Therapy for perimenopause is a bit unheard of so I wanted to add a section for you to learn what psychotherapy can offer you during perimenopause.

If you’re like my clients, you likely went to the doctor when you first felt hot flashes or when you first felt so angry you yelled at your adult child and were worried you ruined the relationship. My clients feel desperate! They are caught by surprise and are convinced that perimenopause will ruin their marriages, relationships with children, jobs, and their body! Perimenopause is intense. If you’re like my clients, you walked into the doctor’s office, paid the $100 copay, and explained these strange things happening to you. The doctor nodded their head then sighed and pulled out a pamphlet. “Here’s a pamphlet. Good luck.” $100 down the drain. After this appointment, my clients usually feel hopeless. Now they know they are alone and must figure this out if they want to keep the schedule and relationships they have worked hard to build.

Let’s also talk about the taboo: the load on women is unfair. The effects of being overloaded with society’s burdens (emotional regulation, caregiving, household chores, imaginary work, and being invisible) can look like drugs, affairs, suicidal ideation, outbursts of anger, cutoff, depression, thoughts of being hospitalized or injured, and more. Let’s add on top of this that women have been fighting for equality for at least four thousand years and yet their work and their names are continually erased. This makes us feel like we must reinvent the wheel every generation. You are not the only woman who has gone through the effects of society’s burdens. Community is key.

Psychotherapy isn’t magic but…it kind of is. Therapy offers insight which is this magical thing that provides us with updated information about who we are, what we need, and what gives us joy. When we apply insight to our lives, we begin to feel more authentic, safer in our skin, and whole.

Therapy also offers healing. My work with IFS has been powerful. When we unburden the parts of us that hold onto trauma and grief, we become more healthy and prevent problems. IFS research shows that unburdening wounded parts of us can reduce pain and heal diseases. I have watched clients go from twenty panic attacks a week to none. I have also watched heart rates go down and hobbies go up. This is because our mind and body are connected. The body holds onto our trauma and that trauma burrows itself into our bones and muscles, causing a lot of tension! We can unburden this pain.

Therapy can also offer clients guidance. Women deserve to have a path during perimenopause but, currently, we are making women go off-road and reinvent the wheel. I will support you and offer resources as you discover the things that help you feel better in your body, process changes happening to you and your life, and find the You you have always known was inside. Instead of reinventing the wheel, we will lean on the support of modern women and women that have come before us for the last thousands of years (women like Audre Lorde, Malala Yousafzai, Hildegard von Bingen, Betty Carter (the therapist), Alice Paul, Faith Kipyegon, Christine de Pisan, Gloria Steinem, Maya Angelou, Wilma Rudolph, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Shirley Chisholm). As a family therapist, I have the skills to work with families on how to support women in perimenopause. I have also worked with many couples on how husbands can be an ally during perimenopause.

And most important, therapy is a space for clients to verbally process what they are going through and be witnessed. Perimenopause adds an important chapter to a human’s life. Stories must be shared. Grief must be witnessed.