SUPPORT FOR WOMEN
For many women the menopause is seen as a normal life stage. The way it is experienced can depend on the individual and culture the woman is from, for example with more negative attitudes to aging perhaps here in the United Kingdom than say other cultures where the transition can be seen as a sign of increased wisdom and status. These kinds of example draw upon a more complex picture of what menopause can mean to a woman, her underlying beliefs and attitudes affecting thinking, feeling and physical symptoms in a cycle.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is strongly evidence based and recommended by the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE). It can support stress, loss of confidence, low mood, anxiety, hot flushes, and sleep, and helps by developing different more self-supportive ways to think.
CBT as supported by the NHS and by the British Menopause Society (BMS) provides increased awareness of how thoughts, feelings and behaviours are linked. Replacing and practising more self-supportive thoughts and thinking can ease menopausal symptoms.
Menopause rarely arrives in isolation. It often coincides with some of life's most significant transitions: caring for elderly parents, children leaving home, career change, or a quiet but persistent questioning of meaning and purpose. Women's bodies are changing at the very same time that so much else is shifting around.
This is where psychotherapy can offer something valuable alongside CBT. By helping you make sense of this moment in your life, honouring and letting go of what has passed and making room for what is new or you want to change. Together we can explore what this transition means for you and find a way through it that feels true to who you are now.
It isn't about replacing difficult feelings with happy thoughts. It's about noticing unhelpful patterns in how we think and finding more supportive alternatives.
The goal is not elimination but manageability. And interestingly, when symptoms feel less overwhelming, they can actually become less frequent too. Hot flushes are a good example. As the distress around them reduces, so can their intensity and how often they occur.
It looks at a whole range of symptoms and draws on a broad toolkit of strategies. Hot flushes, night sweats, disturbed sleep, low mood, loss of confidence, all of these are within its scope.
The skills and strategies you develop in CBT are yours to keep and draw on whenever you need them. But CBT works best with specific symptoms and patterns of thinking. If there are deeper psychological issues at play, a different therapeutic approach may be more appropriate alongside or instead.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about how counselling and psychotherapy works. This enables us to discuss the reasons you are thinking of coming to therapy, whether it could be helpful for you and whether I am the right therapist to help.
CBT for menopause is available online, so you can access support from the comfort of your own home. To find out more or arrange a session, please get in touch.
To book a 15 minute consultation please click here. To book an ongoing appointment, please call me on 07344312844
or email emiliayaucounselling@gmail.com.