Values-Led Menopause: Using ACT When Your Body Changes the Rules
For many women and people assigned female at birth, perimenopause feels less like a transition and more like a biological hijacking. I’ve been feeling this myself quite heavily recently as my monthly cycle changed AGAIN. Between the sore breasts, itching skin, brain fog, and weird moods no longer aligned to the phase of the cycle we are in, it’s easy to feel like the person we used to be is slipping away.
When your body changes the rules of engagement, our body and minds can go into panic. That fight or flight response often turns inward. We fight the symptoms, or we flee from our social lives because we no longer feel like ourselves. Anxiety ramps up as cognitive abilities seem to dampen down.
And shame rules when our tempers feel frayed. Especially when PMT seems to extend longer and longer each month. And we don’t bounce back to our sunny selves once our bleed starts.
This is where Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) offers a powerful alternative to shame and self-loathing. Instead of trying to fix a natural life stage, we can learn to turn towards what truly matters. And reconnect with our inner wisdom.
Moving Beyond the Story of Loss
Our culture often frames perimenopause and menopause as a series of subtractions. We lose cognitive clarity. We lose our sense of self. We lose friendships and partnerships we’ve had for years. We lose our purpose. We lose our sex-drive.
Faced with that story of loss, it’s no wonder we feel depleted, sad, and uncertain during this time.
But, ACT can show us that suffering only happens when we get hung up on these stories. When we allow thoughts like "I’m losing my edge" or "My body is failing me” to rule us. And feel like our whole identity is our perimenopause and the suffering that comes with it.
Instead, to navigate this identity shift, I offer you psychological flexibility. Rather than being pushed around by symptoms, you can use these core pillars to stay grounded:
Defusion: Learning to see thoughts as just "words" rather than absolute truths. Instead of "I am falling apart," try "I am having the thought that I am falling apart." Or if you are also into IFS, you can use defusion and parts language together: “A part of me is having the thought that I am falling apart”.
Values: Identifying what matters to you. If you value "vitality" but can't run a marathon anymore, how can you express vitality differently? This may be through a gentle walk or nourishing food or honouring your body in some other way that brings lightness and life to you.
Committed Action: Taking small steps toward those values, even when symptoms are present. This helps us maintain a sense of agency and direction.
Making Room for Expansion
The most challenging part of the change isn’t just the physical discomfort of needing to pee more, get less sleep, and feel foggy. It is the shame that comes with this sense that we are less than we were before.
The instinctual response to shame is to tighten up, to resist, to hide. In ACT, we practice expansion.
Expansion isn't about liking the sensation. Instead, it’s about making enough room for it to exist without it crushing you. Think of it like the difference between trying to hold a beach ball underwater (exhausting) and letting it float on the surface beside you.
What difference would it make to you if you saw this transition as one that takes you closer to who you really are, and back to your deep inner wisdom?
Somatic Tool: Expansion Meditation
Use this practice when a hot flash, joint pain, or a wave of irritability arises. Or any perimenopause or menopause symptom comes up that you would usually want to push away or feel upset about.
I’ve also recorded the meditation for you to listen to instead of read. Download using the button below.
Observe: Notice the sensation in your body. Where does it start? Where does it end? Does it have a temperature, a vibration, or a weight?
Breathe: Imagine breathing into and around the sensation. You aren't trying to breathe it away; you are breathing to create space for it.
Label: Quietly say to yourself, "Here is tightness," or "Here is heat."
Softening: Instead of bracing your muscles against the feeling, consciously soften the area around it. If your chest feels tight, soften your shoulders and jaw.
The Turn Towards: While the sensation is still there, ask yourself: "What is one small thing I can do in this moment that aligns with the person I want to be, who I truly am?"
No Longer Fading Out
Perimenopause and menopause really do change the rules. I’m not denying this is a really difficult life stage. And it feels like it goes on and on at times. But we don’t have to let it rule us, and feel reduced by it. Instead, coming at it compassionately and with flexibility means we can stop feeling defined by what we’ve lost, and start being defined by how we choose show up anyway.
You are not fading out. Moving from vibrant colour into shadow. You are reforming into a more powerful version of you. One that doesn’t have the bandwidth for nonsense. One that sees things for how they truly are. And is ready to shed the layers of people pleasing and forgetting yourself that may have dominated the previous years.
You are ready to rise into the energy of a wise woman. Who has seen the complexities of life and has an inner knowing of how to navigate them that it’s now time to pass onto your own children and community.
Take those little steps towards your own internal freedom, lightness and flexibility.
