Menopause & Overwhelm: What Your Body’s Trying To Tell You

Menopause and overwhelm go together like night and day for a lot of women.

All the hormonal shifts taking place can have a huge impact on your mood, sleep, memory and focus which can create the perfect storm.

Add into this mix everything women are juggling…job/business, children (either still at home or leaving home), perhaps aging parents, relationships, and everything starts to tip slightly out of balance.

What once felt manageable suddenly feels too much.

Then there’s the questions that start swirling around in your already overwhelmed mind…

Why do I feel like this?

What is wrong with me?

Why can’t I do the things I used to find so easy?

So we sit with all this going on inside us…often silently because we’re unsure if this is all normal and don’t feel able to tell anyone.

But please know this with overwhelm…what you’re experiencing isn’t weakness – it’s your nervous system signalling that it needs space, care, and recalibration.

It’s your body showing you signs.

A couple of weeks ago I fell back into the trap of overwhelm.

I’d left my self-care door slightly ajar and it crept in like a thief in the night and sat on top of me until I realised what was happening.

When this happens I always look to what’s going on for me electronically first.

So here’s what you can do if you find yourself feeling like this…

🌀 Come out of all of the WhatsApp, Messenger and Facebook groups you can if you no longer use them.  I stayed in some for far too long thinking I might need to go back over those conversations one day.  But the truth is, I’ve not once tried to find something in these conversations…never…it was just a lie I was telling myself.  And also it was another thing cluttering up my world.  Some of the groups had no activity in them for over a year!

🌀 Unfollow people on social media (you don’t need to disconnect or unfriend them unless you want to, of course)…it’s ok and it’s nothing personal…you wouldn’t invite people into your house that were making you feel ‘off’, so don’t let them into your feed.

🌀 In particular if you’re looking at other people in your industry on your feed and thinking you should be doing this, that or the other because they’re doing a particular thing, unfollow them…they’re not your ideal client anyway.  Obviously still follow the ones that lift you…and there will be some.  You can most likely unfollow yet still remain connected to people on most apps, so you don’t have to worry about offending someone.

🌀 Turn off seeing the number of likes on your posts and on other people’s…it does make a difference.

🌀 Switch off notifications on your phone…when you hear or see a notification come in, your body is primed to take a look…but what would happen if you took them off and only checked at certain points in the day?  Probably nothing.  In fact I know this is true because I did this myself.

🌀 Unsubscribe from email lists (obvs not mine 😂…and if you’re not on mine, why not 🤔)…ask yourself if you’re actually interested in the content and are reading it and it’s having a positive effect on you or not.

🌀 Don’t check your phone first thing when you wake up…put it the other side of the bedroom if it helps.  Give yourself time in the mornings to come alive gently because this helps to avoid the instant overwhelm of messages, notifications and to-do lists, and to give your mind a moment to wake up on its own terms.

🌀 Notice where things you did for you have fallen away…because in a busy life, they’re the first things we drop ironically, when they’re actually the ones we need to keep going with.  Mine was meditation.  The moment I restarted my 20 minute morning practice was when clarity came in…not loud, not shouting…just words landing in my mind when I gave it the quiet it needed.

🌀 Journal if you can…either freeform by just writing what’s on your mind (pen and paper is best), or use a journal with prompts in it to help you.  This helps you get rid of those thoughts that are crammed inside your head, particularly helpful if you don’t have anyone you can talk to about how you’re feeling.

🌀 Physically clear a small space in your house…an area of your office perhaps, your bag, a drawer…it doesn’t matter what it is, but physical clearing really helps to lighten the load.

🌀 Start saying no…this is your life and you deserve to do what you want to do.

And remember…none of us are perfect.  I regularly have to reset areas of my life when I start to feel overwhelm.  It doesn’t disappear entirely, but I’ve learnt the tools that work for me to deal with it when it comes up.

And guess what happens…it creates space in my mind.

And within that space my body starts to relax and feel safe again.

When everything feels too much, it may not be that you’re doing life wrong, but that life is asking to be done differently 😉

With love 💫

Caroline x

#menopause #coach #accountant #space #declutter #body #mind