Seven Pillars of a Healthy Menopause

#5 Managing Stress and Wellbeing

Perimenopause and menopause affect our brains.

That includes the emotional part of our brains. We can find ourselves becoming depressed or anxious or prone to tears or rage. We can find ourselves becoming all of these in a short space of time. And we become more susceptible to stress.

So it’s really important in menopause and perimenopause that we look after ourselves emotionally and manage our stress levels.

Just how do we do this?

Consciously create time and space for relaxation

It won’t happen on its own. We might assume that when we’re not working we’re relaxing but often that’s not the case. We can still be thinking about work, or carrying the emotions that we brought home from work.

We can also find that time eaten into by other people’s demands and by our own ‘life administration’. And if we’re the driven sort of person we can find that we can distract our self from our own relaxation.

And relaxation needn’t be sitting in a chair doing nothing — I always find that’s never as much fun as it looks. It might be doing something completely different — just for the sake of it. It might be…