What are we doing with our lives? In midlife and menopause, many of us have massive demands. We are busy. That is true. As women, we do the bulk of emotional labour. Typically, women with families add 3 to 5 hours of unpaid labour at the end of a full workday, while in contrast, men do 30 minutes.
However, much of the time that might be free is taken over by our addiction to the stimulation of delights and the horrors of news, shows and constant scrolling on social media.
This is not a failure. A fantastic book Stolen Focus, highlights our vulnerabilities and how modern life and work have created a social attention crisis. This is compounded by the impact of our changing perimenopause hormones and related neurotransmitters (less estrogen and progesterone, serotonin and GABA) on an already sensitive female limbic system.
The cost to us is HUGE!
Our bodies, our thoughts and our external relationships are starved of proper attention, which then, in part, drives us to seek a quick fix for every menopausal symptom.
As a society, we are tapping out of reservoirs of care for each other. We know connection and community are essential to our ability to thrive in menopause.
So what to do?
One of the areas that I help my clients to understand is their relationship with time.
How much time do you spend on the internet, social media, and watching streaming services?
It turns out that most women in peri/menopause have time in their day to be more mindful. It is time to tune in to the triggers of their symptoms, observe their behaviour patterns, and find time to practice a short mindful meditation.
But what is mindfulness?
Mindfulness meditation is training to be less reactive to experience—even when unpleasant. This purposeful training helps us be more present to savour and enjoy pleasurable experiences fully and build the capacity to explore and tolerate the unpleasant, including our physical symptoms, painful emotions and difficult thoughts.
We can see that we do have time for other things (even for meditation) if we can let go of our addiction and avoidance. This involves being prepared to feel irritated, bored, and lonely without reaching for a “fix” from our devices or sugar or alcohol.
The training helps us learn how to explore and process our emotions and relate to our thinking differently.
Learning mindfulness and why apps “don’t work.”
“It doesn’t work!”. I would be rich if I had a dollar every time a woman told me that, even on the first day of class.
We often feel this when we begin learning mindfulness, especially through an app. After a few tries, it is easy to say: “It doesn’t work!” or “I am not doing it right.”
Too often, we are told that mindfulness only takes 2 minutes or that it’s relaxing. I call these circuit-breaking mindfulness or grounding. Without a doubt, coming to the present immediately affects our nervous system. Focusing on sensations, like breathing or your feet on the floor, listening to nature sounds, or smelling essential oils, all shift you from the sympathetic doing mode into the parasympathetic being mode. The result is that we do feel calmer and back in control.
However, mindfulness meditation, based on trauma-informed practices, requires focus. And when it stops being relaxing, that’s when most people give up. Often, what we encounter when we begin practising is how messy our minds actually are: distracted, irritated, rushed, and overwhelmed by competing demands.
We feel alone and powerless to affect that experience. The practice can make little sense without access to a teacher who knows what you are grappling with and who is supporting you.
This has to do partly with the popular approach of mindfulness, which is suggested way too often in menopause. We fit something in to “fix” something uncomfortable rather than making time to understand and become intimate with our experiences, be they sensations, thoughts, or feelings.
What if we approached learning mindfulness with care for our menopause minds, not to get something from it but to get to know and appreciate and nurture it?
Let’s start relinquishing our obsession with stimulation and delving into the depth and richness that can arise when we pay attention.
Navigating Menopause with Mindfulness
Today's episode of Thriving Thru Menopause is a MUST listen. If you are navigating #menopause and experiencing stress, sleep disruption, brain fog and beating yourself up for all of it, then this is for you.
joined me and talked about mindfulness and how it can support us in different ways, like: -Simple practices of self-compassion and kindness practices.
Addressing brain fog, regulating the nervous system and prioritising sleep -
How can we navigate menopause challenges and embrace our wisdom and power now?
I encourage you to share it with every woman in your life because it’s time to change the paradigm.
Clarissa x