There Is No Way Around It

Menopause, trauma, and the moment the body says no more bypassing.

Have you ever read the book by Michael Rosen “We Are Going on a Bear Hunt” to your kids?

The text that is repeated throughout the book is:

“We can’t go over it,

we can’t go under it –

oh no,

we’ve got to go through it.”

This reminds me not only of the menopause journey.

There is no way to bypass it, no matter who you are, how much money you have, how many accolades you have etc.

The same can be said of understanding, processing and healing from childhood trauma.

There is no way to bypass the whole journey.

Yet that is exactly what we think we can do. Cherry pick the healing modalities that suit us without having to face the demons in the underworld. Somehow we can face them without having to actually face them.

For me there was a realisation on my journey.

That not only did I have to understand the elements of my childhood and the impact that they had on me — and my subsequent coping strategies — but I also had to feel, real time, the emotions that I had spent my whole life suppressing, bypassing, hiding from, pretending that they weren’t there.

Take my sexual abuse at the age of 14yrs. My mind at the time couldn’t make sense of it.

I was already frozen from a childhood based around a narcissist father with anger issues. So my mind created a whole story of my abuser being my first proper boyfriend.

It took a new partner at the age of 48yrs to point out that I was sexually abused by someone 16yrs my senior — for comprehension to finally dawn — and the realisation hit me like a steam train. But before I could even access the body impact of that, I had to face, acknowledge, feel other events that sat along the same pathway.

In my mind, I see the strands of trauma like pulling nettles out of a flower bed. You can pull the stem out, but it will re-sprout. You can pull a bit of root out with it (the current trauma you’re looking at). Or you can pull the whole long strand out — that may trace across your whole flower bed!! (The line of trauma and all its links through your life.)

Unravelling the effects of childhood trauma and how it has woven itself into the fabric of your life is like trying to unravel a big ball of knotted string. For some of us, it’s a very big mess. For some of us it’s not quite such a tangle.

It is not only the habits, ways of acting, but also the ways we think — the filters through which our world is coloured.

This is the realm of talk therapy / coaching. Helping you to see through the realm of the mind how your programming is affecting your life. It is also discovering the places in our bodies that hold the lived, emotional experience of our trauma.

As much as our mind influences our body (top down), our body massively influences our mind (bottom up).

Think how many times you have wanted to do something — felt excited in your mind, with the planning, daydreaming of doing it.

But at the point of it becoming a reality, or the need to take the next step to create the reality, fear stepped into the present moment space and paralysed you.

Then your mind capitulated by reminding you of your past and all the reasons this would be a very bad idea. To heal from our trauma we cannot go around — we have to get into the snake pit.

Feel the emotions. Really feel them.

By exploring the sensations, where they live, the nuances, the actual felt experience. And then allow our body to go through its natural process of releasing them.

Sometimes through tears.

Trembling.

Anger.

Knee-buckling grief.

But however it starts to exit from you, there is a degree of courage needed to let the process run its course. Has even the thought of this scared you shitless?

I can’t do that. What if it annihilates me?

It won’t, I promise.

But only if you do it in small titrated amounts that leave your nervous system in full control.

Ok, so what has this got to do with the shitstorm that you are currently going through called menopause?

This, my love, is the missing link.

And this link has the ability to change your life completely — so far beyond what you could possibly imagine now.

Menopause doesn’t ask you to be stronger.

It asks you to be willing