Menopause – more than hormones?

When people talk about the menopause, the cliché leaps to mind at once hormones, hot flushes, sleepless nights, changes to the cycle. Yet this is where the real gap lies. For many women, the reality looks quite different. At the beginning it is often vague changes such as forgetfulness, mood swings, inner restlessness. Nothing that fits neatly into the socially familiar image of the menopause. And that is precisely what makes it so unsettling.

It feels almost like an echo. Once before hormones turned our lives upside down. In puberty. Back then we had to reorder ourselves between dependence and freedom, between being a child and becoming an adult. Today we are going through upheavals again only this time there is no clear direction. Instead of a sense of beginning there is uncertainty. What is happening to me Why do I suddenly feel like a stranger in my own body

And here lies the real challenge. Alongside the physical symptoms arise questions that go far deeper. What role do I play in my relationship in my work in my own life Who am I once the children have left home What holds me when the familiar hormonal rhythm suddenly disappears.

All this is made harder by social taboos. We speak more openly and readily about puberty yet menopause is still mostly whispered about. Myths clichés and the image of the loss of womanhood cling stubbornly on. But it is the silence itself that magnifies the burden. Where words are missing uncertainty often takes their place.

The menopause does not mark an ending but a turning point. Bodily changes can be demanding but they also offer the chance to question what has become habitual to let go of old burdens and to shape new perspectives.

This is exactly where my counselling begins. Not every hot flush needs a pill and not every low mood a diagnosis. What matters is to understand how hormones psyche and life circumstances interact. And for that we need a space where questions can be asked openly where doubts can be voiced and new ways of seeing can emerge.

What we need least in this phase of life is silence. And what we need most is to break the taboos with medical knowledge psychological clarity and an open view of context and culture.