MAKE MENOPAUSE EASIER!
How menopause coaches are helping women reclaim the change – and live their best life yet
Forget tales of “washedup” old women long past their prime – mid-life empowerment coach Gina Mitchell says menopause can be the catalyst for your best years yet. “This is such an opportune time – use menopause as a springboard for changing your life for the better,” she says. “If you’re 50, you might only be halfway through your life, so you want to design your life for the next 40 to 50 years to be spectacular.”
After a “hideous” menopause with crippling insomnia, former science teacher Gina, now 64, is on a mission to help other women avoid her mistakes. “Nobody told me about the depression, anxiety, insomnia, brain fog and how the change in hormones can have such an affect on your brain chemistry,” she says. “I didn’t think what I was going through was menopause – I thought it was overwork and stress.”
But with the help of a good doctor for hormone replacement therapy (HRT), a lot of reading and valuable stress-relieving techniques, Gina says she got on top of her symptoms and now specialises in menopause coaching to help other women avoid what she went through.
UNDERSTAND WHAT’S HAPPENING
Gina says our reproductive hormones programme us to look after others, almost distracting us from our own needs, desires and past traumas. She tells, “As we’ve gone through our lives, our hormones are saying, ‘Have sex! Reproduce! Nurture your family!’ and this is great because it prolongs the species. That’s the way we’ve evolved. But then the hormones wear off and you’re not programmed by them any more, so childhood wounds and repressed feelings are laid bare.”
Gina says a coach will often start by helping clear up mental “wounds” using techniques like hypnotherapy to create more clarity for planning your next chapter.
“I say, ‘Let’s get rid of the stuff that’s holding you back and let’s design a life for you!’ I help them start making decisions about their lives based on what they want for the rest of their life – not what their husband wants or society wants, or their boss thinks they want.”
BUILD YOUR A-TEAM
Just like elite sportspeople surround themselves with a team of experts, if you want to perform at your best through menopause, Gina recommends you get expert help. “I call it the multipronged approach, getting
a team around you of people to help you get on track for what you want in your life,” she explains. “That might include a doctor who specialises in HRT, a counsellor, a coach and even a personal trainer. If I’d had HRT that was custom-made for me and a coach who understood menopause from the beginning, I’d have had a very different time.”
LOOK AHEAD
A non-negotiable in any peri- or post-menopausal life is good stress management. “Stress compounds menopause symptoms – your adrenals get out of whack and stress adds to that,” Gina says. “You’ve got to make sure you’re getting the exercise you want and need, having a good diet and having good sleep hygiene.”
Once you’ve got medical help for your hormones and are working through relevant psychological situations, Gina says it’s time to plan for your best life.
“If a client tells me they want to travel solo around Europe, I ask, ‘OK, how are we going to do this?’ We make a plan with dates so it’s not, ‘Oh, I thought about doing that, but now three years have passed and I haven’t done it yet.’”