And then there was me…

I said, with the brazen confidence of a 23 year old who doesn’t know better, (or maybe I did)

“I want to be a life coach.” Annnnnd…CRICKETS. You could hear a pin drop when I said that, which prompted me to further explain: “I’ve been the recipient of traditional therapy AND of life coaching and I think life coaching offers a wider breadth of help. Also, I’m not a fan of being a servant to insurance companies, I don’t think they pay well and I don’t like that in order to be reimbursed you basically have to slap a diagnosis on every single person that walks through your door. I also don’t like that I have to pick just ONE theory to specialize in, why do I have to be JUST a cognitive behavior therapist or JUST a solution focused therapist or JUST a narrative therapist? Why can’t I be all of them? (If you’re familiar with human design, this was my mani-gen spirit coming through). So, I only applied to grad school because I’m 23, a certified life coach with only two decades of life experience and I want to provide my practice with credibility and my clients with the best service possible, so graduate school it is!”

I was an anomaly.

No other therapists there wanted to be life coaches, in fact, they regarded them as being under qualified at best and a threat to the well being and health of people world wide at worst. And yet, here I was, determined to pave a new way, convinced that life coaching would be the “thing” of the future. And in many ways, I think I was right. The coaching field has become a booming industry and I’m proud to be a part of it, using my graduate school background as a way to do what I set out to do 16 years ago – provide my practice with credibility and my clients with the best service possible.

14 years into private practice has now also given me the edge I didn’t have back then; experience. Not just experience with working with 1,000’s of clients but experience in my own life which has allowed me to apply my tools and see where the weak spots were.  And this is how my hybrid approach was born.…

I’m always growing.

And this year was no different – I turned 40 and got to experience my own version of midlife mayhem as I became curious about “what come’s next?!”

As it turns out, for me, what came next was the need to develop a deep understanding of a woman’s physical health; of understanding the interplay between our hormones and our mental health. And what an amazing interplay it is! As I dove deep into hormonal research, specifically on perimenopause and menopause, I was astounded by the clear and utter lack of education our healthcare providers and ahem, therapists receive on this topic. This, of course, just made me more determined to learn everything I could via research and then by connecting with Doctors who do provide the type of care women need during this time of our lives.

I continued my hormonal research journey and was shocked at the triangulation between the mind and body that I discovered.

In psychology, triangulation happens when one person manipulates communication between two other people so that they turn on each other. I was seeing that very thing happen during perimenopause as I did my research!

Perimenopause triangulation looks like the manipulated interplay between hormonal changes, negative mental health impacts and weight gain.

  • Hormones: Sex hormone levels begin dropping during out late 30’s to mid 40’s due to the beginning of ovarian death known as perimenopause (we begin running out of eggs)
  • Mental Health: This causes what’s known as the zone of hormonal chaos – the lack of hormones first takes a toll on our mental health as our brains try to adjust to the changes – think moodiness, mania, depression, brain fog, cognitive decline, ADD symptoms and more
  • Daily Fatigue
    • Joint pain becomes the normSleep quality decreasesWe become less active because we don’t feel good
  • Weight Gain & Physical Health: When this goes unchecked or is dismissed by your doctor or you are put on anti-depressants or SSRI’s, the side effects COMPOUND. This means we begin:
    • Losing muscle mass due to the lack of estrogen
    • Our bones become more vulnerable
    • Our libido stops or changes
    • We gain visceral fat – especially around the belly that can’t be lost through diet or exercise
    • Weight gain ensues

“The trajectory of changes in body composition for women undergoing menopause has recently been characterized and it entails a significant acceleration of fat mass increase and lean mass decline during the menopausal transition (perimenopause). Shifts in fat distribution and in body composition that occur during the menopausal transition (perimenopause) are associated with increased cardiometabolic risk factors, including elevated blood pressure, elevated low-density lipoprotein (LDL), and obesity.6 Changes in visceral fat, in particular, increase CVD risk by associating with insulin resistance, inflammation, and adverse lipid profile.

It was through this research that I decided I needed to add these topics into my practice with clients. I could not, in good conscience, keep treating women in this age group without addressing the hormonal picture. It would just literally not make any sense.

Adding in hormonal education as well as direct referrals to doctors who prescribe hormonal replacement therapy and a direct source for weight loss peptides like GLP 1’s has been a no brainer. Every woman deserves to feel AND look her best in mid life, this isn’t the end for us ladies, it’s just the beginning!

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