Menopause and Mental Health

Heading into menopause or know someone who is? Have no fear as women have been going through this very normal, natural phase of their life since women have been around. Upon cessation of a woman’s menstrual cycle for one year, a woman is considered menopausal. There is no one way to navigate menopause. As you would guess there is a wide gamut of feelings and views of it. Experiences can range from a sense of freedom, to feelings of grief and loss; from having many symptoms to not having many at all. While it is true that each person will experience this phase of life in a way unique to them, whatever way you experience it, I assure you there are many others who have experienced it similarly. You are not alone.

I have spent over 15 years helping to lead the Mother Daughter Program, a program designed by Mary Pat Van Epps for girls 9 to 16 and their moms to come to understand the great and beautiful mystery of the gift of their fertility and femininity and God’s design for it in their life. Every time I do a presentation at one of these programs, I am happy to proclaim the truth of God’s glorious design for our sexuality and make clear the message that God in his goodness and mercy always prepares us for what is in the future. We speak this message to those young women embarking on puberty and adolescence and what a help that is to know God has prepared them for puberty and adolescence and is there with them through it, whatever their experience of it may be. It strikes me that we are at a similar juncture again during menopause, being another time of change in our womanly bodies, and how helpful that message may be for us as well. Here too, God has already prepared us for what is happening in all the changes and all the feelings we are going through and will go through in the future. He has prepared us and is with us in it as well, whatever the experience of it may be. He is merciful and we can trust him.

Looking at this stage of life from a human development and mental health perspective we see there are many development tasks laid before women at this stage of life that could affect mental health. During the time most women experience menopause the tasks at hand include launching children and starting to refocus on their relationship as a husband and wife; a focus on the marital system as a dyad once again and renegotiating the marital relationship. Also, many couples at this stage are tasked with caring for aging parents and let’s not forget, it is also a time when people tend to deal with midlife crises. Menopause is a time of transition from one stage of life to another. What we know about transitions and mental health is that most humans feel challenged by transitions even if they are welcome.

The key to healthfully maneuvering through transitions is to seek out the support one needs through friends, community, programs, resources, professionals, and God. We are made to need other people and God in navigating life and when people get the support they need, they thrive emotionally, spiritually, and physically. Menopause can provide the opportunity for women to choose to grow and thrive. My advice is to go for growth—thrive and become sanctified in the process.

Launching children successfully into adulthood is one of the primary goals of parenting. Haven’t we all tried our best to equip our kids with the tools they will need to become independent, productive adults? However, when that happens the actual letting go may be harder than expected. Sometimes there is a real sense of loss for parents as their children move out of the family home. Women are especially vulnerable here and can experience a loss of purpose in their life, loss of relationship and a loss of that role of nurturing and cultivating life through taking care of children and running a household. This is especially true if a woman has devoted most of her time to family and her home. What may be a good and healthy milestone, something we worked hard to achieve, may bring unexpected feelings of loss and grief. If this happens, acknowledge these feelings. Let them come up and process them. A good way to process some of this might be in a journal, or with a friend who is or has experienced the same, or in prayer with God in Adoration. Allow yourself the grace and acceptance of being where you are. There is no need to make yourself think you shouldn’t be feeling this way. Give yourself some time to adjust to this new way of living. With so many of the demands of raising a young family behind women, this time of menopause is a time that God draws us back to that primary gaze of love being between the couple once again. For many of us, for so many years, the focus has been on family, taking care of children and equipping them with the tools needed to navigate life. Now the task is to come back to knowing who one is again outside of those roles, as the individuals we are, in our vocation. We focus once again, as when we started our married life, as a dyad as husband and wife. This may feel awkward to some. Being so busy raising children we may be disconnected from our spouse. It is not unusual to feel like strangers even though we have lived our whole married life together. We may be out of touch with each other. If this is the case for you, I would recommend finding a program or resource to help you foster communication and relationship. Counseling can be a significant help as well as programs designed for this purpose. One such program that comes to mind is Marriage Encounter. They exist to help couples learn to communicate and be in an open and honest relationship and learn to live out a sacramental relationship within a marriage. Alternatively, finding shared hobbies or activities that you and your spouse enjoy doing together can be a wonderful source of connection and new life. I know several couples who have discovered the joy of playing pickleball together. It is relatively easy to play and if you choose to play as a couple in games or tournaments it allows you to work as a team again, get exercise, have fun and meet other people.

Middle adulthood often comes with caretaking aging parents. There are a lot of thoughts and feelings around this issue; feelings of obligation and duty, of love and responsibility, of balance of caregiving and self-care, and reality of life and death. Most adult children don’t anticipate how difficult it is to see the decline of health in parents and to step into the role of caretaker. There is a role reversal of parents now relying on adult child, for life giving help and support. It is also a time when in dealing with the decline of our parents that we recognize and come to face our own mortality.

Midlife crisis is another situation that comes up during menopause whether it is a woman’s own experience of it or that of her spouse. It occurs during middle age. It is often a time of people examining their life and their feelings of lack of fulfillment in it. They may experience dissatisfaction and anxiousness due to facing their mortality and their accomplishments. This can be a time of impulsivity and making decisions lacking discernment and good judgment. If you are experiencing a midlife crisis, it is important to talk with someone about your thoughts and feelings. There are many examples of people’s lives going askew due to poor decision making at this time. With the right support it too can be a means of personal growth and deeper understanding of your life and your surrender to God.

Experiencing the loss of fertility may bring a whole host of feelings along with it that may change depending on what one is experiencing in the day to day. The loss of fertility through menopause and how it affects one’s femininity and sexuality unfold over time. There could be a sense of freedom experienced but also loss and grief to deal with. Some women may fell less feminine or experience a loss of their youth in a very concrete way. Women may experience symptoms of menopause that affect their desire for intimacy or their ability to enjoy or participate in the marital embrace. They could experience lack of physical intimacy due to their own or their husband’s declining health that affects their sexuality. What statistics show is that despite experiencing these difficulties in their sexuality women very rarely talk to their doctors about them unless their doctors ask them directly, which is uncommon. Few talk to their friends about these issues and even though they experience it with their spouse, few talk even to their spouse about these challenges. That is to say that most women often walk these places of loss and grief on their own. These are complicated situations fraught with an abundance of deep emotions. It could be helpful to explore the stages of grief as explained by Kubler Ross and how they pertain to the loss of this part of their sexuality. The stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Recognizing that these stages are normal, natural experience of loss could be helpful in walking through it. I wouldn’t recommend dealing with this on your own. Reach out to a mental health therapist to get the support you need.

Fortunately for couples who have lived their sexuality in accordance with God’s design there has been a formation their whole married life on living marriage sacramentally. They have developed a certain mastery over their passions and have grown in the exact virtues that will be helpful to live a life of grace in this situation. If they have practiced periodic abstinence, they have had a deep formation in the various ways of loving their spouse including the physical, spiritual, intellectual creative and emotional aspects of their relationship. If we have lived our sexuality with an openness to life, we have practiced day to day the demands of love whether generally through the demands of family life or specifically through charting our fertility and planning our family with fertility appreciation models that are in line with our faith. The solutions to navigate this phase of life well are already within us built up one day at a time over a lifetime of married love.

Whatever your experience of menopause, one thing I know for sure is that God prepares women for this time and is right there with us through it all. We get to remember that this too serves to sanctify us, and that God loves us, cares for us and we can trust in him.