Perimenopause has a huge impact on female business and careers. The affect is significant and most women are silently living with then symptoms and trying to keep up with the pace.
In this episode, I talk about what Perimenopause looks like and how it is potentially impacting your business or career.
From brain fog to fatigue and a lack of 'drive', it is all likely related to this normal reproductive stage that you are going through.
If you're interested to join my upcoming Libido Bootcamp, make sure to save your seat here. I would love to have you!
Transcript:
Well hello and welcome to the very first episode after the rebrand of my podcast, which is now called the perimenopause podcast and the purpose of my show is to teach ambitious women in business to thrive through perimenopause.
You may be wondering what that actually means to thrive through perimenopause.
Well it means that you have mental clarity all of the time, you hav e sustained energy all day long, you wake up feeling energised, ready for the day and as soon as your alarm goes, your feet hit the ground and you’re productive from the very start of each day, you feel in control, like the master of multi-tasking that you are and you never feel overwhelmed and finally, you have emotional calm and small things don’t upset or annoy you.
The symptoms of unbalanced hormones during perimenopause is so numerous and that’s why this podcast exists. To help you to connect those dots and find the solutions.
So let’s kick this episode off by talking about what perimenopause is.
I’ve come across a training video inside one of my programs that was done just 2 years ago, and at that stage, the term perimenopause only just surfaced but was framed as the 12 month period before going into menopause.
Today we know that term is used a bit more by healthcare practitioners and we finally have some language around what we are going through.
I remember when I suffered from all of these symptoms and some, I had no language to describe what was going on with my body and for 5 years, numerous doctors and specialist visits led to absolutely no solutions, because each of my symptoms were seen as individual issues that had to be dealt with with some bandaids. Today I know that they were all connected and it was all part of the hormonal changes that I was going through.
And by the way, living with the symptoms of imbalanced hormones during perimenopause is not something that you’ll have to learn to live with. I know this is a message commonly shared by the healthcare profession, but I can assure you that it’s not the case.
So perimenopause is generally defined as the 5-10 year period before menopause. In my experience, this is more like a 10-20 year window. My symptoms started affecting me at the age of 31.
This is a normal reproductive phase that we all go through, just like puberty and menopause. So the more we know and understand about this phase and our bodies, the better.
It’s the time when our hormones change and start moving out of the fertile years. Hormone production reduce and with that comes physical, mental and emotional changes.
Apart from all those physiological changes, it generally is also a time of change in our lives. It’s generally the time when we make major changes in our career and when we take on the challenge of starting our own business. We are also fully involved in family life with children that are going into their tween and teen years and we become more aware of our communities and the causes that we are so deeply passionate about.
So on top of all the hormonal changes that are happening, it’s also generally a jam packed life for us.
And I think it’s wonderful the way that our bodies have been created. How we go through these different stages and make adjustments as we go. But unfortunately, for way too long, as a society, we’ve been giving over the responsibility of our health over to the healthcare system.
I love and respect doctors, I think they are needed and necessary at the right time, but they should not be our first port of call.
They are experts at disease and not at health.
They know how to diagnose and prescribe, but they generally do not know how to keep people healthy. They have not been trained to do that.
It is the responsibility of each one of us to understand our bodies, the language that it speaks (in other words the symptoms that we experience) and how to look after ourselves so we can get the best out of ourselves.
So perimenopause is a normal reproductive phase and you are likely in the midst of it.
So how does it affect our businesses?
Well let’s talk about it.
The biggest concern that I hear, is the nagging brain fog, which means you walk into a room and forget what it was that you came there for, or you stop talking mid sentence because you lost your train of thought, or forget halfway through an important task where you were going to go with that. You feel like you’re spending SO much time trying to remember things. It steels your productivity in a big way and you may feel frustrated because you’ve spent hundreds of dollars all the recommended supplements with no noticeable change.
Another main symptom is the fatigue that dawns on you during all hours of the day. You sleep enough but wake up tired and you’ve lost your drive to jump out of bed and get going in the mornings.
You may be lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to motivate yourself to get going. At 3pm you’re ready to go back to bed and sometimes you feel that way by 10am. So you start to live on coffee and chocolates to keep you awake. I’ve been there, it’s the toughest thing to experience if you have a million things on your plate. It’s not normal friend, and you don’t have to learn to live with it.
Then there is the feeling of overwhelm, which is very unlike you. You used to be the master of multitasking and be a high performer in everything that you do. Now you feel easily overwhelmed and stressed. And then feel stuck and you’re not sure where to start and how to prioritise.
You may also be all too familiar with the emotional rollercoaster and irritability. You feel annoyed by the smallest things and your family takes the full brunt of that. I remember days where my 8 year old would ask all of his inquisitive, intelligent questions and I’d get so annoyed, It was hard work to keep my calm and patience and I hated that. I wanted my kids to feel like they can develop and grow alongside me, and I wanted to be fully present and enjoying each learning phase alongside them.
But I felt like I had no control over those big emotions and that also lead to huge amounts of mom-guilt.
I remember when I first addressed my hormonal imbalance, the change in my patience was significant. I always assumed that I was just an impatient person, but now I feel truly grateful every day that I’m able to be present, calm and have the emotional bandwidth to be the best mom I can possibly be.
Other symptoms that perimenopause may include is dry skin and vaginal dryness, which leads to painful intercourse. But if you’re in perimenopause, your libido might be non-existent, so painful intercourse should be no issue. But the guilt of avoiding intimacy with your husband is real!
You may be suffering from more allergies, have thyroid issues, have very messy periods that are heavy, painful and irregular, severe PMS, development of endometriosis or fibroids, bloating, poor sleep, weight gain, inflammation, feeling depressed or anxious, migraines and headaches, tender breasts and the list goes on.
I’ve found that the symptoms for each women usually include some of these obvious things, but also sometimes some very unique stuff like restless legs.
And unfortunately, most doctors want to address these issues with hormonal birth control and antidepressants or anti-anxiety medication.
I know that it’s a truly desperate place to be in, and that’s why I spend my days creating this podcast and online courses to provide alternatives and solutions to women out there. You don’t need to follow a restrictive diet, use prescription drugs or learn to live with it for the next 15 years. You can actually thrive through perimenopause, which means you’ll show up differently in your business every day.
You’ll have the mental clarity that you need to plan the strategy and the implementation thereof, you’ll have the energy to complete those tasks at the highest standard as you expect of yourself, and at the end of the day, you’ll come back to your family with heaps more time and energy to pour into them.
You’ll be able to fulfil all of your roles as a woman with confidence, and in a way that you feel proud of and grateful for.
And I’d love to be the one to guide you along this journey.
So the first thing that I always get all my clients to do inside my programs is to take stock of their symptoms. In other words, write down in your diary or in a place where you can regularly revisit, all of the things that you are experiencing that are stopping you from achieving the things that you want to achieve in your business and in your personal life. What are the things even that you’ve learned to live with and that has become your new normal? If you think about 10 years ago, those things were not there. Write them all down, as it provides many clues for where your body is at and what kind of hormonal imbalance you are experiencing. And add to the list every day as you think of things or experience symptoms.
This is a great place to start, because it will help you to develop body awareness, which most of us lack. We only recognise symptoms when they’ve become really annoying, and have been there for quite some time.
Now before I go, I wanna take a second to tell you about my brand new course that is currently open for enrolments. It’s called the Libido Bootcamp: Secrets To Spark Your [Sexy] Second Act. I’m excited about this course because it has been the request of my clients for as long as I can remember.
It’s a 5-day workshop series coming up, staring September the 11th at 1pm NZ time and all sessions will be recorded so you can watch them in your own time.
If you’ve been having low libido, maybe you never realised that it’s not normal, this is definitely the program for you.
Low libido is one of the tell-tale signs of hormonal imbalance and it ultimately has a huge impact on our marriages.
So I would love to invite you to join me inside this program and you can read more at vandghie.com/libido, You can also find the link in the show notes.
Ok my friend, thank you for joining me for this episode. I would love it if you could rate or review my podcast, this will help more women to find this crucial information that they are actually looking for right now.
Until next week, bye for now.