has been touted as the miracle cure for all things menopause, we also know that some women can’t tolerate it, for some women it gives them migraines, for some women it gives them terrible mood swings and depression.

Even if you’re on HRT, it can take a while for the hormones to settle into their correct rhythm and ratios, and you might need to work on that for a while. And the same goes with the natural products that are everywhere that we’ve seen. I’m sure some of them are really helpful.

I’m just a little cautious for myself about Because I spent so much money on all of that kind of stuff and so long researching, I really want to know that what I’m using will work, but what works for one person might not work for me. So it can be a little bit hit and miss. So I hope that this corner of our world on the podcast and through the work that I do.

Helps us to support you to be discerning around what you choose to bring into your life and utilise. Whether it’s, whether it’s supplements, body identical HRT, therapy, working with me, working with a trainer. That we Scratch underneath the surface of the marketing claims Ask the questions that we want to ask And also If we can, listen to our own gut Instinct Before we invest in things And also remembering that If you’ve using this supplement that’s meant to be amazing for menopause symptoms, it might work really well for you, for example, in early perimenopause.

But when you’re coming into later perimenopause, because of the change in your body’s hormones, you might actually need something different.

And because we get inundated with so many options and so many products,

it is challenging to sort through what is going to work for us. And I don’t have any quick answers. I’m not recommending one product over another. What I can do is tell you what has supported me and anybody else I talk to on the podcast. obviously talks about what supports them. Those are their personal preferences and you will have your own and your body will have its own unique makeup, whereby certain supplements or ways of supporting your physical body will work for you, perhaps, but not for me.

At the moment, that’s just the way it is. It is difficult, but I think if we You Don’t have an expectation that there’s going to be the one pill that we can take that is going to be the quick fix, because unfortunately it’s not out there. For me, Body Identical HRT has been really, really helpful for a lot of women that I talk to.

It’s been incredibly helpful. I’ve still had to work on my strength, my exercise. My beliefs, my mindset, my sleep,

and I’ve known friends that it has worked amazingly for and friends that it hasn’t worked so well for, for various reasons. So all this to say, if you’re being sold a quick fix miracle cure,

put your discerning glasses on and scratch below the surface a little bit. And This is not the topic of the podcast today.

So the topic of our conversation this week on the podcast is around the re emergence and effects of trauma in perimenopause, menopause and midlife. So I just wanted to say at the beginning that this is what we’re going to be talking about So that you can keep yourself safe. I’m not going to be mentioning specific traumas or events other than brushing gently over my own trauma very lightly. I’m not going into any any details But I want you to if you’re a person that has experienced trauma that you keep yourself safe.

This is a very helpful episode if you’re in midlife and you have early life trauma. But I just want to give you that little heads up before we begin. And why I’m talking about this on the podcast today is because I’ve had a few conversations with women where they’ve reflected on That going through perimenopause, symptoms of trauma, as well as the content and the memories of trauma, have come much more to the surface, so they’ve been much more present for them, maybe they’ve had memories, they’ve been taken back to those difficult, dysregulated reactions that they had, post trauma, and I’ve had a lot of training in trauma very early on in my training.

 So much of it was around working with trauma. And then I’ve worked with a lot of trauma over the last couple of decades. And of course, I’ve had my own experience of early childhood trauma. Uh, sexual abuse trauma as a teenager.

I think there’s no question that trauma goes along with any kind of chronic illness. So with Crohn’s disease. So I’ve had to work through my own, and am working through my own responses, and my own nervous system well being in regards to my own personal trauma. And so I think that’s why this topic really, really interested me.

was because I was thinking about myself earlier on in perimenopause as to whether old trauma did indeed come to the surface more or reactions and relationships in life that because I understand my past and I’ve done all that psychotherapy on it I understand that it is linked with very early life trauma.

Those reactions started to get the volume turned up on them a little bit more in perimenopause. And so I took a look around to see, is there research on this? Is this a common experience? Well, it is a common experience for a number of women, I’ve read about it, I’ve heard about it from them, I’ve talked about it with women, I’ve had my own experience.

And so I wanted to dig a little deeper because I think it could be really helpful if you are struggling emotionally, psychologically, mentally, to have that little heads up around what if.

Yes, you’re in perimenopausal menopause. Yes, this is very hormonally based. Our emotions, our psychology goes through quite a wobble through this transition. But what if through this wobble, some historical trauma is somehow being scratched at or becomes more raw and to the surface? than what it was. And so, you might be interested to find out, like, what that looks like, why that might even happen.

And so I did a little research for us.

So we know that in perimenopause and early postmenopause, we’ve got lowering of sex hormones, oestrogen, progesterone,

and testosterone. And then you’ve also got the wild fluctuations, particularly of estrogen in perimenopause, a little bit in early postmenopause. And because of that, your nervous system becomes more sympathetic dominant. So you’ve got the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system and the sympathetic branch of the nervous system.

The parasympathetic branch of the nervous system is our rest, digest, relaxed, calm. The sympathetic branch of the nervous system is flight, fight, freeze. That becomes more activated in perimenopause, because Estrogen, progesterone, they’re supportive of calming, of soothing inside our body, in our biology.

There’s less of them, they’re up and down, it’s natural that our nervous system gets kicked into more fight and flight, more of a sympathetic response. And so there’s research that suggests that we have sympathetic dominance in perimenopause.

So when we have sympathetic dominance, past traumas can have the volume turned up on them. So there’s a more of an intensity of symptoms that may in part or wholly be caused by those past traumas, right? So that’s the sort of, the mechanism. It’s not very well studied, but there’s a few studies that I could look at.

And the studies, there’s a study in the Journal of Women’s Health found that women who experienced trauma in their earlier years were more likely to have severe menopausal symptoms, and that can include anxiety, depression, and even increased hot flushes.

In that research, the data was pointing much more towards early life trauma, and childhood trauma. adolescent trauma, rather than trauma that happened in our adult years, and there’s loads of research around early life trauma and um, negative health outcomes as an adult, and when I look at my own life certainly a lot of my experience of Crohn’s disease was connected to early life trauma.

A few different kinds of traumas, but they happen very early on.

So, if you’ve had trauma in your early life, you’re in perimenopause now, if you’re having a really hard time emotionally, psychologically, mentally, definitely do all those things. that you need to do to support your body, to support your hormonal change in this transition, which by the way, when we’re out the other side, it gets a lot better.

So it’s just about bridging over and supporting ourselves through this time. So do all the things that you need to do, and also understand that for some of us, Our early life trauma might start to surface some more, and I’ll talk about how we can manage that, deal with that, integrate that, heal that, put it where it bloody well belongs, in a little bit.

But I want to add in another piece here, which, which I think potentially inflames the difficulty of experiencing this when we go into perimenopause. One of those is that, you know, it’s a, it’s a sad fact of life that women’s emotional responses are not always treated with the seriousness that we deserve.

We’re ignored, we’re condescended to, and this can happen post trauma. It does happen post trauma, probably less now, than it did a few decades ago,

but it still happens. And then if some of the initial symptoms and difficulties from, from trauma re emerge in perimenopause, and then you get that similar response of being condescended to, being dismissed, the, inferences that it’s all in your head,

then you can see how that can exacerbate our trauma symptoms. Because a lot of what comes with our experience of trauma symptoms is, it was my fault, it is my fault, I shouldn’t be experiencing this, I’m making this up, this is all in my head. Those are some of the experiences that we have from trauma. How our brain tries to manage itself.

So it’s really, really important that when we reach out for help, try and get help, talk to a professional, that our experience is heard and validated. Even this can make such a difference to what’s going on, on our internal psychology. And you absolutely deserve to have that validation.

So, what we might find is It’s really difficult to untangle what is caused by hormones, what is caused by maybe my past trauma, what is a mix of both. And so the same steps that I lay out in my course I would suggest here, and that is get the support for your physical body that you need to get on board.

Whether you are mainstream medicine, complementary medicine, or a mixture of both. Get that started. And then, for example, if you start taking a course of herbal medicine while you’re in perimenopause. And it, it hits some of the pointers, it hits some of the marks really well. but you’ve still got all the psychological and mental and emotional suffering going on, then that’s when we need to seek more help.

And that more help might come in the form of, for example, body identical HRT. And that might be enough. Or it might not be enough. You might still have some of that past trauma material creeping through. You might have some of the nervous system dysregulation. You might have some of the obsessive or intrusive thoughts occurring, still.

Even though you’re doing everything that you can do for your diet, your exercise, your rest, and supporting the biochemical function of your body. And when that’s happening We know that we need to go a little deeper. And that little deeper might be some form of therapy, with someone like me, a psychotherapist, a very skilled body worker, that is not going to bypass the truth of your reality.

And I would suggest that, Somebody who has gone through menopause or at least has some experience of menopause make the best practitioners and therapists to see, in my opinion. I know that for myself, until I went through the experience of perimenopause, menopause, postmenopause, I didn’t have a clear understanding of those different stages. And That’s normal, right? That’s life. We might understand it intellectually, we might have read some work around it, we might have studied it, but when you’ve gone through it, I think particularly with menopause, to understand, for example, the level of fatigue that can arise, the particular nuance of anxiety that arises, or the grief that re emerges, You don’t need your practitioner to have gone through the exact life experience that you’ve gone through, but I think it is helpful for them to understand the arc of menopause.

What I’ve seen for some, when that isn’t the case, and not all, there’s some that have an amazing grasp on the challenges of menopause, but some, if they haven’t gone through that experience, seem to

give the impression that this can all be fixed by Changing your mindset, right? That old adage, happiness is a choice. Don’t tell that to a menopausal woman. She’s likely to slap you around the face. And also, it’s entirely unhelpful. Because our mental, emotional, psychological well being is far more layered and complex than that.

We all know that.

I don’t think that Having said all this, I don’t think we need to be afraid or, or overly worried or feel like it’s all downhill and doom and gloom if you are noticing for yourself that there’s maybe some trauma responses or trauma memory or content that is sort of feels like it’s a little more close to the surface now that you’re in perimenopause.

Because what is the, the opportunity in this Is that because we are a bit more sympathetic dominant, we haven’t got that protection of estrogen and the calming hormones, then you get an opportunity to work through this stuff, to integrate it, to heal it in a different way. Because even though it wasn’t at the surface before.

It still would have been driving some of your decisions, expectations, and perceptions on life because that’s what unhealed trauma does. If it’s now come to the surface a little more, take this opportunity and do some healing work with it. It doesn’t need to take very long. It doesn’t need to be for years and years.

You find the, the right therapist at the right time and do little pockets of work and you will find yourself so much freer on the other side. Research shows that trauma, early life trauma particularly, negatively impacts our health and well being as an adult. So it makes absolute sense when our health and well being is under more stress and perimenopause, that early life trauma is going to turn the volume up on that a little more.

So why not take this opportunity? If that is the case, you might have one event, That was traumatic with a big T and the effects of that are starting to arise a little more in your life right now if you’re in perimenopause. Or you might have had a number of events of neglect, for example, as a young child and that is now showing up more to the fore, more to the front of your experience in perimenopause will now My friend is the most potent time for you to work with this.

For some women when this emerges they utilize both HRT and SSRI type medication and psychotherapy and that is a good basis for to get them back onto even ground again. And it’s absolutely nothing to be ashamed of, to feel bad about that we’re having this experience.

That stuff, that shame keeps us from reaching out for help, prevents us from integrating the effects of that trauma and moving on to the next stage of our life with vitality and confidence, feeling really empowered. It is possible for all of us. We just need different types of support along the way.

And if this is your experience and you want to know where to start and you don’t know where to start, just flick me a message. I’m really happy to have a, have a little conversation and figure out what is your next best step. I’ve had some women come on my course and that was all that they needed. to move through this next layer, to shift their perspective.

And then I know other women who, they need a little bit more one on one. There’s some good evidence based therapies out there that can help us. And particularly if you’re local to me, I can help, but even if you’re not, I can suggest. particular therapies that will be helpful and point you in the right direction.

So don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I’m like really, really happy to have those conversations. I think that the more that we support one another on this journey, the more empowered we become as individuals, but as a collective. I hope that’s been helpful and I hope that’s been insightful and

And actually really supportive. All right, my friend. Lots of love and I’ll talk to you real soon.