If you are in the horrors with menstrual cycle issues or you want to learn how to harness your hormones, then you are in the right place.

Welcome to the Period Power podcast. I’m your host Maisie Hill menstrual health expert, acupuncturist, certified life coach and author of Period Power. I’m on a mission to help you get your cycle working for you so that you can use it to get what you want out of life. Are you ready? Let’s go.

Hello, hello my friends. I have got an absolute whopper of an episode for you today. There is going to be a lot packed into this particular episode. I already know it’s going to be one of my personal favourite episodes. In fact, it’s probably going to be less of a podcast episode and more of a masterclass. There’s going to be lots of nuggets of gold kind of mini lessons all wrapped up within this one topic.

So, I would love for you to send this episode to someone that you know so that it can help them too. And so that you’ve got someone to discuss it with and talk it over with which is always so helpful to do. And I want to give a listener shout out to Super Inventor, that was their name because they left this amazing review of the podcast.

“The Period Power Podcast has been a go to resource for me since its beginning.” You’ve been around from the beginning. Thank you for listening. “It is always relevant to my life even when I think it won’t be. Sometimes it feels almost magically aligned with something I’m grappling with. It’s digestible, often uplifting and applicable. It’s one of my go to podcasts.” Well, thank you so much for taking a moment to let me know that. I’m just so grateful to you and to everyone else who rates and reviews the podcast.

So, today’s episode and the next few episodes are going to be touching on the theme of change and supporting yourself through change, and what it’s like when you’re going through an identity shift and all that’s involved in that process. It is a meaty topic and it’s one that I’ve been going through. And I’m going to be kind of talking in more detail about that in next week’s episode. I’ve gone back and I’ve looked at my self-coaching throughout the process that I’ve been going through just to help tie it all together for you in a really useful way.

Because this is something that I’ve been going through for some time now and I’m finally out of the other end of it and living in the result that I have created. So, I’m going to share more about that next week as I said. But today I want to talk about supporting yourself through change. And this idea actually comes from my clients inside The Flow Collective because at the start of autumn I just asked my clients in there if there were particular things that they’d like me to talk about on the podcast and just weave into my existing plan.

So, my thanks go to Ella, Gemma and Maria Carmen who all requested that I talk about this. And I think you’re going to be very grateful to them as well because I’m not sure if there’s ever been such a juicy episode that I have prepared for. And I was really excited to see their requests for this because I was already planning on doing an episode about going through a shift in identity. And this just felt like the perfect companion episode, so much so that I’m doing it before the episode that I’d planned. But also, I just don’t think I’d have thought to do it until I saw their requests for it.

Because this is one of those things that’s just so intrinsic to who I am and how I do things that it just hadn’t occurred to me as a topic to talk about and to teach about. So, thank you for requesting it. And once I’d picked it, I was like, “Yeah, we’re going to do this.” I also just asked all the members, “Are there specific questions that you have about going through change and how to support yourself?” So, I’m going to be bringing in some of the questions that the members of The Flow Collective have asked me about this topic.

There’s an amazing thread with so many great questions in it. So, thanks for everyone for weighing in. I could probably create 10 podcast episodes just using your questions, but instead what I’ve done is taken what I feel are the most significant or most common issues and just weaved them into the next few episodes. And my guess is that you could be feeling a deep need for this conversation right now. Things are moving. There’s a lot going on in the world, there has been for a while, things are always shifting.

But there’s a disruptive energy right now and I think we’re collectively experiencing that. And then there’s the individual shifts that you’re experiencing too and that can be happening in all sorts of ways. And none of that is good or bad, it just is. We think about disruptive energy being negative often, but disruption can be really good, it’s so healthy. And I know that for many of my clients a result of the work we do together is that their mindset shifts and their experience of themselves, like that changes because they enter a more loving relationship with themselves.

And that in turn starts to shift their experience of the world around them and how they connect and interact with it. And that all involves changes in their identity, how they see themselves and how others see them. So, although disruptive energy often has this negative connotation to it, I’m of the view that it can be helpful and indeed necessary. It just might suck a bit when you’re going through it. And that’s what we’re going to get into today, how do you support yourself when you’re going through a change, whether that’s your identity, or something you’re doing, or no longer doing?

So, there’s going to be a lot of things in this episode, as I said. It’s one you’re going to want to come back to. And remember, every episode is transcribed, and you can find the transcription as well as all the relevant links over on my website maisiehill.com/podcast or just use the link in the episode show notes, wherever you listen to the podcast and that will take you there.

So, we are always changing. We’re always going through shifts, always evolving, even the things that you perceive as being fixed and constant in your life, shift because they get deeper, more prominent, or they open up and become broader, or they narrow. They may become more or less significant to you. And then your experience of them changes because you as a person change, plus they’re all the things that are completely new to you as well.

So, change can be both small and big, not that that’s particularly accurate words to describe things. I’m not really into quantifying things like that, but I think you get what I mean. So whatever change you’re going through I want to give you some pointers that you can use to support yourself. The first thing might surprise you but here we go.

The first thing is to fall apart. What is it with everyone trying to put this off? Just fall apart, let yourself crumble, cry, get mad, grieve, laugh, say the ‘ridiculous’ things in your head because we all have ridiculous dramatic thoughts that come up. We all have intense feelings. We all have reactions and responses. And it’s incredibly useful to feel them and connect with them and just notice what’s there, notice the thoughts that are in your head. You don’t have to agree with them because they’re not facts and neither are your emotions by the way, but they are there, so let’s feel them.

And I know that for some of you that may really terrify you, the idea of this, of just falling apart and I get that. And I’m not suggesting that you just unleash yourself in an irresponsible way on the people around you because it’s important to be self-responsible in this process. But is there a way for you to fall apart if you need to? I highly recommend that you do. You can do it on your own, you can do it with others, a mixture of the two. I love to just let myself do that, it’s so valuable. It’s such a kind thing to do for yourself.

And I also like to get things out paper own because otherwise things just go around in circles in my head. So, if I can write it down or type it down somewhere, self-coach myself because otherwise what happens is we’re much more likely to just keep believing all of those thoughts that are going around in your head and just believing them to be true. And maybe not even seeing that they are thoughts that your mind is having because you’re just so in the experience that you’re not watching your mind, you’re not seeing what it’s up to. So just get it all out on paper.

And if there’s someone that you want to share some or all of it with, then you can do that too. And when you do that, I told you there was going to be lots of mini lessons in this. I like to just introduce things and say, “I’ve got some nonsense going on in my head. And I know it’s probably nonsense, but it would just be so useful for me to go through it with you, are you available for that right now?” And I ask that because not everyone is. Sometimes it’s just not a great time for someone. And either way, I just don’t like dumping stuff on other people without asking.

Most of the time people say, “Yeah, cool, go for it.” Occasionally and usually it’s rarely, they’ll say they just don’t have the capacity for it, or the time isn’t great. And I just park it, but I never make that mean anything about me or them. It’s just asking for consent. I actually want to do a whole episode about this kind of thing. So, I’m just kind of making a mental note of it right now because how we show up to conversations like this is a skill that doesn’t get spoken about much and it makes a huge difference in our relationships.

But my point here is just let yourself fall apart. Don’t try and skip that stage of the process, it doesn’t work. And the sooner you can wrap your head around that the better it is, not as a way to try and get out of it, but because when you try and avoid it, or try to delay it, you’re just deepening the belief that falling apart is bad, and that if you fall apart you’re weak, or unreliable, or whatever other kind of story you have about falling apart. As well as the belief that you don’t have time for it, I hear that one a lot, “I just don’t have time to fall apart.” Like, tell me about that. That’s so fascinating to me.

So, with all of these things, if you go along with them what you’re doing is actively supporting the deepening of those neural pathways. And as I said, you can’t just get out of this. All you can do is stuff it down and then eventually you’ll just have an explosion on your hands and that takes me onto my next point.

The best way to support yourself through change is to have an ongoing foundation of supporting yourself. It’s so much harder to navigate change when you’ve never learnt how to take care of yourself. And listen, you don’t have to go blaming and shaming yourself for that because if it wasn’t modelled to you, that is if you didn’t have examples of seeing other people like your caregivers, your peers, if you didn’t see them taking care of themselves then it might be less available for you to do.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t do it, but you need to kind of model it to yourself or find examples of other people doing it so that you can build that skill. And there can be an absence of this even if you had caregivers who told you to take care of yourself, but what you saw was them not taking care of themselves. That has an impact because what we see is often more powerful than what we’re told. And I thought I’d give you an example of what I mean as a foundation of supporting yourself.

And by that, I mean being aware of yourself, having that self-awareness, and being able to respond to your needs, whatever they are, and just honour them. I’m very good at recognizing my need for rest and actually resting. That’s me being aware, following through on my needs. I’m also aware of my cycle and how the ebb and flow of my hormones influences my experience of life. I know my nervous system very well, the common triggers that create a stress response in me. And I’m very aware of my emotions and how my mindset also influences my life.

I’m also very in tune with seasonal changes. I’m learning about how astrology affects me. I’ve got a couple of fun episodes about that coming up soon. And I think I just have a good overall sense of my life and my theory which I accept I could be completely wrong about but I’m going to say it anyway. My theory is that I am in a solid place to experience the menopause transition. Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s no escaping the hormonal fluctuations, the highs and the lows of perimenopause and then the tapering off of your hormones towards the end of that process.

And I’m still in the early phase of perimenopause. I’m just getting started over here. And in a few years’ time I may well come back to this episode and say, “Oh, Maisie, bless your cotton socks and your naivety about what was about to happen.” So, I can recognise that as a possibility. But I have seen this in so many of my clients over the years of working as a coach and practitioner. So yes, there’s the very real reality of what goes on hormonally and that can be intense and scary, no doubt.

There’s someone I know personally who’s in the midst of this right now and it’s scary for her. She’s literally like, “What the fuck is going on? I don’t know who I am anymore.” And that’s having a huge impact on her life. And I think that happens to some degree for all of us who go through perimenopause. I think it’s certainly useful to plan on it happening because imagine if instead of trying to ignore the possibility of this and never talking about it, we just accepted and expected that this would happen. So that’s what I’m doing.

Paul and I have been having more and more conversations about this recently and how we both kind of foresee my experience unfolding and what that might be like. And how that relates to our experience as a couple and as a family and just thinking about what could we start doing now that is going to support that process? But I do think I’m in a good position to go through it. And there’s good evidence about how mindset affects the experience of perimenopause. And I plan on taking hormones for sure.

But aside from that I’m very self-aware. I’m good at acknowledging and honouring my needs. I’ve educated Paul that this is going to be happening, what it might look like. We’re having those conversations and creating space for it to happen. And I’ve done so much thought work, got to know my nervous system and emotions. And whatever my experience is I guarantee that will have a positive impact on my journey through perimenopause.

And this is one of many, many reasons why working with your cycle and your nervous system is so important. It’s going to pave the way for you to navigate perimenopause and all that comes with it, not to mention supporting everything else that’s going on in your life before and after that. Now, here’s the next thing to consider when it comes to supporting yourself through change. Reduce your expectation of yourself. So many of you are going through change and expecting yourself to be at your best, to be able to bring your A game and that may well be the case.

You may well be able to do that, I think it depends on where you are in the process, and I’ll get onto that next week. But what many of you do is when you’re in the messy bit of change where it feels like your world is being turned upside down and you have no idea who you are what to do is right at that moment, you’re expecting yourself to be at your best. So how about we lower the bar of expectation? Because you’re going to mess it up along the way. And my recommendation is to create space for that.

Can you see how harmful it would be for you to expect yourself to do things perfectly? Because inherent in change is doing things differently and the quicker you fail the quicker, you’ll figure it out. So, whenever I speak to someone who’s about to become a parent, I like to talk to them about reducing their expectation of themselves and perhaps of others too.

And there were lots of reasons why I had such a positive experience postpartum, even in the midst of breastfeeding through Reynaud’s syndrome in my breast which was absolute agony and literally broke me. But even with experiences like that I still describe my postpartum as being amazing. And a large part of that was because after 10 or so years of doularing others because I used to be a birth doula.

I knew to expect very little of myself because that’s what I’d witnessed in my clients, that those who had very high expectations of themselves or kind of anything really above doing the bare minimum every day. That really had an impact on them, not in a good way. So, I dropped all expectation of myself and that meant I just got to be in it. I just got to hang out with my baby. I got to nap. If I had a bath or shower, wonderful. But I just got to be in it.

So, here’s another way that you can think about this. I want you to imagine that you’re renovating your kitchen. You’re having a new one installed and that means that you won’t be able to use your kitchen like you do normally. You won’t be able to use the sink, the dishwasher or oven because those items are either being moved or replaced and there’s just everything else going on that’s involved in a renovation project. So, nobody goes through, I don’t think at least, nobody goes through a kitchen renovation expecting to have full use of their kitchen.

Instead, you make adjustments, so like me, maybe you prioritise being able to make a cup of tea and hot drinks. So, you would move the kettle to another room so that you can still do that. But you would just need to fill it up in the bathroom perhaps. You might use a slow cooker or a camping stove to make some food. Or if you’re friendly with your neighbours you might ask them if you can use their oven. You wouldn’t expect to make a homemade meal that requires more than one pan or several cooking methods. And you’d probably just rely on takeaways more than you’re used to.

But if you’re going through a change of some kind, I want you to ask yourself if you are expecting to have full use of the kitchen whilst that’s happening. So, when change is happening, make adjustments and accommodations that support you, knowing that doing so is going to help you get back to full use of the kitchen. I mean how annoying must it be for builders to have clients who insist on using some of the kitchen because that probably just delays the final result. So just think about that for a moment.

Are you going through change expecting yourself to be able to have full use of the kitchen or are you reducing your expectation of yourself in a kind and helpful way so that you can navigate that change? The next thing to do is to not talk crap about yourself as you’re going through the process. Remember that you’re going through a shift and to be kind to yourself as you go through it. That doesn’t mean glossing over the challenges or the hard bits, but can you love and accept yourself through the process?

This is huge because when you’re going through a change you are going to mess things up. You’re going to get things wrong. You’ll say and you’ll do things in a less than ideal way. And you’re meant to, that’s how it should happen. I want you to see that if you go through a change by trying to do it perfectly you will limit the results that are available to you purely because the way in which you are doing things is based on how you’ve always done them. So rather than create a different result you’ll create the same or similar results.

Now, this is probably going to feel uncomfortable to many of you/all of you so let’s talk about that. One of my clients asked this question. “How can you stay regulated when you are leaving your cave, to use your metaphor which I have been finding so helpful, thank you. I find I am just constantly having micro activations because so much is out my comfort zone at the moment.” There were a lot of questions along this line. And for those of you who aren’t in The Flow Collective I will just explain for a moment.

I often talk about this idea of leaving the cave. So, when we’re in the cave or your house, you have a sense of your environment, it’s known to you. And to some degree you are in control of it, but when you leave the cave there’s arguably more risk involved. So, think about if you’re just watching a wildlife documentary and how animals are all hanging out in their den, all cosied up with their siblings, and cousins, and grandparents, whoever. But they’re not always in their den or cave.

They need to leave to get food and also because the world is kind of interesting and most creatures including humans are curious. So, they head out into the territory around them and see what’s going on knowing that there is some risk involved in doing so, but they do it because the benefits outweigh the risk. And maybe part of that is that they find a new food source, or a new place to call home, or they find a mate, exciting news.

And when you do this as in you leave your cave of what’s known and familiar to you in search of something else, the whole point is that you do get out of your comfort zone and experience some activations of your nervous system because first of all, that’s meant to happen. And two, this is what increases your resilience and your capacity. If you always stayed in the cave and didn’t experience the discomfort of being out in the open, how is that helpful? It isn’t.

There are times when it’s useful and important to seek out safety, and to recover, and to care for yourself, and be tended to by others. But that is all with the aim that at some point you’ll re-emerge from that and be able to encounter things that are uncomfortable again because this is what stretches your nervous system. And we’re talking about stretching rather than stressing it. But the thing is, some of you are making this a problem. And so, I want to remind you that it is the point.

And the goal of befriending your nervous system isn’t to always be regulated, please remember that. You are not meant to be regulated all the time. That is not the goal. The goal is to be able to experience all of your nervous system states to be able to inhabit them without feeling hijacked by your stress responses, and just kind of have no say in the matter. And when I say regulated here’s what I mean. When your nervous system is regulated, you’ll feel some version of feeling safe and connected to yourself and to the world around you and able to be social.

That doesn’t mean being a social butterfly, it can mean that. But you’re just you’re not in a stress response which means you can have a conversation or take in the world around you. So, a regulated state is not about feeling fantastic, though you might. It’s more about just feeling alright in the world. So, experiencing a felt sense of safety within yourself that enables you to be curious about the world around you and to think creatively. Whereas when you’re in a dysregulated state, that’s when you’re in a stress response of some kind.

So, you might have heard of this as fight, flight and freeze and these states are concerned with survival. So, they’re not bad, they’re just different. And they might feel horrendous to you when you’re in them. But what we want to do is find ways for you to become mates with your nervous system, so that you are able to experience these different states. So, as I said, the goal isn’t to be regulated all the time. That’s just not how our bodies work, and these stress responses literally keep us alive. So, they’re actually very useful, we want them.

And part of going through change is you coming out of the cave, out of your den of what’s familiar and known to you, in order to do something different, likely because you imagine it will be better somehow, or you just need to. You need to do things differently. So, there will be some kind of push or pull involved but some of you are wanting to skip the discomfort of this and get straight into what’s familiar and known. And that is why you’re trying to stop yourself from being activated but being activated is part of it.

You can’t skip that because if you weren’t experiencing any activation then there would be no stretching the nervous system and increasing your capacity and resiliency. So, you need to go through it rather than avoiding it. And then after a while it will become your new normal and it won’t activate you anymore. So, I was trying to think of an example of this and kind of it took me back to doing group calls online. Because I hadn’t done this until I ran my first online course which I think was 2017 maybe or 2018.

And to begin with there was some activation. I’m pretty comfortable with public speaking but my heart rate would go up a bit before a call. And I’d experience a shift in my body, was a bit like being on edge. But I chose to say that it was excitement, not fear or anxiety because the sensory experience of excitement and fear are very similar. So, I just told myself it was excitement instead of anxiety or whatever. And I got on with it. And now it’s no big deal to me. I just get on calls and coach.

And I have no idea who I’m going to coach, or what we’re going to coach on, or where we’ll end up going. And I can do that with such ease because I increased my capacity for it by experiencing the activations that caused my nervous system to stretch and grow. And that’s then caused other shifts as well. This is why I’m such a fan of working with the nervous system, it has such a ripple effect. So don’t try to skip this stage. Now, if your experience of this is too much as in it doesn’t feel like a stretch, it feels like you’re being hijacked, then be mindful of that and be kind to yourself.

Sometimes we’re just so used to how we’ve been socialised to push that you might not be aware that you’re pressuring and pushing yourself. It’s kind of like gritting your teeth to get through it. And I’m all for working hard to get a result but how we do that is important. So, if you’re doing it by cracking the whip then stop doing that because all you’re doing is furthering the belief that you can only create results by treating yourself like crap. And the nuance of this is that you can do the exact same things, the exact same actions but do them from a completely different place.

So, it’s all about how you are doing it, the energy behind it, but I suspect that when you’re pushing yourself it’s because you’re already in a stress response of some kind. So, we can see this as both the cause and the symptom of how you’re feeling. And the solution is to create a felt sense of safety and to be able to regulate yourself and experience coregulation with others to help bring you back to a regulated state. And that can be another person, like a hug, talking, a text, a phone call. It can also be a furry friend, being around plants. We can experience regulation from others in all sorts of ways.

And that leads me on to my next point. I told you we were going to be covering a lot today. So, this is all about comfort. When you are making the choice to experience the discomfort of change and yes that is just a thought, that change is uncomfortable. But also, if change wasn’t so uncomfortable, we would all do it a lot quicker and with more ease. Now, my opinion is that the discomfort of change is nothing compared to the discomfort of continuing with things in the same way when you don’t want to.

So, when you’re making that intentional choice and saying, “Yes, I am going to experience some kind of discomfort with this. I’m going to do this instead of that. I’m going to show up in a different way. I’m going to approach things like this instead.” Then my suggestion is to be just as intentional with creating comfort. So, you’re choosing discomfort intentionally and you’re going to choose to be intentional in creating comfort in other ways. So, there’s a few things I want to mention here.

Firstly, you know how some people talk about dressing for success? The idea being that you get yourself dressed up in a powerful way which then elevates how you show up in the world and helps you to be more successful in your day-to-day. Now, there was a time when I found doing that helpful, not for long but I leaned into it for a minute, and it was cool to do. So, at one point in time what I would refer to as dressing up was useful to me.

But I really think that when you do a lot of inner work and when your self-concept changes as in how you see yourself and in relation to the world around you as well. Then you don’t need to rely on techniques like this. Now, that doesn’t mean that they’re not useful or that you shouldn’t use them. If they are helpful to you, please don’t start judging something that is already working well for you. Like I said, it helped me at some point, and it may again in the future, who knows, I’m not against it. Always keep what works.

But if you’ve been around here for while or you follow me on Instagram, then you’ll know that I have sensory sensitivities and needs. And for me, the more comfortable I am with what I’m wearing the more I’m able to show up in the world and do my thing. And this is particularly true when I’m going through some kind of discomfort. So, I will be sharing more about this in next week’s episode. But earlier this year I went through a huge shift, and I spent most of that time in my pyjamas.

There were a lot of emotions going on. I was going through this really big identity shift. There was some things changing in my life, and I went through this whole process of remembering myself and coming back to me. And the whole time I was very intentional with creating comfort because that’s what enabled me to be uncomfortable with the shifts that were going on and to be kind to myself as I was processing all the emotions that were going on.

I have another great question, one of my clients asked, “Do you ever worry about other people potentially not actually liking or being able to adjust to a change or shift of yours, so friends, partners etc, but mostly romantic partner? And do you think that ever stops you from going through with a change that you knew was important for you?” I’ve thought long and hard about this and I’ve actually struggled to come up with an example of this. It doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened, but I just don’t let my brain indulge in thoughts like that.

Because imagine if I did, I just wouldn’t get anything done. Now, I’m very headstrong, and determined, and I think that’s clear to it everyone around me. So, it’s actually very rare for me to ask someone’s opinion. And so, I guess that kind of reduces the opportunities for this but yeah, I’m headstrong. It’s a family trait I would say in my family. We’re all very similar. But there was a stage in my business where I was doing what I describe as investing ahead of time.

And what I mean by that is I was paying large chunks of money for things that I knew were important in order for my business to succeed and to grow. But to a lot of other people those investments seemed ridiculous probably because at the time I wasn’t paying myself from the business. So, I had some money coming in from my books and that was enough to pay for Nelson’s childcare and some of the smaller household bills. But I wasn’t receiving any money from the business for the first 12 to 18 months or so, something like that.

And had I not been making those investments in the business I could have paid myself. My day-to-day life would have been a lot more comfortable. This was back when our toilet broke, and we didn’t have the money to get it fixed. So, we had a dodgy flush for ages. And then the electrics in our car went and I would drive around Margate with the car alarm going off as I was driving. So, we’re talking that level of things. So, at the time to others, me spending so much money within my business instead of paying myself didn’t make any sense.

But I wasn’t thinking about that first year, I was thinking about the next 10 to 20 years. And here’s the other thing, all that investment in my brain and my business meant that I actually cared a lot less about those things because I was able to manage my mind, and know, and trust in the long-term vision. So, when all this was going on there was a moment in time where Paul had an opinion about me spending $25,000 on life coach training, maybe it was a bit less than that. I can’t remember.

Master coach training was 25,000, I think the life coach training at the time was maybe $21,000, something like that. And that’s a large chunk of money. And I think at that point he’d already seen what I was paying for the tech side of running an online business and having a system and everything that’s involved in having a membership. But still a large amount of money and every single one of my monthly payments for it failed at least once and he cared a lot about my business, about me, about our life together, so it all came from love.

I’d never had any judgement about his concern about what I was spending money on. And at the time one of my friends was going through something similar with her partner and she asked me how I handled stuff like that when it comes to conversations with partners. And I just said to her, “It’s my business.” Paul is not my business partner. He’s my romantic partner and there are things that he has great expertise in that I love him to weigh in on and I will seek his opinion out on.

But I’m running this business. I set it up. I created it. I’m the one who’s running this business. And I do not need his approval. If he wants to feel uncomfortable about my business investments he can. It’s not my responsibility. It is my responsibility to show up to our relationship as his partner who loves him and have the conversations that matter within our relationship. But I have never let any man I have ever been involved with have a say in my business, never. A couple of them have tried, they regretted it.

But the reason I love this question so much is firstly, it’s a good reminder that it’s not your partner’s job to like everything that you do. The same goes for your friend, your family members, it isn’t their job to like and approve of everything that you do. That’s your job, but you might be expecting them to. So, notice how with a situation like this we’re often getting annoyed at people for questioning, and challenging, and disagreeing with our behaviour all whilst we are doing exactly the same thing to them. I’m actually going to do a whole episode about this.

We will cover it once we move into our winter programme episodes. But the other aspect of this that I do want to mention now is to be mindful of what you’re exposing yourself to as you go through change and also who you’re exposing yourself to. Think about who you’re spending time around. If your friendship group largely consists of people complaining about life and how hard things are, or you have family members who are quite fearful and talk a lot about job security, whatever the fuck that means. I mean to me this is just a phrase that makes no sense to me whatsoever.

But if you’re around people who are like this, I’m going to guess that for most of you, you’ll need to manage your mind about their thoughts because they will offer you unsolicited opinions or you’ll just make them up in your own head. But they will share their thoughts with you, of course they will, that’s just them being them. We don’t have to try and manage and control their behaviour because it doesn’t work.

But unless you are skilled at working with your nervous system and managing your mind you might find the sentences that come out of their mouth, or the looks on their faces to be quite challenging. You might get defensive, or annoyed at them, or just internally collapse and agree with their viewpoint and stop believing in yourself. So, whilst you are building those skills which is exactly what I teach you how to do in the Flow Collective you can reduce your exposure to them. You can resist the urge to tell them what’s going on.

It’s understandable that you want to share it with them. We are driven to seek out meaningful connections with others and when you’re excited about something and it just feels like it’s spilling out of you and you need to fill everyone in. That’s also just a thought, that you need to fill everyone in, maybe you don’t because you don’t need to tell them. You might want to, you might feel like you need to but you don’t. So how would it be for you to cherish something inside of you, just for you and to let it grow?

And of course, if you are in a community like the Flow Collective, or you have a friendship with someone, or perhaps a colleague, or peer that would be supportive as you make the shift then lean into that. You don’t have to do things alone, so coregulation which you can think of as the impact of someone else on your nervous system in bringing you back to a state of regulation. That’s incredibly helpful when you’re doing things that are out of your comfort zone.

So earlier this year I sent an email to someone, and it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I am so proud of myself for doing it. But my experience of sending that email was so significant. It’s probably the kind of thing that would be no big deal to a lot of people, but it was a huge deal to me. And just the fact that I was even considering doing it, showed me how much I’ve grown in my capacity to feel anger and to embody the highest expression of anger in order to bring about change.

So, I self-coached, I tended to my nervous system and my inner child. I got some amazing coaching, and I asked a friend to be on the phone with me whilst I typed those two sentences and sent it. Because that coregulation was what I needed in that moment. And it also meant I got to celebrate it immediately with someone and to be seen in that moment, to be witnessed as I did things differently.

I talk a lot about being resourceful and being self-responsible but that doesn’t mean that you should exist on your own and completely rely on yourself and never need anyone else. Because that can end up closing you off to connection with others and we humans do very well with connection. We need other people. So lean into your internal resources but don’t forget about the resources that are outside of you, other people and also your environment.

So, you can also think about how different you feel if you got out of an office with lots of greys, and hard surfaces, and lots of electoral equipment, probably not much light, or at least not sufficient light, and probably a fair few people who aren’t thrilled to be there. So, imagine swapping that and being outside in the light surrounded by the sights, and the sounds, and the textures of nature. To be in an open space to see a horizon where you have space to move, and to think, and to dream even if it’s pissing down with rain, that’s still available.

So, think about the places you are in, the people who are around you. This next question is about what if you didn’t choose the situation you’re in? So, this person asked, “How do we work with changes that we didn’t choose or that we feel ambivalent about, for example, perimenopause and some of the changes it brings, or changes to family circumstances that weren’t your choice?” Yeah, because there are lots of things that happen in life that we don’t choose and accepting this is important.

I know it sounds obvious but so many people have an expectation that life shouldn’t have disappointments and that we should be able to control other people and the world around us in order to be happy. And of course, that’s not what life is like. And your experience of life is going to be radically different if you accept that life is 50/50, half of the time it’s decent, half of the time it’s not. And if you can be okay with yourself to know how to manage your mindset, to work with your nervous system, to feel your emotions then you won’t need other people to behave a certain way in order for you to feel okay in the world.

And yes, things will happen that you don’t like, that you never would have chosen, and it will feel awful, not all the time but some of the time. But although you don’t have control over those things happening, you do have a say in how you respond to them both internally and externally. So, find the places where you do have a choice. Perimenopause and menopause is going to happen to you, it’s inevitable but you do have a choice in how you respond to it, in how you think about it, how you feel about it, the actions you take in response to it, what you make it mean about you.

So, train your brain to see all the places and ways in which you do have a say. It’s so much more useful to do this than focus on what isn’t in your control. I’ve got loads more to say on this but that will also be a whole other episode.

Okay, this question is, “How do you regulate yourself when you know you have a change on the horizon such as a house move or a new job? For me when I’m in this situation and don’t know exactly what my life will look like when this change happens my brain tends to catastrophise and imagine worst case scenarios.” Yes, this is what brains do. So, my suggestion would be to stop making it a you thing if you are doing that, and to start seeing that this is just a human brain thing. So, nothing’s gone wrong if your brain does this.

Your brain’s job isn’t to make you feel great believe it or not, its job is to keep you alive. So of course, it’s going to flag up worst case scenarios to you because it’s just trying to keep you safe. It’s trying keep you alive. That doesn’t mean that you have to go along for the ride with it. In actual fact actually think of it like a car pulling up alongside you. So, say you’re walking along and a friends pulls over and offers you a lift. You don’t have to get in. Let’s say they offer you a lift but they’re going in a different direction to where you are going.

They’re just trying to help you and it’s great that they offered. But you’re probably going to thank them and not get in the car. You’re going to keep walking or wait for the car that another friend is driving, or a bus, or whatever to pull over instead. The same with your thoughts. You don’t have to go along for the ride with them. You can acknowledge they’re there.

You can thank them for showing up and just carry on about your business because of course your brain is going to freak out. It wants to keep you alive so it’s going to tell you things are dangerous even when they aren’t. Because your nervous system will always err on the side of caution because if it fucks up, you’re in the shit. And there are all sorts of ways to deal with this and things like this come up a lot on our coaching calls. So, if you’re in The Flow Collective you can just ask in the community and we can point you in the right direction or give you some coaching there.

But what I want to say to everyone here is that remember that this is something that you chose. You chose to get a new job even if you were fired from your previous job, you chose to get a new one. Remind yourself that this was an intentional choice. Now, within all of this I have been touching on the importance of being self-responsible so let’s explore that for a moment just before we wrap up for today. I actually did a three-part series about responsibility that you can go back to and listen to as well, that was episodes 34, 35 and 36.

But for today just consider how you are being as you go through change. Are you being under-responsible? So that will look like blaming others and putting what’s going on for you on them or expecting others to prop you up when you aren’t doing that for yourself. And that doesn’t mean you should never lean on others or need anyone else.

Or are you being over-responsible? Are you thinking that you have to do it all and that you have to do it on your own, or that you have to problem solve for everyone else that’s going to be affected by what you’re going through and the changes that you are making? Or that you have to manage their lives? Or perhaps even using that as an excuse to try and prevent the discomfort of going through change, I can’t do that now because so and so needs me to be this way towards them, so I can’t do that right now.

I think that’s actually a sign of under-responsibility but disguised as over-responsibility. Or are you being a 100% responsible? That means you’re not blaming anyone else; you’re not blaming yourself, you’re being responsible about your needs in your communication, you’re being explicit and open in the relationships and context where it’s appropriate for you to be. You are accepting that your experience of life is your responsibility. Yes, other people do influence it but do you really want to blame others? Because if you do that means that they are in charge of how you feel.

Okay my friends, I told you today was going to be an epic one. My goodness there’s all sorts of mini lessons within this that you can return to any time you want or need to. If you’re in The Flow Collective, then share what came up for you in the community or bring it to Ask a Coach and get coached by the coaches over there. They’re doing an incredible job of coaching you all. All you’ve got to do is just submit your request in writing and they reply with coaching to every single one of them. And it’s all included in your membership.

I love that we are able to offer this to you. So, head over there and get coached. And I will be back next week to talk all about identity shifts. Thank you for listening and I’ll catch you next week.

Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of the Period PowerpPodcast. If you enjoyed learning how to make your cycle work for you, head over to maisiehill.com for more.