Menopause and hypnosis: for fewer symptoms
Menopause: almost every woman will experience it between the ages of 45 and 55. Everyone knows the stories of hot flashes, but there are many more symptoms you can suffer from during menopause. In addition, you may also have psychological symptoms that can make it a difficult period in your life.
To help make menopause an easier time, in this blog I discuss how hypnosis can help reduce symptoms
What is menopause?
Menopause is the period when a woman goes from fertile to infertile. The ovaries then produce less estrogen and progesterone, which are two hormones you need for fertility.
If you have not had a period naturally for a year, you are officially in menopause. It usually begins around your 50th year of life, but for some women it can also begin around age 40. When menopause begins depends on your genes, so ask your mother to check roughly when you can expect menopause.
What symptoms are associated with menopause
Menopause isn’t something that happens overnight. First, you enter a sort of pre-menopause phase, called perimenopause, during which your cycle becomes irregular. During this period, you may also experience hot flashes.
You can still get pregnant then.
Then you get menopause, when you haven't had your period for 1 year. Also during this period, you get hot flashes and:
- Vaginal dryness
- Night sweats
- Sleeping poorly
- Lower libido
- Muscle pain
- Weight Change
- Mood swings
- Irritability
How can hypnosis help
You would think that nature won't let itself help, but fortunately nothing could be further from the truth. Sure, we can't speed up or slow down menopause with hypnosis, but hypnosis does help you deal with the symptoms in a different way that makes you suffer less.
Hypnosis against physical symptoms
Physical symptoms, such as hot flashes and night sweats can be made less severe with hypnosis. This can be done in the following way.
Hot flashes
Hypnosis has been proven effective against hot flashes. This has been studied at the University of Texas, in which 75% of women with hot flashes who listened to a recording with hypnosis techniques did not suffer from the hot flashes afterwards.
The women then often get visualizations of a cool place that makes you less bothered by the heat. Imagine walking through a snowstorm in winter with the fresh, cold air blowing in your face. Then you immediately feel a little less hot.
Night sweats
Night sweats are super annoying, it makes your bedding damp so sometimes you just change your bed completely in the middle of the night. Not useful if you still want to get your 8 hours of sleep because you really do have to work the next day.
The same visualizations as against hot flashes can also be used against night sweats, as this often follows a hot flash.
Sexual change (vaginal dryness)
Less desire for sex, amplified by vaginal dryness, is quite normal when you are in menopause, but it can cause several problems. You may feel less of a woman because of it or have problems with it in other ways.
In that case, hypnosis can also help. Before receiving hypnosis treatment, you’ll often have an initial consultation with the hypnosis specialist to determine what beliefs you hold about your vagina and how it’s supposed to function.
Multiple techniques can then be used to suffer less from vaginal dryness and to accept that the body now functions differently.
Muscle pain
Muscle pain is incredibly annoying, especially when you don’t really have a reason to be experiencing it. You haven’t worked out, you haven’t gone cycling, and yet you still have muscle pain. Hypnosis helps you reduce muscle pain by changing your beliefs about pain in combination with visualizations.
In this visualization, you often visualize a dial or slider that allows you to turn down the pain, similar to the volume of your stereo.
This technique does take practice, but combined with changing beliefs, it often works well to reduce pain.
Hypnosis Against Mental Illness
Hypnosis thus helps against physical complaints and against psychological complaints. The psychological complaints are often caused by tensions in the body that can re-enforce emotions and/or by beliefs you have about yourself and the world.
Sleeping poorly
Poor sleep is incredibly frustrating. You feel as groggy as can be during the day, and it makes you even more stressed when you don’t sleep well again the following night. Grogginess and stress also lead to more mistakes at work.
Hypnosis can help improve your sleep in several ways. Especially if you get anxious at night because you see the clock ticking another hour away, it’s important to stay relaxed.
For this, you can do relaxation exercises guided by visualization.
Change of identity
Your identity is shaped by all sorts of factors: your appearance, the work you do, and how your body functions. In some cases, menopause can make you feel as though your body no longer reflects who you are.
For example, you may feel beautiful, but because of beliefs about how the world works, you think you’re less beautiful once you’re no longer fertile. In that case, hypnotic suggestions can help alleviate your distress and enable you to better accept yourself as you are now.
You then repeat these suggestions during self-hypnosis, allowing you to be more quickly unaffected by your identity change or even believe that your identity actually stays the same regardless of how your body functions.
These may include suggestions such as:
"The functioning of my vagina says nothing about who or what I am."
"People around me accept me as I am."
"I am good at my job."
"I am still who I am."
Depending on your beliefs about who you are and how the world works, you may receive different suggestions from the hypnosis specialist.
Fear of growing old
Getting old it's part of life. Many people think of growing old as being closer to death, but you can also think that you have reached the next level in your life.
How many people manage to reach the age of 50 at all? Of course the majority of people succeed, but it is still an extraordinary achievement. You have never been fatally injured, you have always had sufficient resources to take care of yourself, and with every problem you have overcome you have accumulated life points, so to speak.
Still, you may also have a fear of growing old because you think your environment will react differently to you.
One way hypnosis can help with this anxiety is by visualizing how you can influence that environment. This also increases the chances that your fears will not come true at all.
Annoyance
Those keys your partner always loses, that shirt your child wants washed before going out again, the whining of the neighbor kids. You will all care. Your partner also has eyes to look for and your child just needs to wash the favorite shirt himself.
You will be annoyed much more often, and that in itself is not surprising, because those hormones that have always made you so caring are no longer doing their job.
Anger
This can also cause anger, because you have always done your best for your family and only now do you notice that your family is really making you do everything (maybe lol). This can make you angry and is hard to let go of.
If you find it exciting to address your family members on this, hypnosis can also help you reduce this fear. This can be done with visualizations and repeating hypnotic suggestions that help you with your confidence in yourself and your family, such as:
"My family supports me."
"I may ask for help."
Mood swings and depression
Hormonal changes can also cause mood swings. Feelings of happiness, irritation, and anger can alternate rapidly, and because you now assess situations differently than when under the influence of hormones, you may even become depressed.
Several studies show that hypnosis can support the treatment of depression. This is because depression is often treated with cognitive behavioral therapy. The techniques used in that therapy can also be applied while you are under hypnosis.
Would you like to learn more about how hypnosis works and how it can help you and others? Then come to an event or sign up for one of our training programs. Or sign up for the free masterclass to get started.
Have a question about the training? Schedule a 1-on-1 consultation here.
Also pin this handy infographic as a reminder:
Sources:
https://www.webmd.com/menopause/news/20121025/hypnosis_halts_hot_flashes#1