After being over medicated with HRT 2017, Somatic and Cognitive Psychotherapist Paula Rastrick joined the dots between childhood trauma, being a highly sensitive person and the mental health impacts her experience when multiple life stressors and perimenopause collided. She is on a mission to raise awareness and empower women to understand the links between childhood trauma, nervous system sensitivity and menopause transition.
This was such an enjoyable chat, and confirmed a lot of the dots I have been forming in my own personal history and perimenopause experience. We cover:
- Paula's own experience of being overmedicated for her perimenopause symptoms and the dire impact this had on her mental health
- the concepts of neurodiversity and neurotypical brains, and how the traits of ADHD, autism, and Highly Sensitive People overlap
- Long-lasting impacts that CPTSD and developmental trauma have on the nervous system, and how we need to utilise the biopsychosocial model to better understand the root cause of symptoms attributed to menopause which may have different origins
- how stress ages the brain, how we need to change our focus from stress reduction to building stress resilience, and the important of the brain body connection in building our window of tolerance
- How anxiety and the freeze states are survival mechanism and how living in a state of chaos or lack of safety in our younger years can lead to difficulties coping when life feels "too calm"
You can find Paula online (including the HSP quizzes and other resources mentioned) here https://thebrainbodymethod.com/
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