When Menopause Makes Your Stress Dial More Sensitive: How to Build Emotional Resilience Through Movement and Mindfulness.
By midlife, women have become very skilled at keeping the various aspects of their lives in sync; juggling the demands of growing families and career, home and hearth, as well as their own health and self-care.
When we hit perimenopause and menopause, it becomes harder and harder to stay on top of the changes that are happening in our bodies and our brains. The Menopause Transition is affected not just by our hormones and nervous systems, but also by our lived experiences.
At the same time, hormonal changes are occurring, and the messaging from the world seems to be telling us that we are invisible if we can’t keep up the pace of our younger selves. If we’re not prepared, it can be a scary and isolating time of life to navigate.
In what can feel like an overnight change, it takes longer to recover from unexpected stressors, whether small or large, and we might start to feel depressed and angry that what was once under our control now feels impossible to manage.
Combine that with midlife “social” changes, such as relationship and job changes, body changes, and feeling like we’ve lost our former self. We find ourselves in a full-spectrum, whole-body experience.
None of this is in your imagination.
This is Midlife! It’s an intense time of biopsychosocial change. Your biology—your hormone levels, your brain chemistry—and social factors, such as life satisfaction and feelings of value and self-worth, are all influenced.
Things that you were once able to recover from— a night of poor sleep, jet lag, a difficult conversation with your partner, a fight with your kid, or an unexpected email—seem to push that dial faster and further. It becomes increasingly difficult to control and manage our reactions to the world around us.
This all makes sense if we look below the surface. The midlife brain is sensitive to fluctuations in estrogen and progesterone,
When we hit perimenopause and estrogen and progesterone start to decline, our internal chemistry, body, and brain are adjusting their balance and causing a shift across every area of our lives.
Research often refers to menopause as a “metabolic inflection point,” which it is - but we should be careful about reducing the experience of menopause to a collection of annoying symptoms.
Midlife is so much more than that.
Let's look beyond hot flashes, night sweats, and weight gain, for instance. The research shows that at various stages of perimenopause and menopause, fluctuations in levels of estrogen and progesterone can negatively affect our stress tolerance and lower what is called our “emotional resilience.”
What is Emotional Resilience?
“Emotional resilience is an art of living that is entwined with self-belief, self-compassion, and enhanced cognition. It is the way through which we empower ourselves to perceive adversity as ‘temporary’ and continue evolving despite pain and suffering. (Marano, 2003).”
In a broader sense, emotional resilience refers to our ability to manage the stressors in our lives without letting them overwhelm us.
Here are some of the qualities of emotional resilience:
optimism,
emotional stability,
emotion regulation,
self-compassion,
and self-esteem
sense of community
Research indicates that women who exhibit higher levels of these qualities tend to experience a better sense of their own well-being and mental health during the menopause transition (Süss et al., 2020).
The good news is that several somatic practices can help keep you grounded and strengthen your emotional resilience.
Slow Flow and Restorative Yoga, as well as daily exercise.
Somatic movement practices, such as restorative yoga, flow yoga, and Somatic Strength, help cultivate the nervous system, specifically between the sympathetic (fight-or-flight) and parasympathetic (rest-and-digest) systems. The sympathetic system is more sensitive and reactive, while the parasympathetic system is more regulated and calm. Simple exercises, such as a 10-minute walk outside on a tree-lined path near your house, can have a calming effect on your body, lower your heart rate, AND might be more settling to your nervous system than a full-on gym workout if you’re already feeling unsettled.
Daily Breath practices and Mindfulness Meditation:
A simple breathing practice you can do anywhere and anytime is to lengthen your exhale. For instance, inhale for the count of 4, PAUSE and HOLD and exhale for the count of 6. Try this for 3 or 4 rounds.
Box Breathing is a similar breath practice that emphasizes balancing the cycles of breath and your autonomic nervous system response.
INHALE gently for the count of 4
HOLD gently for a count of 2
EXHALE gently for a count of 4
HOLD gently for a count of 2
Develop skills to manage your stress in the moment:
If you can, plan for stressful events. Allow time to fortify your nervous system. Five minutes of breathwork before and after a meeting, or taking a quiet moment during busy holidays, can make a real difference in how you handle stress and can help you build your reservoir of resilience.
Practice Self-Compassion:
Rethink how you talk to yourself about your body and monitor your self-talk. Negative messages about our bodies, or our ability to handle life’s pressures and amplify pain, and our confidence in ourselves.
There are several ways to practice self-compassion, but here is a mantra you can try on the spot when you feel yourself spiraling into self-doubt or anger and frustration.
Ask yourself, what do I need to hear right now to express kindness towards myself? Is there a phrase that might speak to you in this particular situation? Here are a few to try:
May I give myself the compassion that I need
May I learn to accept myself as I am
May I forgive myself
May I be strong
May I be patient
Manage your Sleep Rituals:
Sleep disorders for women in midlife are real! It’s hormonal and neurological. 70% of women report poor sleep quality during menopause, and this can affect how your brain functions as well as increase your reactivity and lower your emotional resilience.
Create a sleep hygiene ritual. Maintain a regular sleep schedule by waking up at the same time each morning and going to bed around the same time each night, and limit screen time to one hour before bedtime.
Create a wind-down routine. For example, 15–30 minutes of gentle stretching/yoga, dimming the lights, turning off blue light devices, and practicing conscious breathing.
Finally, don’t underestimate the importance of community and social support in reducing anxiety and stress during midlife. Having a solid network of friends, coaches, and specialists on your team goes a long way.
How Can I Help?
If this resonates, I’d love to stay connected and be part of YOUR team.
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Resources:
[Kline, C. E., Irish, L. A., Krafty, R. T., Sternfeld, B., Kravitz, H. M., Buysse, D. J., Bromberger, J. T., Dugan, S., & Hall, M. H. (2013). Consistently high sports/exercise activity is associated with better sleep quality, continuity and depth in midlife women: The SWAN Sleep Study. Sleep, 36(9), 1279–1288. https://doi.org/10.5665/sleep.2946]
Borrell-Carrió, F., Suchman, A. L., & Epstein, R. M. (2004). The biopsychosocial model 25 years later: Principles, practice, and scientific inquiry. Annals of Family Medicine, 2(6), 576–582. https://doi.org/10.1370/afm.245
Ranganath, P., Hishikesh, D., & Rao, P. (2023). Role of social support in reducing the severity of menopausal symptoms among rural women in Mysuru, India. International Journal of Community & Family Medicine,
Süss, H., Willi, J., Grub, J., & Ehlert, U. (2021). Psychosocial factors promoting resilience during the menopausal transition. Archives of Women’s Mental Health, 24(2), 231-241. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00737-020-01055-7
Dr. Kirstin Neff on Self-Compassion: https://self-compassion.org/what-is-self-compassion/