Hello and welcome to the Calmcast,
A time to feel calm and think clearly.
I'm Claire Downham,
The Queen of Calm,
A Transformational Life Coach.
I was a burnt out headteacher who finally made the journey to calm after years of trying and I want to prevent you from having to do the same.
The Calmcast is a series of short explorations gently guiding you back to your natural state which is calm and clarity.
Just listen like you would listen to music with an open mind and curiosity.
There's nothing else to do.
Now let's relax into today's episode.
So today I'm talking about the menopause but hold your horse as if this is not likely to affect you now or isn't affecting you now or you're already through it or you're a man and it's never going to affect you in the same way that it would affect a woman because this is not just about the connection between menopause and happiness or happiness and menopause whichever it is,
It's the connection between everything and happiness.
So the first thing I want to say is this is not about have happier thoughts,
This is not positive,
Toxic positivity,
Whatever you call it,
It's not like be happy and you'll be okay,
You know,
It's not about making yourself be something that you're not.
But it is about seeing that there's a connection because I think it can really look when you're going through something like the menopause or any kind of physical illness that it's that thing that's making you feel a particular way but even though that is you,
There is something perhaps out of kilter with your physiological system,
There is still an experience being created by a thought.
So and that doesn't matter what physical symptom you're working with at the moment or struggling with,
There is a connection there.
So there's this connection between happiness and menopause but there's also the connection between every physical thing and happiness or how we are thinking about it.
So my story of physical health over the last few years is quite extensive really so just in brief,
I don't really know anymore which order all these things came in and nor do I care but I'll just give you a quick outline.
So I burnt out in March 2015 and didn't work for a year,
That's how sick I was and was still probably recovering from that,
I don't know if I still am really,
Because it takes a long time when you've kind of been stressed for that amount of time so don't take that lightly guys,
Don't stay in a terrible place if you are in one,
Do something about it.
So but then not long after that I was aware of some symptoms,
I've always been quite cold particularly my extremities,
I started to notice that I struggled to lose weight and all sorts of other things so at some point I started having my thyroid checked which was very very low but not quite underactive in terms of how the health service in this country works but over a period of time did become officially an underactive thyroid.
So during this time I was doing lots of investigating of all sorts of different things and then became aware,
Well I'd become aware quite some time,
Probably about 2013 that my cycle had got really really irregular,
Now I don't know now whether that was because of the thyroid or because of the menopause,
Very similar symptoms.
So I went through a pretty rough patch really,
Probably about 2019 onwards where I just felt very grotty a lot of the time,
My energy levels would dip quite severely,
I've had a lot of days where I just didn't want to do anything,
Very low mood,
Very kind of lacking in motivation is what I would have said about it.
And just but I was continually exploring,
Trying to work out what was going on,
So I suspect at some point in the last few years I've become,
I've entered the perimenopause phase and if you don't know the perimenopause is the bit before the menopause,
Post menopause,
It's after the menopause,
The menopause is just one day.
It's not that we're over egging the pudding about it,
It's just that it's just what one day is the actual menopause and that's the day that is the anniversary of you having your last period.
So I've been out the other side about 18 months,
About 18 months now.
So I went through a phase of analysing every single symptom and focusing on it and oh what does this symptom mean and is this under-active thyroid,
Is it adrenals,
Is it menopause,
I would really go through that kind of trying to work it out.
I also went through a phase of being really wound up about food.
My under-active thyroid was caused by an autoimmune condition called Hashimoto's and that meant I was always kind of analysing my food and what should I be eating that,
Should I be eating that and cutting out lots of food and then reintroducing it,
Doing an autoimmune protocol.
I've done all sorts of things,
I've tried a lot of things.
Then in January 2020 of course I came across the understanding that I'm sharing with you now and that became,
That really became a turning point I would say in terms of my physical health,
A huge,
Huge turning point in that I started to see differences in how I was with my physical body.
One of the most significant things that happened was that I started to get regular headaches and when I say regular I seem to be all day every day.
I couldn't seem to shake them off,
I wasn't really sure what was going on.
Who knows,
Was it part of the menopause or any of the other things I don't know but I noticed,
I started to notice that the headaches seemed to not be there sometimes so if I was in a coaching conversation which I love doing and I was really present with the other person and listening to them and connecting with them then the headache wasn't there.
There was not a headache banging at my head the whole time I was talking to the other person.
That was because my attention,
My thoughts,
I was present with the other person so the experience of the headache wasn't there.
Now after the call I might you know suddenly notice the headache again for whatever reason.
So that really opened my eyes to notice oh my physical body can be doing something,
I suspect the headache was there all day and not disappearing and coming back I suspect it was my attention that was or wasn't on it.
And so it helped,
It caused me to get a little bit more curious and this is a bit about the happiness and the connection between happiness and menopause.
First of all I noticed that if I joked about my menopausal sweats then I had a nicer experience of them.
Sorry I actually have an itch.
So for example when I did break out in a big sweat which I did very regularly several times a day,
Very often,
I started to joke about it.
So if I was with my fiance I would say my heat always seemed to start in the small of my back and I would say oh you could fry an egg on there now I'd make a little joke about it and then it was okay I was laughing and wafting and opening the doors and carrying on and then oh I was shutting them all again because I very quickly got cold again.
And I did start to just laugh about it because it's ridiculous when you suddenly break out in a sweat for absolutely no reason it was just in there minding my business.
However I did start to notice that if I got wound up about it or if I got wound up about anything that the sweats would come like seemed to be out of the blue but I think there's a connection there.
And you know scientifically there is a connection between stress and the menopause,
A massive connection if you are in any place around the menopause.
Stress is extremely impactful so I can never remember the name of the hormone but this is a very simple and probably wrong but basic outline of what happens is there's a base hormone in your body which I can't remember the name of and it can either in your body be converted into female hormones or be converted into cortisol.
And cortisol of course is a stress hormone so if you are stressed your body will prioritize the cortisol because of cortisol because of course cortisol is to get you out of danger and your female hormones are not as important,
Might not feel like that but they're not.
If your body thinks you're in danger which of course it does if you're having stressful thinking,
Your body thinks you're in danger and it wants to get you out of so it pumps the cortisol into your system.
Leaving your female hormone,
The production of your female hormones neglected and of course that means you've got even less to play with than you had before.
They're depleting anyway because of your age but you know it's worse if you're stressed.
So knowing these things and seeing that as we have a nicer experience of anything we're going to feel less stressed and therefore we're going to have a nicer experience.
So it's almost like a self-feeding system so if we're stressed and have worse menopausal symptoms which will seem to be making us stressed which will then create more menopausal symptoms so it's a real cycle whereas when we start to break that cycle at some point where we see oh it's not created that way once we understand how the system works we can start to have a nicer experience of that system so we can when we see it works that way.
So what's happened to me I think over time is that I've just I've chilled out a lot and I've seen that this is working in every aspect of life.
You know thought is creating all of our experiences even our experience of our own body and that is not denying that female bodies are changing at this time of life but it's saying that it's possible to have a better experience of it and that possibility is like a lovely little seed that can start to grow when you start to look in this direction.
You know that even starting to laugh about those sweats they are ridiculously funny really aren't they?
So that's my little my thoughts on that if you you know if you're going through this don't don't go through it on your own is all I would say to you.
Sending lots of love however you are today take care.
Thank you so much for listening.
There's nothing to do now but bring some awareness to how this is working out in your life.
Listen regularly to experience longer and longer periods of calm.
This has been the Calmcast with Claire Downer,
Queen of Calm.
Take care and keep listening.
