Episode 16 - Joie (Tips for regulating your emotions during Menopause)

Erin is in discussion with Joie Seldon who shares her menopause experiences and some tips for regulating emotions. 

If you are interested in learning more about Joie:

For a free consultation 
https://joieseldon.com/

Joie's book - Emotions: An Owner's Manual 
https://tinyurl.com/EmotionsOwnersManual

Erin is the creator and host of Menopause Chats. She is also a somatic and intuitive coach who helps women in the in-between live with more magic and intention through her signature approach The 5 Cs of Becoming Her. More information at: www.pauseandalign.com

The stories shared in Menopause Chats are not intended as medical advice, but for information and entertainment. Please seek a medical professional for specific advice regarding your menopause journey. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hi everyone, welcome to Menopause Chat. I am very honored today to have our guest. So Joy is joining us today, who um is gonna chat with us a little bit about um her experience with uh menopause. So thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Glad to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

And uh so yeah, tell us a little bit about your journey.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Well, I I will say that I've been kind of waiting 20 years to talk about this. Um I'm 76 now, so it's been a while since I went through menopause, but it was such a powerful and significant experience in my life. And at that time, uh nobody was talking about it at all. So it was a shock uh to get into it and discover things that happened. And I learned a lot about myself and things that I I would love to be able to pass on to other people and in support because it is such a powerful experience that all women go through.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Yeah, yeah, if we're lucky enough, right? Yes, if we're lucky enough to make it this far, uh, you know, we'll experience it. And yeah, I think you're right. I think there's a little bit of a shift in, I feel like my I'm in Gen X, and you know, I think the Gen X generation is is really being like at the forefront of like, no, we're talking about this. We're not being silent about it. Nobody told me about this. What's happening? Um I appreciate that you know my co my counterparts are also there's you know, contemporaries are also speaking out. Um, because like you know, I'll ask my mom, like, how was your experience? And you know, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

And you know, my mother had a nervous breakdown. Oh my uh and when she went through it, and but nobody talked about it. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

You know, I maybe even said it was because of that, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Because it was related to somehow I figured it out, but I don't remember there being a direct conversation, certainly not from my mother uh about what happened.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

And probably not from her doctor.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Uh uh yeah, well, not even my doctor.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Right.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

I mean, when I when I was new, something was going something's not right, and I was um very emotional, and something just felt really off. And I went for my annual gynecological visit, and I had a woman doctor, and she gave me some hormone tests and said, Oh yeah, you're you're uh you're in perimenopause. That was it.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

See you later.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

That was it, see you later, exactly. And I left the appointment and I kind of went, Well, what does that mean? And I was, you know, kind of clueless enough at the time to not ask. And then I started doing research and I talked to my own doctor about it, and she put me on hormone replacement, but it was estrogen and progesterone, which was great for a while. It really did make a difference, but then after time, I started every time I took the progesterone, I felt like I was losing my mind. And in fact, even before I I got went on to anything, the first thing I did was that I started having margaritas at five o'clock in the afternoon. I don't know why it helped. I don't know why, but it was like I just started craving, and I wasn't like I was used to drinking on a daily basis or anything, but I just was craving a margarita, and so I that's where I started with um calming myself. Uh, but then eventually I did get on hormone replacement, and it helped for quite a while.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

And wouldn't that have been around the time where it was still a little controversial to be it?

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Yeah, well, it wasn't it wasn't that common, and then there was the uh primarin, I think it was called, and it was like I didn't want to take that, it was taken from cow something, or I think it was that horse urine, was it those horse urine, or you know, and it's like and I did discover bio-identical hormones, so that's what I was willing to go on. Yeah, but then every time I took the progesterone, I felt like I was losing my mind, and I started looking for a different gynecologist because I just like my gynecologist, no, you have to take both. And I finally I went through three gynecologists before I found a male gynecologist, and he took me off of the pills and put me on a patch, adjust the estrogen, and I was fine. And when I went back to my regular doctor, who was not not a gynecologist, but my regular doctor, and she was like, You can't do that, you know. And later on, there was a big, huge study done that showed that because she thought you would have you would end up be susceptible to having cancer or heart issues.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

Right, and I that's what I was thinking is that study in particular, which now they've shown to be it's was flawed. It was flawed at the time that was like it caused a generation of folks to not go on any sort of hormones at all at that time.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Right. And and uh yeah, it was a very interesting. So this is part of my thing that I was really interested in being uh on your show, is that it is to help women to really take charge of their own experience and to trust themselves and to really, you know, get to know your body. And there's other things too that I want to talk about, but that was one that I thought was so important, and that in society I was I was so angry when this all started happening because no one had ever talked to me about it, and we weren't taught about our bodies as women. I mean, I was thrown in the fourth grade into a class about menstruation and pregnancy, not even knowing anything because I was physically developed for my age. Uh, but they nobody, you know, really talked to me about it. They just had me watch this video. My mother never talked to me about it. So I think it was just so much of a taboo, uh, especially in certain cultures. Um, and so that's so I think it's great that there is more about it now, and I think there needs to be even more because it is uh a very powerful experience. And when I was having hot flashes and I was in an elevator sweating, and this woman turned to me and said, There are power surges.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

And that helped a lot that helped a lot.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

You're like, thank you. Thank you for that.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

Um, when you say like learning to be in charge of your own experience, what does that look like for you? Or what what advice would you give to folks?

SPEAKER_01 6:50

Well, one is to to trust that whatever you're going on in your body is happening for a reason, but don't just take somebody because they are a doctor, that they are the authority. You know, we have a culture, especially in the West, where whoever's the authority in the room, we kind of tend to, especially when we've been trained to give over our power to the authority, whether it's a man or a woman, but to question it and to do your own research. And so I did a lot of research. We, you know, back then we didn't have quite as much available to us as we do now, and now there's a lot, and to see what's out there, because we need to be able to trust our own sensibility and to recognize that not everybody knows everything, even if they are educated in that field, and so it was that was one thing, and the other had to do with the emotional experience that I had that was profound because I did have a huge amount of anger. Um, and fortunately, I was together enough at that age, finally, that I knew how to behave in public. I wasn't out, you know, yelling at people in the streets or anything, but I certainly felt like it. Um, and my husband, and I I didn't yell at him, but he would, God bless him, he was a witness to quite a few spewings uh in private. And what I came to realize is that when we go through such a big hormonal change, and it's not just a hormonal change, it is a profound change in our role of who we are as women in the world. And when we're going through that change, it's going to bring up what's underneath the surface. And for me, it was a lot of buried anger over the years. Uh, I was a good girl growing up, and I was taught to behave. And even though I felt very disconnected from my family, I had a lot of that conditioning of the culture that I grew up and very conservative. And um, and I was you know horrified that anybody would see all of the stuff that was in me, and so I started learning how to be present with my anger and not just being spewing, not just going into a raging fit over something, but to recognize maybe this is a symptom of something deeper. And so I intentionally started journaling. Uh, I I learned some tools and techniques about how to express my anger. I actually went on retreat and spent a few days in a place where I could be with myself and in nature, and I had learned to do this meditation where I would picture people across from me or situations across from me, and and I would imagine them there, and then I would just express whatever it is that I felt like expressing with all of the energy. I was fortunately in a place where I could do that out loud, and um, it's good to do it out loud, uh, to get that out through your voice, because your voice is really important. And when we go through menopause and we're going into our later years, and there's a lot of them, thank God. For me, there has been, and many more to come, but where I can be expressing myself and contributing to the world, and I had to move through the all the anger that I had, and a lot of it was around the conditioning that I had to go through as a female in our society that says that as a woman you are liberated and you are free, but but in truth didn't have the power and didn't have the authority through society's eyes to be able to express my opinion. And so getting a place where I could express my anger and with the intention to release it, you know, with harm to none, I would start the meditation with harm to none so that I could get that out at my family, my parents individually, uh, society, at God at one point. I was expressing some energy there. And um, and it was liberating, and it taught me a lot about how to be present and honor the anger that I had because it was there for a reason.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

And it sounds like such a powerful tool. I know for myself, like anytime I avoid anger is not something that I normally have, but like, you know, frustration or fears or worries, worries and fears are more of my my uh on my plate, but expressing them out loud, it sort of helps to diffuse them or give them less power, you know, like if but keeping them in my head helps me ruminate on them, not on you know, but expressing them out loud, whether it's to no one, to a journal, um, but out loud still, or to you know, to my husband or to a friend, it really does kind of it's for me is like help sort of like almost dissipate it, you know.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

It it does dissipate it because emotions and and I got very involved in learning about emotions.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

I was just gonna ask you how this informed your work.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

It was part, yeah. I mean, I was already, I was already on the path of personal growth and recognizing that I was a very emotional person. I'm a highly sensitive person, and uh it really informed me of the power of expressing our feelings. I have actually ultimately became a somatic therapist and then an emotion educator. I have created a whole system about uh experiencing and being present and self-aware around emotions and then expressing them. And what I've come to really believe and understand is that emotions are an information system and they happen through sensations in the body that communicate to us through our body. So when we're feeling anger, we know it's very different than fear, because each of these emotions have a very specific purpose or message, core message that they're bringing. And so when we can feel them and express them in a safe environment, which may be journaling, it may be out loud with yourself or with a therapist or good friends or a partner that you have that safety with, it releases that energy. And sometimes we don't fully understand it until we speak it. And when we speak it, we can have awarenesses, we can have uh recognitions of, oh, this is this anger I'm feeling. I thought it was about what that person did, but what I realize as I speak it out loud, uh, there is a conditioning from my past that tells me there's something wrong with me. And that's what I'm really angry about. Because there's nothing wrong with me, there's just this belief.

SPEAKER_00 14:15

Yeah. Well, that's what I've always heard too is like, you know, people someone can't make you angry. Like you are reacting to something, right? Like it's not like this person, they may have done something, you know, people do stuff, but like it's really about your reaction to the things that they've done.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

Yes. And it's it it is also a boundary setter. One of the ways when, you know, but because a lot um I I really believe that we also use anger as a coping mechanism in a way, as a way to diffuse other feelings, you may feel powerless or you may feel shame or some other difficult feeling. And the anger is there as a kind of defense against that feeling.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

My go to humor. That's you know, if same purpose, but humor.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Uh uh, yes, humor is very helpful.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

I don't know. Well, I mean, not if you're using it to mask.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

No, not if you use always a mask, yes, exactly. Yeah, so this is there's a difference between what I call defensive anger and clean anger. And clean anger is that that energy that comes out that says, no, this is not okay with me. So when I got angry when I was in menopause, I was saying no to society that says my body and my value as a person is not equal to men or to authority, or you know, we've been told we're equal, but we have not been treated equal, and we're still not fully treated equally, right? So that anger that comes up and says, no, that is a healthy form of anger, but we have to be in tune with ourselves inside to recognize is that what's really happening, or is there some part of me that feels scared or that feels shame and I don't like that feeling? And so I'm getting angry as a defense against that.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

Oh, I remember what the quote was. Someone said, Do you no one could no one can drive you crazy unless you give them the keys?

SPEAKER_01 16:26

Ah, yes, yes, and it is about a sense of autonomy and our own self-authority and our own self-leadership. That I think is something that's very important for women to be able to develop.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

Yeah. And I think, you know, hopefully people because I think also uh back when you were going through menopause, even well, it depends because where you live it might have been okay. But like, you know, I grew up out east and it, you know, like therapy, nobody like you didn't talk about going to therapy, people don't get help. Nowadays, and particularly when I lived in California, I used to joke that like in California, people are you know, like in other parts of the country, it's like, oh, you have a therapist, what's wrong with you? And in California, they're like, you don't have a therapist, what's wrong with you? So for me, you know, it's like I think there's the stigma even around seeking out help has also gone away, which is helpful. Then people learn how to better manage their emotions better. Um, and I've always heard the phrase of sort of like emotions or energy in motion. And you've mentioned that it's like it's something in, it needs your somatic therapy, probably talks about the, you know, yeah, making sure you're moving that through and not because if you keep it in, it's gonna manifest somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

It will, it will show up as illness or accidents or dysfunctional behavior, it will show up because it's still hanging around waiting for you to acknowledge it, because it's there to serve you. It's there to serve you.

SPEAKER_00 17:58

And um, so if people are dealing with anger, because certainly it comes up in these conversations that you know, through the menopause, because that's certainly menopause rage can come up for for folks. Um again, wasn't my experience, but again, I you know, everybody's experiences are unique. Totally menopause snowflake, you know, everything's just that everyone's completely different. But it's you know, there are some things that some more that show up, I guess, more often than others. So if someone's feeling that sort of menopause rage, what would be your recommendation to them for um helping to acknowledge it, you know, and and and move it through the body?

SPEAKER_01 18:39

Right. Okay. Because it is physical, it is a it is a physical sensation. Well, certainly the the expressing it in a safe way, journal writing or someone you trust as a friend where you can express the energy of it, but also to just be able to be in charge of your own physical experience. And one of the tools I love to teach is uh it's called the three balls technique, where you simply put your attention on the balls of your feet. And when in in uh qigang, uh there's a premise that where your attention goes, so goes your energy. So if it is energy in motion, which I believe it is, it's it's contracting like fear and anger are contracting emotions. A joy is an outward moving energy, uh, so it's it's about what kind of flow that is. Sadness may also come up, and that's also in moving inward, but it's a slower vibration. So to come into your body and to be able to calm your nervous system so that you can be more present with whatever it is that's going on in the message. If you put your attention on the balls of your feet, it will start to pull the energy down because when we're when we're in our thing, we're all up in here, and your ovaries. If you were manna would say testicles, but since we're talking to women here, and your ovaries, so you put your attention on your ovaries, and you can even do this right now as you're listening, and then your eyeballs, so it's not efforting, but it's just an awareness of your eyeballs, awareness of your ovaries, and the balls of your feet. And when you do that, what you're doing is you're allowing the flow of energy grounding with your feet, connecting to your power center, or what's called the Dantien and the martial arts, below the belly, or below the belly button, down in that lower part of your where your ovaries are, and then your eyeballs, so you you're in your mind state of awareness, but not spinning in your brain, and it connects this whole so that you're a whole person, and when you can calm your nervous system in this simple way, then you can be present with the vibration or the energy. Is that anger still there? If it is, what is that saying? It might, you know, hormones are hormones, and they're gonna have an effect on your emotions. Is this just in a hormonal thing, or is there something else in me that wants to be expressed?

SPEAKER_00 21:35

Yeah, and it's uh what I like about that practice is you can do it anywhere, and people don't necessarily know you're doing it, right? Exactly. It doesn't require a lot, you know. It's it's like if you're in a meeting and someone you know you get sort of triggered by something somebody said, it's like you don't even have to be standing, you can sit and do this.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

Exactly. That's one of the things I love about it too. And even if you can't quite get to the whole thing, if you just feel your feet on the ground, the balls of your

SPEAKER_00 22:00

feet your feet in your shoes putting that a bit of awareness on that will help the energy to start to flow yeah yeah I I always uh I'll tell people like to have like a rock or something something they can like be tactile with right like to get yourself out of your head of like at least or stress ball whatever like something that's like tactile I have crystals yeah I do too but I was like crystals I have stones uh yes yes um I have they're like it's they're just on the other side of the um but like and the tactile thing there's a thing called um I'm just learning about positive intelligence and one of the things that they teach is you know when you're when you're stressed and when you're worried or whatever you just come into something that's tactile that will and that what that does is it pulls the attention away from that spinning brain. Yeah one of someone else I follow is talks about um like just looking around the room and naming five things like again you're getting yourself out of that like your mind spinning it's like okay I see a picture I see you know the heater just to be like okay and just which is just enough you know to it's a pivot baby shift yep it's a pivot from going down the down that it can be so easy to do that you know especially with all the stuff happening in our world right now it can be really really easy to just keep going down that which doesn't help us right exactly exactly I mean and and you can't stop an emotion you can't control your emotions you can't stop them from happening but you can be in dominion of your own experience of them because they're not meant to run the show. You know they're not meant to be in charge they're there as a servant and sometimes it's the reframe right it's the oh it's a power surge versus a hock clash right yeah I love like I've had people tell me this like the idea of like excitement and um nervousness like are the same feel like your body feels it the same way but one has more of a negative connotation and one has more of a positive you know like oh I'm excited about this versus like oh I'm nervous about this.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

Well just what you just did excitement is outward moving energy and fear is inward moving energy. And fear see this is this labeling of emotions as negative is something I'm on a mission to dispel. Okay great I'm glad I'm giving you this opportunity because when we call something when we label it as negative we don't want anything to do with it. We don't want it we don't want to experience it. The emotion itself is not negative it's our inability to manage it to cope with it to understand it or to regulate it that creates a negative experience it's not the emotion itself that is negative and so I really harp on this in my classes and in what my sounds like I need to sign up for it now is just it's like and so that because we if we the more we can learn to be present with all of our emotions the more wisdom we have because our emotions are they're they're directly connected to our intuition they are there for a purpose a beneficial purpose fear and anger are our survival emotions we need fight or flight we if you're in a situation where your life is threatened you need to be able to act faster than you can think so we need these these this response at the ready at all times but in our daily life for most of us thank god although for many more in the world right now their life is threatened or their livelihood is threatened so it's totally natural and beneficial for that emotion to come up you just don't want the emotion to control the situation you want to go oh yeah I'm feeling fear I need to pay attention that's fear's primary message when your life is not threatened is pay attention anger's message is somebody's crossed a boundary something some boundary has been crossed we need to stop this so each of these core emotions have some kind of fundamental message for you and then it's your um role your job uh to be in charge of that so you can make a conscious choice about what you're gonna do about that situation that's where our power lies thank you thank you for that reframe of like no it's not negative it's just it it just is it it is it just is yeah and my reaction to it might be negative my reaction to it and and again in that judgment gets in our way the judgment of the emotion shouldn't feel this and then should you know that's yeah oh I I shouldn't be angry I mean I grew up in a household where you know anger wasn't not you know that's why I had a pre-ulcer stomach in elementary school yeah and I got in the habit of suppressing that anger so once started to come out it terrified me I was terrified of my own anger you were the good girl right like good girl don't get angry would be heard and you would be seen and oh yeah yeah yeah so it it it it it took a while but thank god I I you know I made a commitment to it just like joy I didn't know how to be joyful either it's not just like oh you know I don't call joy a negative emotion but I didn't know how to be joyful because I was so suppressed I was a very serious person too I had to train myself because um the thing is change is uncomfortable and we get in habits of behaving so even if you want to change a habit to something more beneficial it's easy to resist that because the shift into it can be uncomfortable even though it's a more positive choice. Because those pathways are so embedded it's like oh I've traveled down the throat all the time you know exactly our neuronal pathways our uh you know our whole body's nervous system we get trained and trained we've trained it whether we like whether we realize it or not yeah um anything else you want to share um with with our viewers listeners um I I just want all the everyone listening um to to embrace yourself you know don't judge yourself or whatever those experiences are we go through natural transformations in life and uh looking back I look how much time I wasted when I was younger being critical of myself and being judgmental of myself and of course other people too I'm you know no saint but just you and me both you know be kind to yourself be loving to yourself and ask for help when you need it and then if people are interested in learning more about what you do how can they find you um I I have a website is my name joyseldon.com and you see it's joie changed it from joy to joie because joy j o y was too much pressure when I was young and uh and I do have a book called Emotions and Owner's Manual uh came out of all my own journey and a lot of study and and working with clients it's a workbook it's informational it's on Amazon you can get it in Kindle Audible print whatever and it it's a great resource it's a great resource to have so and I'll and if you want to reach out to me I offer free consultations uh for anyone that's interested in learning more so you can find me through my website.

SPEAKER_00 30:17

That's great and I'll put that in the uh YouTube notes so people will see that as well so thank you so much for being around just sharing all your information around like how how we may have a little more agency over uh our experiences. I love that word agency yes thank you lovely to be here yeah great and so thank you all for uh watching listening uh please feel free to comment to share this with others if you're interested in being a guest please reach out I am happy to um chat with you uh otherwise have a wonderful rest of your day