The fear response, a double edged sword

Fear is a master of disguise. It doesn’t always show up as a racing heart or sweaty palms; sometimes, it speaks in the language of logic, whispering that we’re “not ready yet.” It convinces us to set arbitrary deadlines, create endless prerequisites, or delay action under the guise of preparation. But if we look deeper, we often find that fear is at the root of our hesitation, quietly orchestrating our self-sabotage.

At its core, fear is a survival mechanism, designed to keep us safe from danger. But in modern life, fear doesn’t just react to physical threats—it responds to uncertainty, failure, judgment, and change. Our nervous system doesn’t distinguish between the fear of a tiger and the fear of speaking our truth, starting a business, or pursuing an intimate relationship. It just registers the discomfort and sounds the alarm.

This alarm triggers one of four responses: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Each of these can subtly shape our choices in ways we don’t always recognise and we create adaptive strategies to push through and avoid our feelings. Here are some examples:

• Fight: We overcompensate, push too hard, and exhaust ourselves with perfectionism.

• Flight: We distract ourselves with busyness, convincing ourselves we’re productive while avoiding the real work.

• Freeze: We get stuck in analysis paralysis, endlessly researching or seeking validation.

• Fawn: We over-prioritize others’ needs and expectations, losing sight of our own desires.

Fear as self sabotage

One of fear’s trickiest tactics is its ability to masquerade as prudence. We tell ourselves we’ll launch the business once we get one more certification, we’ll write the book when life is less hectic, or we’ll pursue love when we feel more secure in ourselves. These milestones often feel responsible and logical, but in reality, they are fear-driven delays.

Self-sabotage isn’t always about overt destruction; sometimes, it’s simply about waiting too long. The longer we delay, the more distant our desires feel. And the more distant they feel, the easier it becomes to believe they weren’t meant for us in the first place.

Ignoring our fears

Sometimes we develop adaptive strategies to ignore our fears and push through. This becomes problematic when we learn to ignore the limits of our own bodies and keep on pushing through. Some of us, to have more courage, learn to ignore our fears and push through (I used to do this a lot). The problem with this is that we are ignoring our bodies risk assessment system, our autonomic nervous system, and that ultimately can cause us to get run down, ill or so stressed that our focuses narrows so much we find it hard to function with the complexity of life. So I am not saying learn to push through your fears, I have saying learn to understand them and listen to them, what they feel like in your body. Learn to discern between levels of fear.

Making decisions from a survival state versus coherence and feeling safe

The state we are in when we make decisions matters. When we make choices from a place of survival mode—driven by fear, anxiety, or urgency—our nervous system is dysregulated. In this state, we tend to react rather than respond. Our thinking becomes narrow, focused on short-term relief rather than long-term impact. This can lead to reactive decision-making, avoidance of necessary risks, and choices that feel safe in the moment but create more complexity down the line.

On the other hand, when we make decisions from a state of coherence—where our nervous system is regulated, and we feel safe—our thinking is more expansive. We can be truly strategic, discerning, and appropriately prudent. We’re able to see the bigger picture, weigh options without urgency clouding our judgment, and engage with complexity without feeling overwhelmed.

This is why when we cultivate nervous system regulation—through practices like breathwork, grounding, or simply slowing down—we tend to make more sustainable, wise decisions. The more we develop the ability to recognise when we’re making decisions from fear in survival mode versus from a regulated state, the better we can lead ourselves and others.

“Courage does not always roar, sometimes it’s the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, I will try again tomorrow”

Mary Ann Radmacher

So how do we break free from fear’s grip and step toward what we truly want?

1. Recognise Fear’s Voice – Become aware of when fear is masquerading as logic, caution, or endless preparation. Notice when you’re setting unnecessary milestones that delay action.

2. Slow Down and Regulate – Instead of reacting from fear, pause. Use breathwork, grounding techniques, or somatic practices to settle your nervous system so you can make choices from a place of clarity rather than reactivity.

3. Make Micro-Moves – Fear thrives in the enormity of big leaps, but it loses power when we take small, consistent actions. Instead of waiting for the perfect moment, take one small step today. This goes for those of you having to make harder choices at work in your leadership role. Small iterative changes help people to adjust and accept change rather than big sweeping changes that often put people into their survival response and usually result in them trying to avoid the changes.

4. Reframe Fear as a Companion – Fear will never fully disappear, but it doesn’t have to lead. Instead of resisting it, acknowledge it: “Hello fear I see you, and I know you’re trying to protect me. But I choose to move forward anyway.”

5. Commit to Your Desire – If something truly calls to you, trust that desire. Your nervous system might resist, but deep down, your body knows what it longs for. Trust that wisdom.

In our big life transitions we often go through periods of review and reflection. The biggest regrets aren’t usually failures—they are the things we never tried, the dreams we postponed, and the desires we denied. They are often the relationships we didn’t foster or pay attention to. Fear will always try to keep us safe, but safety isn’t the same as fulfilment. The good news? We can choose differently.

What have you been delaying that your heart is calling you toward? What if you took one small step today? Because the truth is, you’re already ready.

Fawning and hypersocialisation, when survival becomes over accommodation

I have talked quite a lot about the fawning response before. A few years ago I was introduced to Brigit Viksnins work. In it, I was introduced to the concept of hypersocialisation, and as I thought about my own fawning response it made a lot of sense.

We often think of fawning showing up as people pleasing behaviour, which it is. But do you know it is actually more complex than that. Fawning which was coined by therapist Pete Walker, refers to the instinct to appease and accommodate others as a way to stay safe. When we fawn we use our social engagement system, which is the part of our nervous system where we usually feel safe and connected, as a survival response. Women and children are more predisposed to do this for a couple of reasons. Children because of relational power dynamics and the fact they have less physical strength, will use fawning as a response to evade danger. Women because they have estrogen and oxytocin which wires them for deep attunement and connection, will also use this strategy for the same reasons of power and strength, but also because they are biologically wired to connect. For those people with developmental trauma, fawning can become a deeply ingrained survival strategy, shaping how they relate to others and even to themselves.

Brigit Viksnins, a somatic trauma practitioner, expands on this concept with the term hypersocialisation. She describes hypersocialisation as an extreme form of fawning, where the nervous system is wired to prioritise social connection at all costs—even at the expense of one’s own needs, boundaries, and authenticity. Hypersocialisation isn’t just about being ‘nice’ or ‘people-pleasing’; it’s a profound survival adaptation rooted in early experiences where belonging and attunement to others felt like a matter of life or death.

Where I have seen this within myself and with clients is when we over function and over accommodate at the expense of our own needs. Yes, some people do develop this in their family system, and, I think the rough and tumble of the playground at school can deeply hone some nervous systems to develop this response to stay safe, as can some pretty toxic workplaces. With this, it brings some profound strengths. For me it is deep empathy, a sixth sense for what people are feeling which is of course a gift of being hypervigilant and the ability to read a room or space very quickly down to a somatic level. When we fawn like this we are putting on a mask and hiding behind it for protection. This disconnects us from our authentic self and from making deep authentic connections with others.

Understanding Hypersocialisation as a Trauma Response

Hypersocialisation emerges when a child’s primary survival strategy is to attune to others so finely that they anticipate and meet the needs of caregivers before their own needs are even acknowledged. This pattern often develops in environments where emotional safety was inconsistent or where a parent’s approval, love, or even basic presence was conditional. Rather than risk conflict, rejection, or abandonment, the child unconsciously learns that being hyper-aware of social cues and modifying their behaviour accordingly offers the best chance of maintaining attachment.

This adaptation doesn’t just disappear in adulthood. Instead, it can manifest in ways that are often mistaken for positive traits: being highly empathetic, socially skilled, and attuned to group dynamics. However, the cost of hypersocialisation is high—it often results in chronic exhaustion, resentment, and a disconnection from one’s own truth.

Signs of Hypersocialisation in Adults

• Chronic Over-Attunement: Constantly scanning for social cues, micro-expressions, or shifts in others' emotions to adjust behaviour accordingly.

• Shape-Shifting: Adapting personality, opinions, or emotional expressions based on the perceived expectations of others.

• Difficulty Setting Boundaries: Feeling guilty or anxious when asserting needs or saying no.

• Fear of Rejection or Conflict: Feeling emotionally unsafe if others are displeased, leading to habitual self-silencing.

• Emotional Exhaustion: Overextending in relationships and social interactions, leaving little energy for self-care.

Healing from Hypersocialisation

Recovering from hypersocialisation requires a gradual process of reclaiming one’s inner truth, bodily autonomy, and emotional safety. Some key elements of healing include:

1. Reconnecting with the Body: Because hypersocialisation is a nervous system response, somatic practices like breathwork, grounding, and body-based therapies (such as Somatic Experiencing) can help restore a felt sense of safety.

2. Developing Internal Awareness: Journaling, meditation, and self-inquiry can help identify the automatic patterns of fawning and where they show up in daily life.

3. Practicing Boundary-Setting: Learning to say no, even in small ways, can be a powerful act of reclaiming agency.

4. Titrating Social Exposure: If social interactions are a primary trigger for hypersocialisation, gradually practicing authenticity in low-stakes environments can help retrain the nervous system to tolerate healthy differentiation from others.

5. Building Secure Relationships: Finding relationships where authenticity is welcomed—and not contingent on over-accommodation—can be deeply reparative.

Digital art - Kellie Stirling

Beyond Fawning: Reclaiming Authentic Connection

The paradox of hypersocialisation is that, in an effort to maintain connection, it often leads to self-abandonment. True connection, however, doesn’t require over-accommodation—it flourishes when both people can show up as they truly are. Healing from hypersocialisation is about shifting from relational survival to relational agency. It’s about allowing the nervous system to trust that being real is not only safe, but also the foundation for deeper, more fulfilling relationships.

For those who recognise themselves in this pattern, healing is not about becoming less social or less empathetic—it’s about integrating those gifts with a deep and abiding connection to self. From that place, true belonging can emerge—not because we’ve molded ourselves to fit, but because we’ve learned to stand fully in who we are. Connecting with desire and understanding our boundaries, supports us to move to this place of being comfortable and safe being in our own bodies.

If you think you might be abandoning yourself through fawning and hypersocialisation, come talk to me about somatic experiencing or relationship coaching. We can work with your nervous system so you can feel comfortable to express your boundaries and feel safe to be your true self.

If you want to understand your survival responses a little better, click on this link to download a complimentary copy of my short explanation of your brilliant nervous system's survival responses.

The web of life, we are not just in nature, we are nature.

For centuries, humans have told themselves a story: that we stand apart from nature. We build cities, design technologies, and shape landscapes to meet our needs. We name ourselves as observers of nature, as though it is something out there—separate from us. But this illusion of separation is just that—an illusion.

The truth is, we are not just in nature. We are nature.

We have this myth of separation, a mental model that we hold that we are separate to nature. We need sunlight, water and oxygen to survive. We take all that in, plus food (from nature) and we breath out carbon dioxide which the trees take in to make oxygen. We are a system living within a system.

Somewhere along the way, many human cultures began to see nature as something to be tamed, managed, or extracted from. The industrial revolution accelerated this thinking, and modern life often reinforces it. We go from temperature-controlled homes to air-conditioned cars to office buildings, rarely touching the earth with bare feet or feeling the true rhythm of the seasons.

But no matter how much concrete we pour, how many walls we build, or how advanced our technology becomes, we are still living, breathing organisms shaped by the same forces that shape the forests, the rivers, and the wind.

Our bodies speak the language of the earth even, when we forget our connection, our bodies remember.

We have our own rhythms and cycles just liken nature, some of these are:
- The circadian rhythms that govern our sleep are tuned to the rising and setting of the sun.
- Our lungs evolved in partnership with trees, exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide in a continuous, reciprocal dance.
- The minerals in our bones were once part of ancient mountains.
- The water that makes up most of our bodies has cycled through clouds, rivers, and oceans for billions of years.

We are the land, the sea, the sky—just temporarily arranged in the form of human beings.

Human beings are relational beings, we are wired for connection and we need other people around us to co-regulate our nervous systems - we are not wired to do life on our own. In nature, everything is relational. Forests are not just collections of trees; they are living systems where roots exchange nutrients, fungi form underground networks of communication, and birds and insects pollinate plants, sustaining the whole.

Humans, too, are part of these systems. We have always been in relationship with the land, with animals, with each other. Indigenous cultures have long recognized this interdependence, honoring the earth not as a resource to exploit, but as kin to respect.

When we embrace this view, our decisions shift. We stop seeing ourselves as rulers of nature and instead become participants—stewards in an ancient, living network.

So how do we connect back to our natural place in nature?

Remembering our place in nature is not about abandoning modern life. It’s about reweaving our awareness into the fabric of the world.

We can start small:
- Walking barefoot on the earth, this is one of my favourites and I often do laps each night in a park in my house,
- Swimming in natural bodies of water,
- Noticing the phases of the moon,
- Eating food that actually comes from the soil, not just a package,
- Listening to birdsong in the morning.

Our body actually loves being in nature and connecting with the earth helps to anchor us back down into our bodies when the daily machinations of modern life and technology lift us out of it.

These simple acts reconnect us to something ancient within ourselves. They remind us that we are not just visitors here—we belong. Whilst these are great activities we can do on our own, they are even better when we do them with friends. We build little spots of coherence in our life with these activities and coherence has the capacity to shift a system. Coherence. both within our nervous system and in ecosystems, act as small attractors and they pull the system toward greater organisation. This is because systems are often fractal, which means that small patterns reflect and influence the larger whole.

Digital Art - Kellie Stirling

So in a system that is dysregulated, a single stable rhythm, like a leader modelling nervous system regulation in a group, can influence a group to entrain to steadiness and calm.

Our nervous system is not separate from nature—it is nature. The same principles that govern ecosystems also govern our inner world:

Just as a forest needs diversity and resilience to thrive, our nervous system needs a range of experiences and emotions to stay regulated..

Just as a river adapts to the landscape it moves through, we heal by allowing our emotions and sensations to flow rather than becoming stagnant.

Just as animals shake off stress to reset their systems, we can release stored trauma through therapeutic modalities like somatic experiencing that work with the natural rhythm of the body and we can use somatic practices that restore regulation

How do we come home to ourselves?

The climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and ecological destruction we face today stem, in part, from our belief in separation. But if separation is the problem, then reconnection is the medicine.

When we stop seeing nature as something outside of us and start feeling it within us—as us—we open the door to a different way of living. A way that honours interdependence. A way that leads us back home.

Because we were never separate. We just forgot.

Now is the time to remember. Although we face many big global problems, act as that small port of coherence, start local. Start with yourself and in your systems you interact with.

Midlife, the autumn season of our life. A time to pause, reflect and let go.

We humans are cyclical beings although our modern world doesn’t care or cater much to our cyclical nature. For those of us in female bodies, we are in a constant state of cycling through our menstrual cycles and this brings with it for many people a way of orienting and being in the world that provides a sense of feeling anchored to our cyclical nature. Our life is seasons within seasons, within seasons. Although many of us don’t always feel good about this all the time and I wonder if we talked about our inherent connection with nature and the natural rhythms of the world more, this would provide a sense of meaning to us at a deeper level.

Our midlife season is Autumn. It is a time to take stock, pause, reflect and let go of what we no longer need in our life so we can birth new parts of ourselves. I find this metaphor to be true for all midlife people I work with regardless of gender. It is a process of death and rebirth that happens where we are moving toward a soul oriented life. With this for many comes expanded consciousness where you are stepping into an unknown way of being in the world; this in itself can be overwhelming for many especially if you do not have roadmap or mentors to guide your through. The rebirth is your initiation into your wise woman power that is your authentic self. You are probably familiar wit the archetypes of maiden, mother and crone. This archetypal stage is called Maga which is the stage before Crone. Maga is Portuguese for sorceress and is the feminine of Magus, which is the sorcerer. We are the first generation of woman going through this because we are living longer than the other women in our female lineage.

For Males the archetypal equivalent is the Magician or the Sorcerer and to move to this is a rite of passage, a man needs support and community of wise elders supporting him. The Magician archetype when integrated in a man has the ability to turn disappointing situations and setbacks into opportunities to learn, grow and become a better man.

For all of us when we come to midlife their is often a great deal of inner work to be done for Autumn is the seasons of letting go. In the Celtic tradition, Autumn signifies a time of abundance because harvests are at their peak but also the season where we prepare for austerity, the winter season to come. Autumn is the season that brings the double outer and inner movement, a transition. By midlife we are ready for this big transition. It is the right time for this as we have the wisdom and perspective to really differentiate what is going on for us. Many of us may have been judged as having mental health or personal development needs in the past when they are in fact dealing with cultural overlays that are maligning our life. With our deep life experience we begin to see everything happening in our life for what it is.

Midlife is about healing any trauma or wounding from the first half of your life. When we move through this process of letting go, we are going through a process of dying metaphorically speaking. All the ideas you had about yourself, who you are, who you thought you were becoming, where you thought your life would take you may not have eventuated. So of course there will be anger, grief, resentment and maybe sadness that comes with that. You will find that what used to motivate you no longer does. You will start to pull back into yourself in a way, rather than giving your energy away.

This is because, for women in particular, you are leaving the archetypal mother phase of your life. With that comes some very real deep emotion. I think for many women there is grief regarding fertility ending. This is especially true for women who have not had children regardless of the reasons why, because all of a sudden choice is removed. There will no longer be any choice anymore, no possibility. I have also seen women who have had children experience this even though they were quite adamant that they did not want more children. The nervous system loves choice and agency, so when we are faced with the removal of choice, it does not surprise me that the body experiences either strong fight or flight responses like anger, anxiety and resentment because lack of choice backs us into a corner. But you also experience grief. Grief you see is the emotion that is the secret ingredient that helps us move on. You cannot let go without grief.

For grief to flow it needs the support of the community. it strikes me that at midlife, many of us feel like we are losing our true inner compass we got from our regular cycles and we are trying hard to orient to something new that we have no road map for because there is so much shame and denial in our culture about ageing. I think for males they experience something similar but often later maybe in their fifties is what I have noticed with my clients. All of us are looking for our ‘north star’ to anchor to something.

So why are these big emotional experiences in midlife so hard?

I think it is because we live in a culture where there is collective denial about our emotional lives. Many of us grew up in families where we did not have that emotional life fostered by our parents or caregivers. There was a complete lack of attunement to our needs. This has contributed to a huge array of hurt, trouble and physical symptoms for many people. When we are disconnected from our emotional body we become frozen on the inside, our emotions gets stuck with no means of freeing them. Our nervous system is very clever it will create all manner of management strategies to stop us from feeling that which is painful to us. This is deep work that is required. Learning to befriend our vulnerability so we can feel into our emotions, the harder ones in particular, opens the way to feeling the full spectrum of emotions - Joy, Love, Anger, Amazement, Wonder and Delight. It broadens your emotional landscape.

In midlife, we need our community around us to support us through this transition. But you know what, we need community all the time. Humans are not wired do life on their own. Our interpersonal neurobiology is wired to connect with others for co-regulation. Co-regulation helps us feel like we don’t have to carry the burdens of life all on our own.

Image - Visions in Blue

As my teacher Francis Weller says in his book The Wild Edge of Sorrow “Private pain is a legacy of the creed of rugged individualism. In this narrow story, we find ourselves caught in the shadow of the heroic archetype. We are conditioned from birth to the image of the hero, the one who needs no one, the one who rises above his or her pain, the one who is always in control and never vulnerable. We are imprisoned by this image, forced into a fiction of false independence that severs our kinship with the earth, with sensuous reality and with the myriad wonders of the world”.

The hero archetype, which so many of our stores are centred around, disconnects us from nature, from our cyclical nature, from our natural rhythms and our inner seasons.

Is it any wonder that our rites of passage feel so hard and so overwhelming. They are super complex and we need a circle of support around us to get through and for many of us that is simply not there nor do we know how to put it together.

So how do we navigate midlife better? We face it together we build a circle of support around ourselves. Each life stage has a developmental task that is asked of us, and in midlife it is radical honestly with ourselves, discern our truth. To learn to be kind to ourselves and to stay present to our life. For many of us this might be the first time we have had to do this it re requires vulnerability and acceptance of ourselves for who we are right now. Once we can accept ourselves as we are we start to connect with our unique gifts and slowly we are ready to put them out into the world.

One the principles I really like that helps us frame this experience comes from Japanese aesthetics and it is the world view that is called Wabi Sabi. Wabi Sabi is centred on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. This aesthetic appreciates that beauty is impermanent, imperfect and incomplete. This can be seen in Japanese art.

I think it is a beautiful way of framing life because it helps us to appreciate that all of life is fluid and we are always learning growing, that there is no such thing as perfection. We are all perfectly imperfect.

There is no right way to do your midlife transition. There is your way because you are unique and your life experience are unique and whatever comes up for you, whilst it might have something in common with someone else, will be uniquely your experience to learn from.

Getting over heartbreak

When we have our heart broken the pain can be so great that we feel it physically.
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Heart break is big because there are so many emotions mixed in there; despair, grief, shame, feeling worthless. We can also feel betrayal and anger depending on the circumstances. Our wounded heart is so hurt, there is such a rawness to the pain we experience. We can also feel great stress and may be disorientated and not surprisingly, really dysregulated in our nervous system.
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It is no wonder that people shutdown from their hearts in an act of self-protection. The raw pain can be more than our poor heart can bare because the intensity of our emotions, of the sensations we feel is so great.

Our heart feels shredded to bits sometimes.
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When we shutdown and disconnect from our heart this gets in the way of connecting with new people and finding new love. It stops us from being able to feel close to another person. It blocks us from feeling our emotions and feelings in our own heart space.

When we disconnect from one emotion we disconnect from all of them. Our bodymind is amazing but it is not clever enough to be selective from what it disconnects from when it comes to emotions and sensations.

Image, Tim Marshall

We can work with your body somatically to expand your capacity to feel, we can expand the container that lives within you so there is more space for your feelings to move around it and when we do this, we expand your capacity to feel and process emotions that are overwhelming.
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From there your heart can open again to new love that is coming your way.

How freeze physiology in our nervous system can impact our self-confidence

Freeze physiology in our nervous system can manifest in many different ways. Many of us walk around every day in a state of functional freeze. I did for a very long time. We often think of freeze as flat but that is often not the case. What we can see in freeze is a permanent state of contraction. Just like we see a snail or turtle moved into its protective shell when it feels threatened, the human body can move into a contracted posture when placed in a situation that evokes fear.

Freeze can be a stuck startle response or stuck fight and flight energy. Imagine all the times when you have been startled by something that you have seen and never got to discharge that energy. That response gets frozen in your system. It doesn't matter what the story of the situation is, it is something that overwhelmed us that was too much, too fast, too soon for our nervous system, or maybe too little for too long.

As the years go by, we absorb and adjust to this physiology so we can function well in life. However it can come at the expense of certain characteristics that we might like to develop. Like Self-Confidence. Why is this so hard? Well it has a little to do with the qualities of expansion and contraction.

Confidence is an expansive quality. It allows us to stand up for ourselves, speak more freely and take actions we might not take in other circumstances. However it is hard to expand when we have a contracted position stuck within. It needs the qualities of openness to emerge and stay available to us.

Sometimes we do a lot of mindset work to feel more confident. Sometimes a lot of exercise helps us to feel better in our body, more connected to it and more confident. However when we don't do the work on our nervous system, these benefits don't stick around. We wonder why, what is happening why is my confidence really up and down. Well it is normal to have up and down moments in life, but if we don't work on the functional freeze, the patterns of contraction in our nervous system keep pulling us back. Just like the turtle or the snail we contract back hard into our shell under a situation that stimulates the fear response. Sometimes this is why some of us cannot speak up in meetings or for something we care about when the stakes are high.

It can also impact us in our relationships, being able to speak up for what we desire most in life. In our dating life, it helps us so much to be able to ask for what we want in relationships. In our work life it helps us in so many ways move towards work that supports us and nourishes us, that allows us to feel confident to be our authentic selves.

Are you a midlife lady and your libido has disappeared? You are not broken

Midlife transition is a time of enormous upheaval for most of us. The developmental challenge of midlife is for us to be radically honest with ourselves about where we are right now in our life. It is a healing journey and it gives you the opportunity to make some changes, to do some deep inner work, if we need it, to heal childhood wounding. Recently I saw a social media post that said we spend the second half of our life undoing our experience of the first half of life. There is is no doubt in my mind that this is true.

In childhood we will always choose being our adaptive selves over our authentic selves. We create these adaptive strategies to ensure attachment to our caregivers, so that our basic survival needs are met. This is a primal survival response. As Gabor Mate says, adaptation over authenticity every time. That means for most of us, there is a lot to unpick in midlife because whilst those adaptive strategies kept us safe and alive as children, rarely do they serve us well as adults.

If you live in a female body you have menopause happening, often at the same time. This is a lot to handle. Menopause is a mind-bending, shapeshifting transition. Over this time, the deepest system in our body, the endocrine system, goes through a massive act of rearranging itself. This affects us physically, mentally and how we orient and show up socially and culturally. There is no way that this hormonal shift does not affect how we think, feel and perceive the reality of our life. It happens over time. (Unless it is induced by surgery or cancer treatments) Perimenopause is the 5-10 years of gradual change before we arrive at Menopause. That one day when it has been 12 months since we have had a period.

I will tell you something awesome about perimenopause. It is the start of a new phase or your life. Perimenopause is a transition to a time where you focus shifts to be on you. You are at the centre of your world. So often we need to make some changes to ensure that happens.

During this time, many women notice that their libido seems to either go away or change. A changed rhythm is both normal and common. Our rhythm of our desire changes many times during our lives, but for most women the period where they notice it is the most, is either post-partum and perimenopause. Both times we have massive hormonal changes going on in the body.

Don’t worry it is not all over. Well it can be if you want. What I have found with my clients, is that post menopause, many women experience the best sex of their lives. Midlife can be a time of great fun and exploration.

“Sex isn’t just about who we do and how we do them, and it it isn’t only about the ways we get aroused and orgasmic, either. Your sexuality goes to the heart of who you are. All of your relationships, not just your actively sexual ones, grow from this root.

When I say ‘all of your relationships’ I mean that literally…including the most significant connection of all, your relationship you have with yourself.

If you want to have better sex and more satisfying intimate relationships, the place to begin is with yourself - and more specifically, with your relationship to your own sexuality”.

Sheri Winston, Women’s Anatomy of Arousal

Let’s talk about some of the reasons why you are not feeling turned on, on the inside.

Many women have never explored their sexuality. We have just ridden the hormonal waves for years. What brings you pleasure? This transition offers you an opportunity to explore what your body really likes when it comes to what turns you on, what brings you pleasure. Most of us learn about sexuality through popular culture and this is shown predominantly through the male lens, as it is centred around a male body and its arousal patterns. Often, women wonder why does it take them so long to become aroused. The reason it is that it is normal for female bodies to take longer to become aroused because most of us have responsive desire. The alternative arousal pattern being spontaneous arousal which as it suggests happens spontaneously. Most female bodies are responsive, they respond to stimulus.

What many people notice during the menopausal transition is that it takes them longer to become aroused, this is normal. Get curious and most importantly start to tune into what brings you pleasure. I often feel with most of my midlife clients that their body is truly speaking to them and telling them that what they have been doing does not work for it. Imagine you body is yelling at you and saying '“This doesn’t work for me, find out what does”. You can have a lot of fun exploring both on your own and with a partner (if you are coupled) what works for you.

Emotional upheaval is a pretty normal experience for women in perimenopause. Some of this is due to the hormonal changes impacting the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and it become a little dysregulated. Our ANS state drives our behaviour. Think back to what I said about midlife being about being truthful with yourself. Many of us learn to repress ‘negative’ emotions like anger, frustration, sadness, fear, grief for example. There is no such thing as a negative emotion, this is a cultural belief system you have internalised. Your body is asking you to reconnect with these emotions. All emotions are useful and necessary, they orient us toward pleasure and pain and help us navigate the world. Anger is an important emotion for honouring our boundaries, we need it. Grief helps us let go of what we have loved and move through life transitions. If you start feeling these emotions and you have repressed them for year, your body will feel unsafe. When it feels unsafe it will produce stress hormones. You cannot produce stress hormones and sex hormones at the same time, you body will always prioritise safety and survival over procreation. So it makes sense that when you are feeling very stressed that the last thing you feel like sex. Your body will be constricted and tense, the opposite of being open to receive. Make it your mission to develop a new relationship with all your emotions. When you repress one you repress them all. You will be amazed and how alive you can feel when you slowly start to connect with all your emotions.

Pelvic health is super impacted by this transition because estrogen is the hormone that makes our skin, tissue, ligaments, tendons and joints all juicy and supple. it supports the production of collagen which does all the repair work at night on skin and joins. So less estrogen means less hydration. This can be experienced as joint discomfort all over but particularly in the pelvis, vaginal dryness and potentially gynaecological and pelvic health issues. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Make your pelvic health a priority. So whether you become a pilates devotee, yoga aficionado or make pelvic work a priority in the gym, all are good options. You might also need some hormonal support with estrogen for your vagina or maybe use a good internal moisturiser. All are good options. Talk to your GP or Gynaecologist about them.

Perimenopause has this way of highlighting our vulnerabilities showing us where we need to focus. This becomes very obvious with many of us when it comes to our relationships. Many women lose their libido because they are simply bored in their sex life with their partner. Rather than giving up on each other, look at this as an opportunity to explore something new. All of our bodies are changing. Good communication is the foundation of intimacy in a relationship. Intimacy is being able to speak out hearts truth to another and your sex life will become a lot more fun if you are able to talk honestly and truthfully with each other.

There is a cultural expectation that women will be ‘over the hill’, washed up and grumpy. This is simply not true. What is true is that many people experience burnout. If you are exhausted, your libido will go. Again it comes back to those stress hormones being front and centre. There is an emotional burden that women carry in society. The unrealistic expectations of mothering alone. It is simply unrealistic that anyone is able to mother and do all of that work on their own. The problem here is our culture not perimenopause. Make rest your priority.

So what can we do?

Well for a start, make rest and understanding your sleep your priority. Yoga Nidra is amazing when you are feeling exhausted during the day. Rest is part of your erotic practice, make it a priority.

Start with your sensuality. Your 5 senses are the language of your nervous system. What brings you sensual pleasure and really tune into exploring that and practicing it. Explore healthy pleasure. I just might add when it comes to our taste, wine and coffee are not healthy sensual pleasures. Alcohol is a depressant that brings an overstimulated nervous system down and coffee does the opposite. If you are feeling flat and a bit freezy it produces adrenaline and lifts you up. Make sure your sensual pleasures promote health. Food also affects mood, healthy food is medicine for the body. Eat the rainbow.

Explore your desire and erotic blueprint. We each have our own blueprint of arousal. Some good resources are Emily Nagowski’s book, Come as you are or Miss Jaiya’s erotic blueprint quiz. Discover what your turn on’s and turn off’s are.

Work on your trauma. If you are experiencing old trauma coming up in perimenopause work with someone who does somatic work, to help you befriend and connect with your body. This is the work I do, you can book a call with me if you want to talk about this.

If you need to do some deep inner work on reconnecting with your emotions, work with either a somatic therapist or coach, who can work with you to help you to expand your capacity to feel your emotions in your body. This is life changing work, that supports you maturing into emotional adulthood, I do this work with all of my clients.

Read and learn about your body. There are so many good books out there now about perimenopause. I have a great resource list you can look at.

Bust up any cultural beliefs about ageing. These will be stuck in your body, this requires some pretty deep inner work.

You might need to change the way you exercise. Stress is not our friend in perimenopause, it is the biggest hormone disrupter of all. High impact exercise stimulates cortisol (stress hormone) and it can be very easy to become cortisol dominant because we don’t have the estrogen levels to balance it. What most women find is that they actually need to do less exercise but do it daily. In small bits. Low impact and resistance based exercise seems to work best for our bodies as we age. Stacy Sims has written an excellent book on this and has loads of information about training female bodies as they age and to cater for menstrual cycles.

Have fun exploring your own pleasure. When you know what works for you then you can communicate it to your partner. You might need some help from a coach where you can work 1 -1 or you might do a group course but there is a lot of information out there about women’s sexuality. Get curious.

Putting yourself first, is not a self indulgence. it is actually a way of being and an act of self preservation. It is so important for us to ensure we set ourselves up to live well and thrive in our second half of life.

Are you a highly sensitive person? I am, here is how I turned it into my superpower

Are you a highly sensitive person? I am too. For those of us who are highly sensitive people (HSP) we pick up on everything that goes on around us. This can be great, people think we have extra sensory powers. It always made me a very good judge of character and I often felt I was able to feel what the other person was feeling. Turns out, I could, my body resonance is very good and I learned all of this through years of somatic coaching and somatic experiencing practitioner training. It helped me enormously when I worked in the corporate world in executive development roles because I was really good at spotting people’s talents and working through with them how they can continue to grow and learn and what work and life experiences would help them to do that.

So I am really good with my sensory experiences, very attuned to environments and very nuanced changes in them, I pick up minute details in people especially emotional and energetic changes. I am super aware of light, dark, electricity, climatic change.

Where does it become hard for HSPs?

I found the big differences for myself and for other HSPs I have worked with is whether the nervous system is regulated or not. That is, our ability to move into the different autonomic responses (fight, flight, freeze and fawn) and then soothe ourselves and come back to our window of tolerance where we feel curious, connected and safe. Sensitivity is a gift when you are well regulated, it is your superpower. When you are aware of everything around you and don’t perceive it as danger, you can have a very deep connection with the world you live in.

Where is becomes a problem is when your nervous system is dysregulated. We can be stuck in survival mode. When you are stuck in survival and you are an HSP, you can find it really difficult to stay present and grounded. Everything in your environment can feel like a threat, you can become constantly anxious, overwhelmed, have panic attacks. It is not fun.

So how do we become an HSP?

It starts when we are young. Even as early as when we are in utero, yes inside Mum’s tummy. When babies are born they don’t have the capacity to regulate and self soothe. We do that as parents, mostly through touch. We soothe babies through touch, rocking, our voice. Brand new babies are super sensitive to the new world and they will startle and cry over any sound or cause of confusion to them. New babies are sensitive to new sensory experiences and to their parents. It is our job as parents to co-regulate their nervous system and this continues for the rest of their childhood. If a baby has had healthy co-regulation from an adult who can self regulate, at about 11 months old they will start being able to soothe themselves a little. The first three years of our little lives are super pivotal in the development of this capacity. What can cause us to become dysregulated is early trauma, it can start at conception.

We can experience stress in utero if our mother is stressed. My parents were in a motor vehicle accident when my mother was five months pregnant with me and one of the earliest experiences I had in my somatic healing was, we think, (me and my therapist) this experience that came up in a somatic experiencing session. It is hard to put to words because we have no explicit memory the first 3 years but we remember sensation in our body.

Stress in utero can prime a baby to be living in high stress when they come out into the world. Other experiences we might have that cause us to be in this state is if we grew up in a family where mum and dad fought a lot. We become masters at anticipating what our parents are feeling in order to defend ourselves. We become hyper-vigilant to the mood of the adults in the house. We become attuned to energy, emotions, physiology of others and in these survival states this may drive behaviour where we are very introverted or shy or just feeling like we can’t be ourselves. I also think some kids can experience this at school either with a teacher or other kids and become in this hyper aware state.

Also medical experiences or sickness we experience as a little person. If we had to have surgery or spend a longer period of time in hospital our little nervous system can become super overwhelmed and can struggle to understand what is safe and what is not safe. Over time if we have a few of these experiences we can shutdown to our feelings and emotions. This is our nervous systems way of coping.

The impact of experiencing all of this dysregulation over time, is that our nervous system can go into shutdown, this is the dorsal vagal state of the parasympathetic nervous system. When untreated this can lower our metabolism, energy and immune function. There is a lot of evidence that early and developmental trauma has a significant impact on health outcomes as an adult. Look up the ACEs study if you are curious, this has all the info in it.

Other kids might not shutdown they just might become hyper-attuned to their environment, these are our highly sensitive people. Their system is revving on high and they perceive everything as a threat, they don’t ever really feel safe.

Experiencing that co-regulation from caregivers when we are young is super key in teaching children to self-soothe and bring themselves back into presence and calm. If their caregivers were dysregulated because their nervous system never learned this, we end up with early developmental trauma.

A little passage from rumi or hafiz

If you identify as sensitive, whether you are introverted, extroverted or somewhere else in between, your sensitivity is a foundation.

Sensitivity is so wonderful, yet so fragile and misunderstood. We spend so much of our lives resenting it, fighting it, trying to smother it down, instead of nourishing it.

Sensitivity is often labeled as a weakness but in reality it cultivates a strength most people don't ever experience.

Sensitive people used to feel more so they can often simply handle more, when push comes to the shove.

The good news is that we can work with this. There are many somatic modalities, like somatic experiencing, neuro affective touch, neuro affective relational model, sensory motor psychotherapy which all support nervous system healing. It is never too late to learn, to heal your nervous system. When you do this nervous system healing work, your HSP gifts turn into your super power because you use them from a more grounded place. You are aware of your environment and you can witness your own experience on the inside and be with both at the same time. You can experience the world in technicolor and bring yourself back to calm, centred and grounded.

Come talk to me if you would like to explore healing your nervous sytem.

Ten things I wish I had known before I started my midlife transition

I ran into an old friend a few weeks back and we were talking about our work. We cross over on the trauma resolution and nervous system work. This friend is in her thirties and we were talking about midlife and menopause and supporting women in this transition and how important it is because it is such a time of overall transition AND it is a gateway to ageing. It is an important transition and we really need to review our life and all aspects of it so that she can set herself up to live well in her second half of life.

I went home and thought what would be the top 10 things I wish I had known before I started midlife? If we had a crystal ball we could stare into that would helps us, what would be the most helpful tips. So here you go.

1.We go through two transitions midlife and menopause at this time in our lives if we live in female bodies. Menopause is the end of our fertility with that comes not just physical change but psychological growth and healing. The developmental challenge at midlife is being radically honest and truthful with yourself about where you are at right now and who you are.

2. Learning about hormone health is absolutely key at this time in life, if you can learn earlier go do it. It is not just your sex hormones that change, they affect all our other hormones, like thyroid, insulin, our stomach hormones and stress hormones because of the change.

3. You cannot push your way through these transitions. The way through is going inward, slowing down and learning to rest.

4. You will get restless, question everything and intuitively feel like you need change in your life. Don't project this all out, explore your inner world.

5. Your body is the home that you live in. Take very good care of it. The overarching question that covers these transitions is "How can I set myself up to live well in the second half of life?". Use that as your guide and refer back to it constantly.

6. Old trauma will come up for resolution at this time and the hormone changes often impact the nervous system to cause that to happen. Remember our body is wise, intelligent and has an innate capacity and orientation to healing.

7. Get the support and help you need. You are the CEO of your body, it is OK to work with different professionals to get the support you need. (I count my chiropractor, shiatsu practitioner, GP, oncologist, massage therapist and somatic experiencing teachers just to name a few in that group)

8. Estrogen is a hormone that fosters connection with others and bonding AND it gives us rose coloured glasses. All of a sudden you will start to see the world differently when it declines. This is normal, you will get mad and annoyed. All of this is OK, you cannot 'unsee' things now, this will help promote your passion and purpose as you move through menopause.

9. You will come face to face with your cultural conditioning around ageing, sexuality and sensuality. Face into it, don't let it hold you back from growing and be radically honest with yourself.

10. Pelvic health is critical at this time in our life. The Pelvis is a incredibly important part of our body that connects the top and bottom of our body. Within it are our reproductive organs and and our organs that get rid of waste. We hold so much old emotional stress and tension in our pelvic floor and this impacts us physically, emotionally and sexually. It is ok to get obsessed about pelvic floor health in my opinion. Do pelvic floor exercises, pilates, jade egg exercises, whatever you need, find people who really know what they are doing.

And one more just because...... you are letting go of parts of yourself you don't need anymore and birthing a new part of yourself, your inner wise women is on the way!

Pleasure: how it nourishes us, resources us and helps us to grow

Pleasure is your birthright. When I say that, when you read it, what do you notice in your body?

Pleasure is certainly a word that sets a lot of us off and that is because of the stigma of cultural shame that we hold in our body around it first and foremost. Our body has orientations toward pleasure and pain. Pleasure is opening and expansion and pain is constriction and a move away from energy. Pain tells us when something is not safe and our nervous system moves us into action to take us away from it. Maybe we’ve also had personal experiences of when we overdosed on something we felt was pleasurable and things haven’t turned out well. That is one way to stop our nervous system from letting us feel free to fell it.

Humans are incredibly sensuous beings and our senses are how we experience the world through our five senses of smell, taste, smell, sight and touch/feeling. We experience pleasure through these sensory experiences. When we are consciously doing this we are building new neural pathways for our body to feel this expansive energy. We need to do this in small doses, like microdoses, otherwise that nervous system kicks in, says I’m not enjoying this, or this is too much and that shame reaction comes back.

Let’s just talk about shame for a minute. There is a relational component to shame. It’s usually something like this, “That person made me feel ashamed by saying/doing……. “. People definitely use shame as a weapon, and shame definitely been used to stop us feeling and embracing our bodies need to feel pleasure. It’s been used to take away autonomy and choice without a doubt.

But shame occurs when there is a part of us that agrees with the other. There is some part of you and me that agrees with the shaming idea/assertion/concept and then we feel shamed. The shame that is living there in the unconscious, actually agrees with what the other is saying or their perception and ideas of you. The person might be actually saying the thing that we have always feared is actually wrong with us and now it must be true because they’ve said it.

What this shame tells us is that we are seeking external validation to tell us we are ‘good person’ and that there is a part of us thinking what they are thinking. It wouldn’t bother us if that part wasn’t there feeling the shame.

When we realise this it is liberating because we know that anyone can say anything to us and we don’t have to feel shame.

When we are children we don’t really have the life experience and inquiry skills to look at it this way. To do the self inquiry and perspective seeking work. We rely on our parents and caregivers to support our nervous system through co-regulation and to give us information about ourselves, our behaviour. What is ok and not ok, help us with our boundaries.

When we don’t get that support as kids, we tend to continue to look for external validation from others into our adult life. It would be silly of us to expect children and traumatised nervous systems to not feel shame.

So back to pleasure. That cultural conditioning that said you are a bad person if you feel pleasure, well a lot of it comes from religion and came in times of austerity when the cultural austerity came in to curb the excess of hedonism. The pendulum of culturally acceptable behaviour swang really hared the other way. Those Romans they were hedonists. The French revolution came about after years of hedonism and sensually gratuitous behaviour by the French Royal court. Kind of makes sense, but the pendulum swang too far and here we are a couple of hundred years later disconnected from our bodies because we don’t feel safe to feel pleasure.

This is why sensual pleasure is a good start and starting small is a good way because that small dose of it will feel safe in your nervous system, and that part of you that feels shame, it won’t go into overwhelm. Our sensory experiences help us connect to our bodies, they are the language of the nervous system. So by starting small we build and strengthen the nervous system. Our autonomic nervous system is beautiful and it is always working really hard to keep us safe and to regulate us. Small doses, titrate it for us. We have to practice. It takes devotion too. We have to commit to letting ourselves feel pleasure every day and the best way to do it is by starting off your day with pleasure. Our body will fight us, there will be resistance. “I’m too busy, I have work to do'“. Flight response. “I feel like I don’t deserve to feel pleasure it feels terrible putting myself first’. Flight and freeze working together. “I’m too tired to do it”, that is collapse.

Pleasure is the counter vortex. It builds that alternative neural pathway to the vortex of trauma. This is how it resources us.

So what are some pleasurable activities that are healthy choices.

• Singing, Chanting or Dancing

• Using our breath; doing breathwork or breathing exercises

• Movement, exercise, walking in nature.

• Eating nutrious food and really being present to the taste of it

• Surfing, skiing, rollerblading - they take a lot of concentration and ask of us to be truly present in the moment with our body.

• Going to an art gallery and admiring the art

• Listening to music or creating music

• Sexual self-pleasure is very nourishing and supportive

This helps us in everyday life and it helps us in the bedroom. When we know what we like we can talk to our partner about it. We can ask for what we want.

What about the pleasure we might feel from coffee, drinking alcohol and taking recreational drugs?

Well you might feel good but actually we take them to avoid, to not feel and to soothe most of the time. So coffee is great but it stimulates adrenaline in our body which creates that fight and flight energy. So if we are taking it because we are tired and need more energy, we are ignoring our bodies boundary and its message that we you need to stop and rest. Alcohol is a downer and generally distracts us from feeling. Or for some people they can only express themselves and find a voice when they are drunk which is still avoidance. Recreational drugs, the stimulus response depends on the drug, but they are a tool of avoidance from being present in the moment, to wanting to feel.

Addicted to the pleasure of shopping, that high from buying stuff? This is a little hit of external validation that elevates us to help us feeling a sense of belonging but its a super quick hit and we often feel empty afterward. Don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with shopping per say and personally I love a good spot of window shopping and looking at clothes, but when you use it as a distraction to make yourself feel good, to not feel the ‘difficult’ emotions, or can’t stop your online shopping, that is a problem.

Finally, pleasure, how does it help us grow?

Well when we build up our capacity to receive it in our nervous system, we build up our capacity to feel more expansive energy. This is an open and vulnerable energy, we can only grow from this position. We cannot grow from constriction and shutdown, from invulnerability. We are not open to other perspectives in this state, we rarely inquire, we cannot listen to another person’s point of view and we certainly find it hard to let ourselves feel bigger emotions. We are in disconnect.

As always if you like this post, feel free to share it with someone for whom you feel it might be valuable.