The myth that we can ‘do it all’
Stress, rest, and perimenopause
Most of the women in midlife I speak to are exhausted.
For 100% of the health coaching clients I work with, this is the first thing that they want to work on.
Why are we all so tired?
Because we are so busy working long hours, caring for others, trying to fit in exercise, social time, voluntary work, ferrying the kids about that sleep and rest slip gently to the ‘nice to have’ list.
It’s exhausting being a woman. As America Ferrera put it SO well in the 2023 Barbie movie . We’re expected to do it all, and be grateful for it too.
But our inner biology and our emotional wellbeing aren’t programmed always be ‘on’.
We need downtime.
And in the midlife, perimenopausal rollercoaster, we are less stress resilient and need more rest.
But it’s also a time in life, in our 40s and 50s when we face the double whammy of teens and ageing parents needing support in more emotionally challenging ways.
It feels like there is no space for the downtime we need
Taking time out for rest can be one of the hardest changes we make.
I speak as someone who acts as a carer for my mother with Alzheimers Disease and has an 11 and 14 year old at home, runs a small business. Plus I’m in my late 40s so I’m well and truly in the perimenopause!
I’ve found that stress massively exacerbates the impact of my own perimenopause transition. More hot flushes, more sleep disruption, more aches and niggles, and itchy skin.
Our bodies don’t distinguish between physical and emotional stress, so when you’re under stress for any period of time, your body will adapt and prioritise - meaning that your digestion and reproductive functions can suffer. And then amplify the impact of your changing hormones.
Our bodies need space and time to rest and adapt to the perimenopause hormone fluctuations.
Which means that sleep and rest need to go back to the top of our to-do lists.
How?
Sleep is often one of the things we struggle with.
For example I know I can’t sleep beyond 6:30am, and that I need at least 7 hours of sleep, preferable 7.5 to feel optimal in the morning. So getting to bed at 10:30am to be asleep by 11ish seems reasonable.
Your optimal time might be 11-7 or 12-8 or 10-8. We’re all different.
It’s easy enough to do this a couple of nights. But then we drift, we watch a movie, get absorbed in a book, start a random chore at 10pm because it’s the only time we have left.
The same with rest. When we have enough downtime we are actually more productive - our brains work better when they have time to mind-wander, or enter a state of flow (both Peak Mind and Stolen Focus have some really useful insights into this).
But downtime in the daytime feels impossible and a little bit naughty.
In my work with clients I actually suggest they take tiny actions, ones that they can be consistent with 75-80% of the time.
Tiny actions for sleep.
We know we need a dark room, not too hot, to not look at screens too close to bedtime, to not be too hungry, too full, to have had too much caffeine or alcohol. All this helps a good night sleep but actually getting to bed at a good time can be the first hurdle.
One client set an alarm on her phone to go to bed. We agreed a certain time after which she doesn’t need to have her phone on for her kids at uni. Then on airline mode and off to bed.
Another client created a bedtime wind down ritual, with a book, herbal tea, and then time to pamper her face before bed.
Another simply got ready for bed at the same time as her younger teens. It made it easier to just slip into bed as soon as she felt she was finished for the day.
One client had a read of Matthew Walker’s Why We Sleep to help her change her motivation for sleep, because she could see the evidence of why it was so important and wanted to feel that for herself.
Another found that taking a magnesium supplement before bed was a game-changer.
I share these because we’re all different. Some of us won’t respond well to alarms, or to routines. We have different barriers and different motivations. These are individuals, just as you are.
What one thing could you to do improve the amount or the quality of your sleep? (Any blogs on sleep?)
Taking action for rest
This can be even harder for my fellow midlife, perimenopausal women.
Because we’ve lived through the ‘go go go’ era of our 20s and 30s and think we should be the same now in our 40s and 50s. We’ve grown up in a society that praises productivity over anything else. So doing nothing is lazy (also, no one can make money out of doing nothing, apart from maybe a spa resort?)
So rest feels hard.
But rest can be super simple too. Mere moments that act as a buffer between one action and the next. A deep breath or 10 before a meeting. A quiet moment in the car before getting out and into the office or home. Taking time to drink a cup of tea mindfully. A walk around the block. Our aim with rest is to shift from our sympathetic nervous system mode (go-go-go), to parasympathetic (rest and digest), so that our bodies and brains and catch up.
Unfortunately, scrolling on your phone doesn’t really count - your brain can easily get fired back up, and it adds to the constant stimulation.
With my clients we’ve worked on simple things like:
A sit and sip of the first cup of coffee of the day. Taking 5 minutes in a comfy chair, watching the garden and savouring the flavour and warmth before getting on with the day.
A 5 minute lie-down after getting in from work. Setting a timer and lying down phone-free on the bed before getting on with the next thing.
A pre-work from home walk to the end of the road and back to get a dose of daylight and gentle movement before focussing for the rest of the day.
20 minutes of reading fiction a day.
10 deep breaths before switching from one Zoom meeting to the next.
As we’ve worked together, these clients have gradually added to their rest habits, integrating a rest-based approach to their lives, enabling them to take more focussed, and inspired action, and find space for creativity in their work, or to become less reactive in their relationships.
Both of these things, sleep, and rest seem simple but are often the areas in which we face the most internal resistance. It can be easier to ‘do’ by adding in more exercise or planning nourishing meals than to ‘not do’.
Small, incremental changes help though. They really help.
On 22nd March I’m going to be running a workshop on stress and perimenopause and the simple actions you can take. Sign up via the link below: