Menopause & Attachment Styles: Why Old Childhood Wounds Flare Up in Midlife

Ever wondered why your emotions suddenly feel louder, your patience thinner, and old childhood wounds are resurfacing as you move through midlife? In this episode, I sit down with attachment and menopause specialist Bev Mitelman to connect the dots between hormonal shifts, stress tolerance, and the emotional legacies we carry.

We break down why perimenopause and menopause can hit like a freight train, not just physically, but emotionally. Most of all, we unpack how your attachment style (secure, anxious, avoidant, or fearful) influences how you respond to relationships, stress, and change at this stage of life.

If you’re feeling burned out, less like yourself, or find yourself blurting things you regret or feeling unexplained relationship tensions, this episode shines a compassionate light on what’s really going on and what you can do about it.

 5 Key Lessons:

1. Attachment styles aren’t your identity; they’re learned patterns, and you can unlearn and rewire them, even in midlife.
2. Menopause isn’t just hot flashes; it’s a complex, decade-long process with over 30 real symptoms, many emotional and often dismissed.
3. Sleep disturbances, anxiety, burnout, and irritability can be hormonally-driven, not just “life stress,” and you deserve real support.
4. Emotional regulation is possible: pausing for 90 seconds, moving, or stating “I need a moment” can radically improve your relationships.
5. This season of life is a chance for rebirth, an opportunity to tackle old wounds, rediscover what you want, and create the best version of yourself.

 Music:  

Title: Relax by SyncLabMusic

 Call to Action: 

Want to dive deeper into emotional regulation, attachment styles, and real support for menopause? Like, share, and comment, and don’t forget to subscribe for weekly episodes designed to help you thrive. Find helpful resources by clicking the links below!

 📕 Resources: 

https://createthebestme.com/ep154

Take the Attachment Quiz: https://mailchi.mp/securelyloved/quiz

Connect with Bev Mitelman: https://securelyloved.com

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https://www.buzzsprout.com/1949561/episodes/18550342 

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Transcript

0:00

If you've ever gone to the doctor in your forties with real symptoms anxiety, brain fog, sleep issues, feeling like you're not yourself and you got the classic advice, it's just stress. Get more sleep. You're going to feel seen today because my guess is the kind of expert who will look at you and say, " Okay, and which child should I get rid of?" Yes. She actually says a version of that, and we'll get into it. Today we're talking about something that hits a lot of women in midlife, like a freight train. Why emotions feel so intense in perimenopause and menopause. And why old attachment wounds can suddenly flare up and feel like they were never healed at all. My guess is Bev Mitelman, the founder of Securely Loved. Bev specializes in helping women navigate the intersection of attachment, trauma, emotional health, and menopause. So we're going to connect the dots between what is happening in your body and what is happening, in your nervous system. And keep watching because before we wrap up, Bev is going to give you a simple, in the moment reset. A way to stop yourself from blurting something you can't take back. And the exact sentence you can use to pause an argument without shutting your partner down. Okay, let's get into it now. Bev Mitelman, welcome to Create The Best Me. I am super, super excited to have you on the show. Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here with you and your audience. So before we get into today's important discussion, could you please tell the listeners and viewers a little bit about who you are and what you do? Sure. I'm a relationship and attachment trauma practitioner. Which means that I work with people who, are dealing with attachment trauma from their childhood. Usually experiencing emotional overwhelm. And I help them regain emotional balance through healing these wounds that they would have acquired through their earliest years in life. And I'm pretty sure you get asked this question a lot. What made you decide to become a therapist? Yeah, it's such a great question. So, I've always worked in the realm of personal growth and professional development my entire career. And at the time I was going through some personal struggles. And I had been to different therapy, different modalities. I hadn't really figured out what was my core reasons for why I was feeling the way I was thinking and behaving the way I was until I found attachment theory. So for me, it was so incredibly important in my healing that I thought other people need to know about this. And so my focus is there. And I do work, quite a bit, particularly with women, and families, and couples who are in the forties, fifties range. And we all know at this point that that is when women are experiencing a significant amount of change usually in terms of life responsibilities, physical change, hormonal changes, all sorts of things. So, I do have a subspecialty also as a menopause specialist. And it works well because again, so many of my clients are in that particular age group that come to me. And we as a society, have just started to talk about menopause. But what we haven't really started to talk about is really how does this impact us on an emotional front? And so, I do a lot of that work where appropriate, of course, underpinning the attachment trauma work as well. And that is exactly why I invited you onto the show, is to talk about why in midlife do we feel so emotionally intense? And why is it that hormones and attachment styles tend to collide during that particular time? Yeah, it's such a great question. So in order to answer this properly, I have to kind of parse it out, if that's okay. I'm gonna talk a little bit about attachment styles, and then I'm gonna talk about a little bit about menopause and then the overlap there. So when we're talking about attachment styles, we're really talking about learned behavior. The way in which we form emotional bonds with other people, depending on what we learned, saw, felt, experienced in our earliest years. That creates a roadmap, a template for how we're gonna interact with ourselves and with others. Right? Our romantic partners, our friends, our colleagues, our neighbors, all of that. So your attachment style has a significant impact on your thoughts, your emotions, your communication style, your relationship to boundaries, and all of those good things that are needed for safe, healthy relationship. So in a nutshell when we talk about attachment styles, there's actually four different styles that we talk about. But if I take it a step above; there's two broad categories. We talk about people who are securely attached and people who are insecurely attached. Well, the first thing is someone who is securely attached, generally speaking in broad strokes; they experienced a fair degree of emotional attunement from their caregivers. They felt love, consistency, predictability. They were taught about their emotions. They were taught how to emodes and communicate. And they generally are emotionally regulated for the most part. These are people who generally gravitate towards long-term relationships. They do a good job in terms of being independent and also interdependent with their partner. So, that's sort of the utopia that we strive for, right? And nobody's perfect and we all have things we can learn, but that's generally the pattern of someone who's securely attached. Then we have people who are insecurely attached, and that is the cohort of people that did not get consistent emotional attunements, predictability. They didn't learn about their emotions. They didn't learn about boundaries. Communication wasn't encouraged in their families. And so they come out of their home of origin with a very different lens and a very different template when they enter into adulthood. So when a child doesn't get that emotional attunement from their parents, and there are many, many scenarios that we can talk about. Maybe there are too many children in the home. Maybe one parent has a mental illness or an addiction or has to go away for work or is neglectful of the child, or abuse. There are so many ways in which we can be emotionally disconnected from people. So these children grow up and they usually adopt one of two different strategies. One, they either become anxiously attached or they become avoidantly attached. There are some people that become a mixture of both avoidantly and anxiously, and those people in the middle; we generally call them the fearful avoidance or the disorganized detacher. So all three of these, the anxious preoccupied, the dismissive avoidance, or the fearful avoidance, they're all subcategories under the insecurely attached umbrella. So that makes up our four. We have the secure, the anxious preoccupied, the fearful avoidance, and then the dismissive avoidance. And so this is really what we're working with in adulthood is, the patterns that we develop as very young, very young children for how to interrelate with other people. I'm gonna take a pause there.'Cause like, that was a whole mouthful. It was.'Cause I'm wondering; you talked about the being the in-betweener, where you can either be here or be there. I interpret it as being really needy or very isolated. Yeah. So, you're kind of really on the money here. So the idea here is, is that, if we look at the anxious preoccupied, they generally would've experienced a parent who was inconsistent, not predictable. Meaning that they would've experienced some love in childhood and known that that felt really good. But they also would've experienced sharp moments where the parent took that love away, and that is extremely painful. And in order to soothe that pain, they then chase after the parent to regain that love. Now, how do they do this? They people please. They turn themselves into very congenial people. They do everything their parents say. They become perfect in every way. Perfectionism. They're star students and athletes. They become high performers, all because they're trying to get the attention of their parents, because it feels terrible to lose that attention. Now that child who experiences that, they grow up into the world and they become, as you're describing, the people pleasers. They're the ones that say yes to everything. Because they grew up with a core wound of, we see different wounds, but I will be abandoned. I am unlikable. I am unlovable. I will be excluded. All of these things that they have experienced in their childhood sort of brings them into adulthood with that lens. And so, as I mentioned earlier, all of these, it's folks who are in the insecure attachment styles. They are not emotionally regulated, not because there's anything wrong with them, but because they never learned how to emotionally regulate. They never learned about their nervous system or how to communicate in a way that was effective. Most of the time what they were experiencing was their parents who was emotionally dysregulated responding to them. And so why does this matter? I'm gonna tie it all together in a bit because when we talk about emotional dysregulation and then we talk about why is it so hard for women as they go through this transition into menopause a lot of it has to do with the fact that you're not starting from this sort of solid foundation. So, these people outside of menopause, these people have much more difficulties with relationships. They generally have problems with their family. Like they're not speaking to this one, or they're not speaking to that one. They have problems in their romantic relationships. They can have problems with their neighbors. They don't do well in the workplace. They carry a lens that's very damaging in terms of how they see the world. They don't have a level of safety in the world. Which is so different from someone who is securely attached. So, that's the anxious, preoccupied person. And then you mentioned the sort of isolation, that's far more the dismissive avoidant person. The dismissive avoidant person, they would've likely experienced either enmeshment or neglect. And what this means is that yes, they were likely given a warm bed to sleep in and three meals a day, but very little emotional attunement, very little attention, very little validation. When something hurt their feelings, they were left alone a lot to deal with it. And they developed an attitude of, I can't rely on anyone else. No one's coming to save me. It's me, myself, and I. And so they develop these sort of walls, these protective measures, because for them, the idea of vulnerability and letting someone else into their space feels really threatening. It feels unsafe. And so what I'm talking about here is, is that as a result of not getting that healthy emotional attunement from a parent. Both of these groups of people develop these maladaptations, these strategies, these behaviors for how they're going to navigate into the world. And it impacts, as I've said, almost everything, the relationship that you have to yourself and also to all the other people who are in your life. Now, have you met people that you would consider to be more avoidant or more anxiously attached? I have. And I think it's because, when I think about like myself, I'm in my fifties;

when I grew up, there was that term: 13:46

children should be seen and not heard. Mm-hmm. You and I are of the same generation. I'm turning 50 in a month. So I grew up in that generation too. And I will tell you that I spent my whole life as a fearful avoidance; that category in the middle. And it took a lot of introspection and a lot of work to realize that the behaviors that I was carrying forward as a 40-year-old, 45, 50-year-old, I was still carrying them forward as if I was operating like I was three years old, living in my house of origin. Which I say this in jest because obviously I'm not. But as humans, we all do this. We forget that we can update like our operating system. So, so yes, this was a very common parenting strategy back when we were growing up. You know, children are to be seen and not heard. And it's very damaging to not see a child. And so I would venture a guess that you did all sorts of things to try to get the attention of your parents. Maybe you overperformed? I was the over performer. It's especially; so when you, I always say this human behavior is really predictive. It's not that difficult to actually, there's very specific patterns that emerge. A child cannot survive, like a child under five cannot survive without the connection to their caregiver. The connection to their caregivers, everything for them. They are the sun, the moon, the stars, everything. I used to think my father made the sun come out in the morning, like literally. So, when that connection is fragile or it's broken, or it's threatened to be broken, the child panics. And rightfully so, because it is threatening their survival. The child knows that if I cannot reconnect in a healthy way to my caregiver, that this is highly threatening to me. And so they will go through a series of strategies, behaviors, to gain the attention, love approval, validation, reassurance from the caregiver. And yeah, perfectionism is a very, very common one, especially if you grow up in the area of not to be heard. You were often running, chasing after love based on your achievement. Which I don't need to tell you as a 50-year-old woman, what happens is, is that you grow up believing that your worth is based on what you achieve. And I see lots of women in their late thirties to mid forties that are just burnt out. And because they're still operating under the, I gotta, I gotta go, go, go, go, go. Because if I stop and I take a rest and I do something that's good for me, I'm not earning my worth. Exactly. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And I think that that leads us into the next part is when we've been doing this, we're starting to feel a little burned out, A little. But then a little and then our bodies start doing something different as far as hormonals. Yeah, yeah. And all of this happens kind of at the same time to create this storm. So if we look at the trajectory of sort of the average, we'll say 40-year-old, at that point in time, the average 40-year-old usually has an established career, and or financial obligations. Like most people, they usually have a family that they are taking care of, which could include elderly parents, it could include other siblings, it could include children, it could include a spouse. And then at the same time, there are these hormonal changes that start happening. And so that constellation, that storm of things that's happening can be really, really difficult for women. Especially women who, as we're talking about, have always been high performers, high achievers. Because that's again, the strategy that they use to earn love. And when they can't achieve the same way, it starts to be really impactful on their emotions. So I'm so glad that we're now talking about menopause much more openly than we ever were. I think that many people still don't understand that menopause is a transitional state that can last for up to a decade for some women. It's actually called perimenopause. Some people will be surprised to know that menopause is actually one day; it's one magical day in our life when it's been 12 months since we had our last period. And for many women, they have no idea when their last period was. So the day comes and goes and am I now post-menopause? We laugh about it because there's a silliness behind some of the terminology. But for most women, they will start to experience a change in their ovarian reserve around 40. It can happen for some women earlier, like around 35, 38. But by 40, we're gonna start to see some changes. But this here is a list of 34 different symptoms that women will experience in perimenopause. When I was growing up, to me menopause was something that happened to women when they were 60 and they had a hot flash. And I thought, well, that doesn't sound so bad. It's, you get a little hot. Until you've actually had a hot flash, you don't realize just how frightening it could actually be; because all of a sudden the heat starts expelling from your body. You start to sweat. A lot of women will think they're having a heart attack, an anxiety attack. It's extremely uncomfortable. We don't wanna minimize that. But when you ask most people, what is menopause, they'll say a hot flash. So that's at the top over here. But these first here, the night sweats, the hot flash, the irregular periods and all of that, that actually happens in mid to late perimenopause. That's not really happening to the 40-year-old. Generally from 40 to 45, what's happening much more prevalently are the things that are in yellow here. The things that are in yellow are the symptoms that you can experience that are tied to your emotional health. What happens is that we go to our doctor and they say, well, it's because of stress. You have too much on your plate. You need more sleep. And I remember having a conversation with my doctor when I was like 42 and experiencing all these things; and I remember the doctor said, it's 'cause of stress. You need to reduce your stress. And I said, okay, well, I have two sons. Which one should I get rid of? I said, I have a full-time executive job, should I work part-time or should I just quit? Because we're so simplistic in giving advice out to women that it's just silly. So, one of the first things I want to talk about is sleep disturbances. So this shows up really, really early in perimenopause. Around the time that you're 40, 41, you'll start experiencing that. Anxiety, panic attacks, low mood or depression, brain fog, memory lapses. We love to laugh at our friends that walk into the room and go, I can't remember why I walked in, but that happens. The other day I left my condo and I forgot to take my purse. There's no woman who leaves her home and doesn't take her purse. This is like walking out without your shoes, right? Difficulty concentrating and then fatigue and low energy. These are the things that we start to see really, really early on. And most importantly down here; this here heightened stress sensitivity. Our resilience to stress really takes a hit. And the last thing that I wanna mention, number 34, but it's actually the symptom that shows up, typically the first: just not feeling like yourself. Mm-hmm. And so what does this all actually mean? When I work with women and they come to me whether it be for individual relationship counseling, they wanna work on their own trauma, or they're in couplehood they often say to me, I just don't feel like myself. Yes, I have a lot on my plate, but I had the same amount on my plate five years ago and I dealt with it better. So, during the early forties, when your hormones start to go into a state of I would say "chaos". It's like they're trying to stabilize as your body is adjusting to the fact that you have lower and lower ovarian reserves; of eggs. I'm not gonna go into the whole thing of it. But what happens is that your body starts cycling in an unpredictable way. Your estrogen, your progesterone, and even your testosterone is involved. And so you get a myriad of symptoms; as we talked about that are emotionally based. And so if we look at why is it so difficult for women in midlife; it's a combination of things. One, the lack of sleep. I think it's more than 50% of women will recognize that when they're going through that stage, they can't sleep. They're either having trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. And so if that was the only criteria we were looking at, we'd already have our answer for why people are crankier, less focused, less productive, because sleep is critically important. Mm-hmm. But, if you went to the doctor and you said, I have all these symptoms, all the ones you said in yellow. First thing they would ask you is how much sleep are you getting? And you would say, well, I only sleep this much. And maybe let's say hypothetically, you've always, because you've been a high performer, you've always slept six, five to six hours a day. But now you're in your forties and it's weighing you down. So they would not say it's perimenopause. They would say, you need to make sure you get more sleep and dismiss it. I think that's why we don't talk about menopause. Because it's always being dismissed. It's always being dismissed. I think I'm hopeful that things are getting better now. Why is it so difficult for women? Because they themselves can feel that something's different. Their level of patience wanes. Their ability to handle the same amount of stress that they once did is impacted. So estrogen does a very good job at keeping us focused on caregiving, nurturing, and giving to others. And the minute that the estrogen starts to drop there's like a veil that lifts. And we start to question, why am I the only one doing all of this? Why is no one helping me? Where is before we didn't question these things. Now, things like progesterone keeps our body naturally calm. So when that drops, we do see a spike in anxiety. We see the sleep problems as well. And so you compound all these changes that are happening. Going to the doctor and trying to get help and being dismissed, going back home and not tolerating the things that you once tolerated; it's really a recipe for a lot of failed relationships. And we see this going on right now. Even Oprah a month ago did a whole special on gray divorce. Gray divorce has tripled since the 1990s, and that's divorce after the age of five. But what they didn't talk about was the elephant in the room, which is perimenopause, is right in the middle of that timeframe. And so If women are not getting the support that they need for their emotional health and for their physical health from their partners, from their medical community then they simply go through this really, really difficult phase, almost alone. And unfortunately that was my experience, and I do this work so that I can try and help others so that they don't feel as alone either. And that we can bring some awareness to the fact that many, many, many of these symptoms that we're talking about have to do with your emotional health. It's not just about missing a period. It's not just about a hot flash, body aches, joint pain; I mean, that's very difficult to deal with. So that's the other thing that people don't understand what hormones are. So hormones are to ensure that your body is functioning properly. And this misnomer that we have, that estrogen and progesterone and testosterone are sex hormones, that their only function is for reproductive health is false and silly. What does that mean? Like, the only reason I would take a hormone I have some sexual health issue that I'm trying to identify or I'm trying to fix. We know from science that there are over 400 estrogen receptors in the body; our skin, our bones, our muscles, our brains, our hearts. How we yeah, how we actually metabolize insulin. It's a really, really important, part of our system. So when you don't have that estrogen and that progesterone and those supportive hormones, and they're, not just dropping they're dropping and they're raising, they're dropping, and they're raising. The symptoms that you experience physically and emotionally are very real. I know I'm preaching to the choir, to your audience, but I, I really wish people would understand how real this is. So I think another thing here is that during this particular time, we already feel, like we're an alien or like, you know, like we're already in that sense of loneliness when this starts to happen. And so, when you go to your doctor and they dismiss it, you're just; I remember, I thought, I, I thought I was losing my mind. And thank you for sharing that, honestly. I said I know because I experienced it too. I also thought I was losing my mind. And what doctors generally do is they hand out antidepressants. And so the number of women who are on antidepressants that start at the age of 40, 45 is incredible. And it's really unfortunate because again, they're not making the connections back to emotional health and all of these symptoms that we talked about that are incredibly impacted by the loss or the fluctuation of estrogen and progesterone. So we're starting to connect some of the physical things, but we have to, as a community, do a better job in connecting the emotional things. And what I tell my clients is that this is an opportunity for rebirth. Because you're now, you're experiencing this turmoil, this distress, it'll force you; menopause has a way of forcing you to slow down. Forcing you to try to get more sleep because you're more tired than you used to be. Forcing you to adopt new different habits because maybe your anxiety has spiked. Or maybe, which is very, very common, you've put on weight in menopause. So now all of a sudden, you're recommitted to going to the gym, which is not a bad thing. Menopause if you look at it in the right way, it's a rebirth. It's an opportunity for you to regain yourself and actually, finally tackle some of those bigger questions that you've been carrying around as wounds. Like, what does trigger you? What do you actually want? What are some of the things that you're dissatisfied with in your current relationship? Or what do you aspire to be? And I think that many women, especially if they were married young, had children, young, never had those thoughts. And they never really thought about any of these things. And so, I look at it as a beautiful opportunity to say, okay, you're going through this transition, but this here can possibly be the next best 30 years of your life. So, what do you want for yourself? And one of the first things we do is we tackle some of those wounds from childhood that they're still carrying around. Something like, I feel unlovable. Great, let's tackle that one. And we have certain ways that we can rework these narratives in our mind that get stored in the subconscious minds. We can rework them so that we can re-pattern a new thoughts, which then of course, changes your emotion and changes your behavior as well. But for a lot of women at this age, it's just undoing some of the thinking around well, if I take a moment for myself, I'm selfish. I don't know about you. I was taught that if you focus on yourself, you're selfish. I was taught that way. That it just, you're so self-centered. You're suppose to be taking care of everybody else, fixing things. But what about this? What about me? What about fixing this? That's it. But it's a gender role in our society women are expected to care and nurture others. And many of us do enjoy that role. It's a strong purpose. But we were taught to do it in a self-sacrificing way. Everyone else's needs came before ours. And that thought process is very much punctuated for people who already have an anxious, preoccupied attachment style. Because their focus is always on pleasing someone external to themselves because they wanna be liked so heavily because that's what matters to them. If they feel that someone doesn't like them, it's incredibly disruptive to their nervous system. So they bend themselves into a pretzel to be likable by everyone so that they can feel calm and secure. But I think when we start to do that, we kind of have an outer body experience and we look at ourselves, and we may not like ourselves. We don't like who we've become because we have shifted to become what we felt like who we need to be so that others can accept us. Exactly. I'll push that thought even further. Many people, they don't even know who they are. I remember at one point feeling so confused going, I don't even know what my favorite color is. Because I was so focused on everyone else. And what they needed from me and what they needed to feel calm and secure and safe in this, that you lose yourself. You lose what do I stand for? What do I need? What matters to me? What brings me pleasure? I remember saying to a friend around the time that I was 45, and she said, I think maybe you should take up a hobby and learn something new that might be interesting for you. And I remember crying in the moment going, I don't remember what I like. Like, you're so disconnected from yourself because you go into what we call survival mode. So, again, when you get this combination of you have an insecure attachment style, you have this wounding, you're emotionally dysregulated. Now on top of it, your hormones have started shifting greatly, which introduces another layer of dysregulation on top of the emotional dysregulation you already had; you go into survival mode. You're no longer enjoying life. You're no longer connecting with people. You're just trying to get through the day. And that's what many, many women find. And so when they come and see me, they're depleted, they're exhausted. And so it's a very, very common story. And the partner, the husband often says, she's not the woman that I married, and he's right, she's not. That is accurate. Because she evolved to be what she thought was needed to make the world go round for everybody. Yeah. So, we need to recognize that, the shifts that happen over a period of possibly a decade, for many women into that menopause transition is multifaceted. We can expect to see changes physically. We can expect to see changes emotionally. It doesn't mean that every woman will experience all 34 symptoms that I showed, but those are the common ones. And what I listen for most often is the phrase, I just don't feel like myself anymore. Or I don't recognize myself. Or I don't feel like I can handle the same things that I did three years ago. That change, that baseline change, there's no blood test for that. That's a woman saying. I know something is different. And that's the start. So let's go back here. Why is it that when we hit menopause, perimenopause, these old attachment wounds that we have, that we thought we had healed from or recovered from; why is it that they sneak their little dirty heads up and just surface and they bother us as if though it just happened? Yeah. So the key word is, in the phrase that you just said was the wounds that we thought we had healed. A lot of times we haven't. So what happens is, is that we collect these wounds and then we sort of push them down, especially if our focus is elsewhere. So, if you're raising a family, you really don't have time. There's no luxury to break down and talk about how your father treated you poorly. You are focused elsewhere. The transition happens around the time that again, nature, will have it usually around 40, 45, those really, really intensive child-rearing years are over. So the children are more independent. And then what happens is that usually around that time, the primary couple will try to reengage some of the love, or the young love that they once had before they had children, and realize that they are very, very different. That their needs have really, really changed and that the wounds that they once held, that they thought they healed, weren't really healed. They were simply being hidden underneath a veil. Now, because you're sleeping less, because your hormones are fluctuating so greatly, you do not have the same resilience to stress. It absolutely impacts your ability to deal with stressful situations. And so even smaller relational problems that would have generated a small emotional response now feel a lot bigger. So you start to feel your emotions in an even bigger way, in a more volatile way because your body is destabilized. So we see a lot more fighting between couples during this time about small things. Like, I need more help with the dishes. I need more help with the kids. That's usually the woman who's saying, I'm exacerbated. I'm tired. I have too much mental load. I can't concentrate. But she doesn't always have the words to say all these things. And so we see a lot of, like the couples I work with, we see a lot of the wife saying, I just need more help. And the husband going, well, I took out the trash last week. What else do you need? I teach them that what you really need to do is actually communicate. Here's all the things that I need. Here's what is triggering me. You know, at this point, I feel unseen. I feel unseen by you because you could see how tired I am. You can see that I walk into a room and I don't know why I am there. You can see that I'm not sleeping. You can see that all of a sudden I'm more irritable. And instead of stepping up and saying, I can see you're not yourself, you're expecting me to operate at the same level that I always have. That's the first thing. So it's confronting for a lot of couples. Because the woman doesn't recognize it in herself. I have yet to meet a woman, when I say to her in her early forties, you are likely starting your transition through perimenopause. Every woman says to me, no, I'm too young. You're wrong. Because none of us wanna think about it we don't wanna think about because it's like we're aging. And so we tend to do a really good job at gaslighting ourselves too, right? So, you know, going back to the doctor: oh, it's just stress. Oh, it's, you know, I just have too much on my plate. Oh, work is just really busy at this time of year. So why does it show up? It's a combination of things. A, it wasn't healed to begin with. B, your hormones put you in a place where you're less tolerant to what you once were, more tolerant for. C, you're not sleeping. And this impacts many, many women. So the loss of sleep, of course, has a great impact on your mood, your regulation, your ability to regulate your emotions. Which, if you had an insecure attachment style to begin with, you already didn't have a good skillset there. So this is why it all becomes explosive. Yeah. And you know, it's funny, you talked about where you might softly tell people that they're in perimenopause. I always think it's funny 'cause I think I was like 46 or 45 when I hit menopause. When I can officially say, bam, that day came. That was it. And so when I tell people that are around my age now and I say, maybe you're going through menopause, oh, I'm too young for that. I'm like, seriously? Because I'm thinking; I felt perimenopause. Perimenopause 35. Yeah. And that does happen. I was super young. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah that does happen. So perimenopause can start in between 35 and 45. More common like in the forties. And it can last seven to 10 years. So if you do the math, what you just said, you started at 35 and then you hit menopause at 45, that tracks. So for you, the decade, 35 to 45 must have been really, really difficult. Yeah. And so when I walk into the doctor's office now and they say, when was your last cycle? I'm like, many years ago. Many, many years ago. Thank you. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm like, thank you for the compliment here. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's interesting because, you know, I had a number of different symptoms myself over the years, Because again, I didn't go through all 34 symptoms, all of a sudden at the age of 45, I developed metabolic disease. All of a sudden I had a problem with my cholesterol. All of a sudden I had an issue with my sugars. Where is this coming from? And so I had spoken to different doctors. I was getting recurrent UTIs, urinary tract infections, and they had zero answers for me. And I started to research things on my own. And I said to my cardiologist, God bless him. He's a good man, but I think he could use a refresher course. When I said to him, it seems like this metabolic disease came outta nowhere, and all of a sudden I have cholesterol problems, which he prescribed three; three different medications to control my cholesterol problems. I said to him, what if my estrogen was balanced? What if I was taking HRT, do you think I would still have these issues and need all this medication? And he said to me, I don't do hormones. And I said, I'm sorry. And he said, I'm a cardiologist. I don't do hormones. And I was like, so are you suggesting there's no correlation between my lack of estrogen and the functioning of my heart and the plaque in my arteries because it's very well documented. So it's stuff like this. I won't go too far into my own story, but, yeah, women, we definitely get dismissed a lot. And I'm hopeful that this is changing. Mm-hmm. So let's say a couple comes to see you and she is either in perimenopause or she's in menopause. They know that each one of them has their own stuff they need to deal with. And she knows, she's accepted that she's menopausal or perimenopausal and she's not open to HRT because of the negative news that she hears, and she doesn't wanna take that risk. Can someone still get balanced even though they don't seek the hormone regulation route? So I think that anyone can do the work to heal their inner wounds, when we're talking about attachment wounds. I think anyone can do the work to understand their personality needs. To learn how to better communicate, to learn how to, work with boundaries to learn how to become interdependent with their partner. So all of that work can be done. I'm very careful about suggesting to women that they should or shouldn't take hormones. What I think is really the best position for women is that they have all the information and they have the agency of choice to make their decision based on the best research available at the time. If this woman is presenting to me and saying, I'm afraid because of all the risks. I might say the decision of course, is yours, but I'd like to share with you some information because we know now that, what was once reported years ago in terms of risk was really misrepresented. So my job is generally to say, here's all the information that we have in front of us today. Now make your choice. Because if someone says to me, I'm not gonna take hormones because I'm afraid of the risk, I know they don't have all the information in front of them. But does that mean I make the decision for them? No. But it is my job to educate. Mm-hmm. Yeah.'Cause I just think that personally, I mean myself, I am on HRT; I think that it just makes it easier. I don't know if it makes it easier. I mean, I'm happy to hear that, that's your response. I'm on HRT as well. Easier is not a word I would use; because my symptoms were so severe that I just wasn't functioning. So now I'm functioning again. And I go to the gym four times a week and I have my strength back and my sugars are regulated. Like, it brought me back to life. So it stabilized also the emotional pieces too. Like, I still have moments where I have brain fog, but it's not as bad. I still have moments where I can't sleep as well at night, but it's not as bad. And so, not just easier, I think all of these components; for me, I consider them to be the building blocks for wellness and vitality. And so, I feel like it gave me back my life in the most sincerest way. Yeah. I say easier because, you know, my symptoms were bad. I've, my ears were itchy. I horrible, itchy ears. I would sweat so bad that I was going to pass out. I mean, it's just like, I was like going to collapse. Was scary to you? It was scary.'Cause I'm like, oh my God, I'm gonna fall. I'm, I'm gonna fall. I'm, I'm gonna pass out. It just, it, it was horrible. And I couldn't sleep and I was grinding my teeth. I'm like, I'm gonna have false teeth because I'm gonna break my teeth. It's just, and I was angry all the time. I had a short fuse Yeah, rage is very common. And it's not me. That's not who I am. So the reason I say easier, it's because when challenges hit me, I feel like I can take a breath, take a step back; think about it, process it in my head before something comes out of my mouth. Yeah, absolutely. I could be me. Yeah. I think what I hear you saying, and I think it's so apt, is that your body was out of line with, like, it wasn't cooperating. It's like your body was out of line with who you truly are as a person. I can see your reflective, highly intelligent, you're calm, like I can see all these things. But there are certain processes in the body that need to work smoothly in order for you to remain in that state. And I'm, I'm grateful that you talked about also, the hot flash and how you felt like you were gonna pass out. Because we minimize it all the time. Oh, it's just a hot flash. Those are very scary. I know. I suffered from them too, and it's just out of nowhere. All of a sudden you're dripping sweat and it's uncomfortable, it's embarrassing, and it's scary. There's been moments. You're dizzy with it, and you're like. And then I would try to talk to people and I sound; I don't drink, I don't do drugs, I sound like I was drunk. Because I just couldn't connect the words, the thoughts. I could not articulate what I needed to say. Exactly. And so I'll ask you a personal question, I'll only answer if, if it's comfortable in doing so. But during this time that you were experiencing all of that turmoil, did you notice an increase in the distress in the relationships that you had with other people? I did with my husband, who is wonderful. He is so good to me. And I'm like; what is going on? Why am I irritable toward this person? Why is everything say just annoy me now. Yeah. Versus he's like, it seemed like the more he loved on me, the more it would anger me. And I'm like, what is wrong with you? Where is this coming from? Why? Why are you doing this? So this why people come to me. Because there is that level of volatility, but it gets escalated into something else. Where any and all issues that would've been, at the core of your relationship that you've never addressed before, that you kind of just like swept under the rug and it's not a big deal. All of it suddenly comes to the table. And so it's like it looks like all of a sudden you have all these things to argue about. It's because they never really bothered you before. You had the ability to sort of just ignore it or accept it. And I told myself, I am not going to be a gray divorce. I'm not going to throw away all this good for something that doesn't sound right. Right. And it's not him, it's here. It's right here, it's me. Yeah. So, good on you. And it was the imbalance. Yeah, good on you for recognizing that. And I guess ultimately you were successful in finding a provider who listened. And who gave you, the support that you needed. I lost my hair the first go round. Yep. I'm just won't do testosterone because I'm sensitive to testosterone, but I will do the other stuff. Yeah. I'm always careful about, do this, don't do this. Because HRT is intended to be extremely individualized. So what I need for my body to function well is different from what you need. And we may have different goals. And so, there's lots of different options. And some women tolerate this and some women tolerate that. And so you have to be willing to sort of try things, see how it works for you. And then go from there. But I'm, very careful about suggesting that you should do this or you should do that. Because I know what works for me and I also know that everyone else is individual. When we're in menopause or perimenopause, our bodies are in survival mode sometimes. And sometimes we feel like we're not being seen by either our spouse, our boyfriend, significant other, or even our kids. What can we do to self-regulate ourselves and keep ourselves from lashing out or saying things that are going to be distructive? Yeah. So whether you're a menopause or not, I always say that an emotion lasts for about 90 seconds. We tend to think it lasts longer because we keep it on our mind and we circle and we think about it. But it lasts about 90 seconds. So if you have an emotion that is bubbling up and presenting itself and it's uncomfortable and or you recognize that it's inappropriate for the situation, excuse yourself. Go to the bathroom for a couple minutes and try to release it. And there's lots of different ways. Usually a little bit of movement in the body will help just move the energy. When I work with men, I say to them, do five or 10 pushups, just release that energy. With women, they can do pushups too. But you could also, take a little walk. You can take five minutes to pet your dog. You can do something that's sort of switches you out of that mode of fight or flight and back into rest and digest. So the thing that you can always do when you feel yourself moving from one; we have two systems in our nervous system. We have rest and digest, and we have fight and flight. When we feel that we're under threat, the way in which, you know that you're transitioning from one to the other, usually the first sign is irritability. So when I start to get irritable, I know; okay, I'm moving over into my fight or flight. So I catch it there and I'll take time out and I'll do whatever I find grounding to keep myself grounded in the moment. And that again, could be a little bit of exercise. It could be listening to my favorite song. It could be calling my best friend for a five minute talk. It could be taking my dog for a walk, whatever it is. But we have to learn that we are not obliged; we don't have to respond to people immediately, especially if we feel ourselves that we're irritable and we might potentially say something damaging. Because you can't take those words back.

And so I teach people: 54:59

if you feel that you're emotion level is higher than a five outta 10. So like you can see that's escalated five outta 10, it's a six, it's a seven. Your response in that point in time should be something like, "I'm really feeling some strong emotions right now. Gimme five or 10 minutes. Let me sort of relax a little bit. I promise we'll finish the conversation soon." Okay? That's the best thing you can do, whether in your menopause or not. You might be doing it more if you're in menopause, but your partner by then I think would appreciate you taking a five- to 10- minute pause instead of vomiting on him. Or allowing the emotion to escalate to a place where it's impacting both of you. So that's something that we never learned as children either: to just say, you know what, I'm gonna take a moment to process what I'm feeling. And let's come back to this. I think what's really important that you addressed here in the entire discussion that we've had is that these attachments are things that we learned along the way. And it's not like it's carved in stone and you're gonna carry this thing around all your life. It's learned. And so it can be unlearned. Yeah. You said it beautifully. I often say that it's learned behavior. It can be unlearned. It can be relearned. A hundred percent. They're just coping mechanisms. But, you're living a different life now. So we can teach you to respond in a different way. We can teach you how to recognize your own nervous system responses and how to stay calm. And again, going through menopause, if you understand, what your body may or may not experience, that does help with identifying things and keeping you calm. If I knew what a hot flash would actually feel like, I wouldn't have thought I was having a heart attack. And so we need to have a level of patience with ourself. And we need to, with kindness and respect, ask for that patience from our partner and from our children. I believe in radical honesty and honest conversations. You know, sometimes I'll say to my partner, I just need to spend the night alone. It's not that I don't miss you. It's not that I don't wanna be with you, but I just need, a day alone because I'm feeling a little heightened and I need to just sort of rest a bit. And having that ability to be vulnerable and say, this is what I need in the moment, and have your partner respond with respect and understanding is everything. Another thing I wanted to tie here is not just those people but your employer. Hmm. That's one. A sign of weakness. It's not sign of weakness. No it's not. But because menopause is so misunderstood and women are still feel that there's a large stigma around it, they're less likely to discuss with their employers, especially if their employer is male. So, that's a personal decision, but that's a tougher one. Mm-hmm. I always and I thought about this way when I was young, when I was in my twenties and thirties, I used to always say, can't cut the tree with a dull knife. I gotta go sharpen my sword. And if you're not gonna gimme time to go sharpen my sword. Yeah, Can't get it done. Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, I agree with you. I do. For the listeners and viewers who identify themselves, because you've, talked about it, identified themselves as either anxious or avoidance, and they wanna move toward something safe. What can they do to get there? They wanna move towards safety in their relationships? First of all, there's a little quiz on my website that helps people identify whether they're anxious, avoid insecure. My website is securelyloved.com. I always say awareness is the first step, really seeing where you fall. What I do is I work with people to identify what their core wounds are. What's coming up for them today. A lot of therapists will say, you know, tell me about your childhood, and sort of go; what I'm focusing on is on, my first question is generally tell me about the last time in recent memory that you got really upset. And usually we see some patterns of some core wounds that come out pretty easily. Because we tend to get upset or, negatively charged thematically around the same things. And so we can pinpoint those themes. And then what we do is we work to undo those patterns so that they no longer carry the same charge that they once did. And that it has a beautiful effect in terms of over time changing our thoughts, our emotions, our behavior, and helping to keep the body calm. I teach nervous system regulation as well because that's a key component. I teach communication and boundary setting; depending on what people need. So it's hard to answer that question because the needs of someone who's anxious and the needs of someone who's avoidant are polar opposites. So there's a number of different things I would do, depending on the skill that they need in order to get to their place of wellness. mm-hmm. But would working with you be,'cause I've, talked to some people that say I have a therapist. See a therapist. And they sometimes say that they've seen a therapist for years. So I'm not the type of therapist that you see for years. I generally keep people in a 12 week program. What I'm doing is I am looking to make some real changes. So real changes happen, not where you intellectualize or you align, someone like you overthink something or you keep talking about something or you validate someone's victimhood. I can say, yeah you had a terrible childhood and that was difficult. I'm sure that was difficult to deal with, but it's your responsibility to heal. So now let's move forward. Because staying stuck in that sort of victim hood does nothing. And people who stay in therapy for years, often it's because they feel so validated talking over and over and over again about all the wrongs that were done to them. But the work is about in reflecting the role that you had, and in some cases learning how to set boundaries. In some cases, learning how to identify traits and characteristics of people that you should no longer let into your life. In some cases, identifying what your personality needs are and aligning, where you put your energy and effort with what serves you best. And so yeah, all of that work is really important. So, your work is more like a; you're not fooling around. It's quick. We're gonna identify the problem and work straight into the solution. Yeah. And you can expect results within three months. Yes, my clients start to see results in three months. A lot of them will stay on after that. But it's not just talk therapy. The idea is that in order to see results, you have to work towards making incremental changes in how you do things. Because your behavior, your emotions and your thoughts are all intricately aligned. So, couples that feel, like they are disengaged from one another, I had them take nightly walks. People would say it's homework, but what we're trying to do is we're trying to instill moments of repair and connection that have been lost over the years. So it's not just enough to sit on the couch and say, here are all the things that you said that I didn't like, and here are the things that you said that I didn't like. Okay, great. That's part of it. Now let's get back also to the parts where we enjoyed each other. So if we enjoyed taking walks, let's do that. Or if you feel that you, are not seen by your partner. Okay, what are some of the ways, like a lot of people think that they rely on this idea of like, I'm gonna read your mind. Tell your partner, what's something they can do for you that would make you feel special? Like you're really seen. I love when they wake up in the morning and they brew me a pot of coffee before they leave for work. And I'll be like, when was the last time you did that? And they'll be like, it's been a while. Tomorrow morning coffee will be served. And so, these small things make such a difference in couplehood. But we all have to learn how to say, this is what I want, this is what I need. And then respond in a healthy way. So I like to focus more on the practical stuff, 'cause I think it makes a larger impact. And so Bev, if people are interested in working with you, where can they find you? Where can they take the quiz? So my website is securelyloved.com. The quiz is right on there. It's the attachment quiz. I'm also on Instagram @securely_loved. And I've also launched a YouTube channel where I like to put out lots of free resources for people. My YouTube channel is also called Securely Loved. So I'm hoping they'll find me. Love it. Beautiful title. Beautiful Yeah. Bev, Thank you, so much for coming on the show. I will include all of your information in the show notes so that people can become securely loved. Thank you. I love that. It was a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you, Carmen. Likewise. Thank you. Okay. How good was that? Because if you ever thought, why am I so irritable? Why do I feel like a stranger in my own body? Why are my emotions louder than they used to be? I hope today's discussion gave you clarity and relief. Here's a wrap up of what Bev shared with us today. Attachment styles aren't your identity. They're learned patterns, and they can be unlearned. Perimenopause can absolutely mess with your stress tolerance, sleep focus, and emotional regulation. So if you feel off, you're not broken. Your body is asking for support. And yes, the reason those old wounds can pop up in midlife is often because you're tired, hormonally dysregulated, and less resilient to stress. So things that used to feel manageable suddenly feel huge. And the best lesson, what do I do before I say something I'll regret moment? So here it is, Bev reminds us that an emotion can peak fast. And one of the most powerful tools is a pause plus reset. Step away for a few moments, move your body, breathe, pet your dog. Take a quick walk. Anything that brings you out of fight or flight. And the phrase she gave us, use it exactly like this: I'm feeling strong emotions right now. Give me five or 10 minutes and I promise we'll finish this conversation. That right there can save a relationship from unnecessary damage. And let's not forget, if someone tells you, just reduce your stress, you are allowed to think perfect, should I quit my job? Or which kid should we rehome? The point is your symptoms are real and you deserve real support. If you want to learn more about Bev Mitelman and Securely Loved or connect with her, head on over to createthebestme.com/154, I'll have everything linked for you there or down in the show notes. If this episode helped you, please subscribe and follow the show on your favorite podcast platform and share this with a friend who's saying, I don't feel like myself lately. And don't forget to come back next week for another amazing episode, created just for you. Until then, keep dreaming big. Take care of yourself. And remember, you are beautiful, strong, and capable of creating the best version of yourself. Thank you for watching. Catch you next week. Bye for now.