Episode 209 – Decluttering During Perimenopause & Menopause with guest Clarissa Kristjansson

Our guest today is internationally recognised menopause educator Clarissa Kristjansson. She teaches women and men all around the world how they can transform their menopause journey from one of challenge into empowerment to go through the menopause with kindness and understanding.

She would love everyone to release the stress, lack of confidence and body image issues and guide us towards a sense of clarity and control, so we can ride out the storm.

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Transcript of this podcast episode

[00:00:00] Ingrid: Our guest today is internationally recognized menopause educator, Clarissa Chris Jansen. She teaches women and men, I think all around the world how they can transform their menopause journey from one of challenge into empowerment to go through the menopause with kindness and understanding. She would love everyone else to release the stress, the lack of confidence and body image issues, and guide us towards a sense of clarity and control so we can ride out the storm. I

[00:00:35] now, I would love to introduce to everyone, Clarissa Christiansen, Lesley, and I had the.

[00:00:41] Pleasure of listening to her talk about this menopause topic during our annual conference of the Association of Professional Declutters and organizers and Clarissa explained everything so well that I was nudging Lesley, when we like Lesley. Lesley, we need to get Clarissa on the show and tell us more.

[00:01:00] So welcome Clarissa. Thank you for being 

[00:01:02] Clarissa: here. Well, thank you so much, Ingrid, for inviting me, and thank you Lesley as well. It was great meeting you and I'm excited to share with your listeners more about 

[00:01:13] Ingrid: menopause. Well, I'm going to come clean. Uh, uh, Clarissa, I don't know a lot about the menopause, and I've really, I've now delved into your book and I've, I've listened to a couple podcast episodes because I'm like, I feel like I'm woefully.

[00:01:30] But I think one statistic really shocked me. And in that, you said that in your talk 1.2 billion and I was like, what, what, what? So tell us a little bit more. 

[00:01:41] Clarissa: Oh yes. That's how many women are very shortly around the world in menopause. That's a huge number. That's the size of China almost. That that's an incredible number and yet we are still not able to talk about it properly and openly.

[00:02:01] We are still very confused and really it's time to change 

[00:02:06] Ingrid: that. I hear you. I'm on the barricades with you. So, um, especially because I think I can learn a lot from this podcast as well, so I'm very happy. Um, so I hear the terminology, menopause, perimenopause, post menopause. Can we start at the beginning and can you just explain to me what this is and what's the difference?

[00:02:30] Clarissa: Oh, that's a great question, Ingrid. Yes, terminology matters, but let's keep it simple. Perimenopause is when all your hormones are fluctuating. Starts commonly, but not for everybody. Sometime in our mid forties. So when we go around thinking menopause is about old people, it's not, it's about, uh, midlife women.

[00:02:58] And just remember that the top end of the millennials, the top end of Gen Y. Turning 40, so they're soon all going to be in perimenopause. But this is really when we feel all those symptoms that we talk about, their brain fog, their hot flashes, the weight gain, and the 40, 50, however many symptoms there are.

[00:03:20] They seem to grow by the day. Then you have menopause. And although we use that term as a kind of overarching term, really from a biological perspective, it is the one day, 12 months after you last had a period. If you don't have another menstrual period after that, you are then post menopause. That's a horrible term.

[00:03:45] I hate that term. Yeah, I think I like queendom and queen age and wiser woman. You know, technically it's post menopause, but you know, you can still have symptoms. You can still be having hot flushes and still having some other menopause issues like joint pain and even our brain fog after that period, because we're still.

[00:04:08] Declining hormones for quite a while, especially estrogen until we get to a kind of new baseline. So simply peri is the chaos. Menopause is one day, and post is when the body slowly starts to settle into the new hormonal balance that we will have as we age. 

[00:04:30] Ingrid: Thank you for explaining that because I mean, the terminology makes sense, but I think it's really good to have clarity on that because there are different stages and I think we all, so far, it's all been kind of thrown in one heap, right?

[00:04:42] The menopause. And I hadn't even until recently realized there's actually such a thing as peri and post menopause. I'm really glad that we talked about that. Um, now, Symptoms. You mentioned a few. The list can be quite extensive. It doesn't mean everybody gets everything right. I mean, there are a lucky souls that get everything, but what kind of symptoms are we talking about here?

[00:05:10] Well, 

[00:05:11] Clarissa: I like to put them in buckets. So I think there are real physical symptoms, hot flashes. We can have pain, we can get itchy skin. We can feel, um, you know, sort of sore and you think, why have I got. Funny, joint pain or whatever, suddenly got back pain. And then we can have worse stuff like migraines that are hormonally related.

[00:05:35] My mom had those, but then we have the mental issues. So they are anxiety, very common. We can't sleep. We can feel fatigued, we can feel. Panic, some of those and depression and some of those can be quite significant. And then there are the ones we talk about all the time, these vasomotor ones where we are hot or cold.

[00:05:58] 'cause we can have cold flushes, some people do and we can have night sweats. So there's lots of different types of symptoms. Um, and yeah, 34 is the number we. You know, I've heard 85 quoted recently. I'm not sure that I would put everything you experience at this time of life as down to the menopause.

[00:06:22] Ingrid: Okay, that's good to know then. So, um, how do people start to recognize. Kind of things when, when, when they start to get married? Me perimenopause. What, what kind of things happen to women? 

[00:06:36] Clarissa: You know, it's usually starts in the brain and I read a great statistic from, um, professor Jay Sheri, k Kish. She's a women's psychiatrist at Sydney or Monash in, in Australia.

[00:06:48] I think she's moved uni now, but she said menopause starts in the brain five years. Before your body actually feels any change, and I think that's true. We notice that we're not sleeping so well. We are more sensitive to stress. We start bursting into tears and we don't really know why I am sitting in my car crying about the world.

[00:07:10] We get anxious and we think. A lot of it is to do with the fact that we're stressed, and of course, stress makes all of that worse. Mm-hmm. But it's really the start of hormonal changes that impact important centers in our brain. 

[00:07:26] Ingrid: Okay. Yes. 

[00:07:28] Clarissa: Yes. So that's where it starts. Yeah. So that's what we notice first, and then we notice all the classic stuff we put on weight later on.

[00:07:36] Most women will get hot flashes much later. Maybe two thirds of the way through that, you'll start to notice the hot flashes. And then progressively we get more symptoms that are related to estrogen loss, the joint pain, the itchy skin, the dental issue, you know, the list is very long. Um, but it really goes in stages for, for a lot of women.

[00:08:00] Of course, you don't have all of the symptoms and you don't have all of the symptoms all of the time. You have your unique. Cocktail, unfortunately, we dunno what that's going to be, and we don't know how long it's going to last. 

[00:08:11] Ingrid: Okay. That's that's good to know. So we can't kind of, because I, I, as a professional organizer, like, okay, okay, when is this starting?

[00:08:19] When does this, and it doesn't work that way, does it? Loria? 

[00:08:22] Clarissa: No, it works in its own way. I mean, some of this is related to your lifestyle. It's related to your genetics. You could have a look at the sort of impact that your mother had. It's related to lots of things that are outside of your control, your education level, how much you grew up in poverty, trauma you've experienced, toxins you've been exposed to.

[00:08:45] We can't control lots of those things. What we can control is what goes on in here. Which is obviously a lot of my work and what we put into our bodies, what we eat, what we drink, how we move, and how we try and take care of ourselves. 

[00:09:02] Ingrid: Yes. You mentioned Indeed mothers, and I actually been meaning to ask my mother about it because I.

[00:09:08] When I started thinking about menopause and when I heard your talk, I had a flashback to a holiday in Spain back in the eighties, seeing my mom going, I'm so hot. I'm so hot. Like the whole time, the whole holiday. And that's kind of the only thing I ever really realized from it. And I actually, I don't think we ever had a conversation about it at the time, or it was not really.

[00:09:32] Spoken about and um, I now am firmly, I've got on my list to talk to her about like, what do you remember from this time? Um, also maybe to kind of mentally prepare myself a little bit. 'cause if it's a bit genetic, I need to know what she went through so I can kind of prepare myself, I think. 

[00:09:51] Clarissa: Exactly. I mean, asking your mother may give you some clues.

[00:09:55] Yeah. What I do say is, and you saw that in my last book, that a lot of women there went to their mothers, and mothers went, well, I had a hysterectomy. So I don't know, of course you don't have, not have menopause, but you don't have a prolonged one. Yeah. So a lot of women of our mother's generation really didn't experience this 3, 5, 10, 15 year.

[00:10:16] Um, Long journey that many women today are having? Yeah, 

[00:10:21] Ingrid: I think the same. I think, I think I'm gonna, I think my mom had a hysterectomy too, so, um, I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna, I'm gonna have to now talk to her about it. It is really strange that you never kind of talk about these things, right? Mm-hmm. And is that what you see that now you've opened the conversation up that all of a sudden a lot more people are talking about 

[00:10:41] Clarissa: this?

[00:10:42] Yeah, and everywhere in the world, you know, I've started to notice the conversation is popping up in India. There's a fantastic group called Menopause Uganda, who thought that women in Uganda would come together in groups and march on the street and have men joining in talking about menopause. That's happened in the last few years.

[00:11:04] Yeah. Obviously the conversation is enormous in the UK and kind of bigger than anywhere else in the world, but everywhere we go, women are starting to open up and men are coming along to the journey as well and saying, we need to be part of this because it impacts us too. So it isn't just a women's thing, it's a.

[00:11:23] People's experience. 

[00:11:25] Ingrid: Yeah. Yeah. And that's why I specifically, I said, and men around the world in the, in my introduction, because I thought men are such a big part in, in this journey, I think, and I mean, you know, they, they need to be educated and they need to, they, they, they're so important as a supportive system as well.

[00:11:42] They, they need to be involved, I think 

[00:11:44] Clarissa: in this. They do, and they have their own version of menopause. Obviously they don't have menstruation, so they don't have menopause, but they do have andropause and that is a decline in testosterone for men. Lots of the symptoms look similar and we've often sort of went, oh yeah, med midlife crisis or whatever.

[00:12:03] But it's real. They can feel depression, they put on weight. Um, and, and they generally expect. Experience a decline in muscle mass just like we do. So we shouldn't dismiss that. And I think the strength will come when we join together. Yeah. And say this is our midlife experience. For most people, it is a midlife experience, and how can we support each other?

[00:12:25] Wherever 

[00:12:25] Ingrid: we are in the world. Oh, I love that. Yeah. Thank you. Um, well, yes, you're right. I mean, here in the UK there's a massive movement. Of course. We have our, uh, fantastic TV presenter, Dina McCall has been very much involved in, in this almost revolution. She made a a TV program about it a couple of years ago, and.

[00:12:45] Every, just Twitter or social media, every, everybody was talking about it and it became into magazines and it suddenly became this thing. And, and she was such a fantastic, I think, um, figurehead to, to, to spearhead this whole, um, Revolution, I think she called it. And she's now done a follow-up program a couple of months ago, and I didn't watch the original one.

[00:13:09] I tried to actually find it and I couldn't, but I'm still, I still want to watch it. But I saw the follow-up show and she actually said herself that she could not even have phantom the, the, the things that happened after her first show. 

[00:13:22] Clarissa: No, and I think for the UK that's opened up a whole different approach, which isn't happened for the listeners in places like the US or in Australia.

[00:13:32] The conversation is, is at a lower level. It's not as celebrity driven. Though I'm happy to see Natalie Portman and whatever we think of Gwyneth, she's out there talking about it, and they're also investing into a EmTech. That is providing long-term, possibly non-hormonal solutions to this. And I think that's a fantastic way forward.

[00:13:59] And for celebrities to actually put their money into this is good because it helps the rest of us feel we could invest and benefit too. Yeah, 

[00:14:07] Ingrid: yeah. I love that. So, um, How, how come you know so much about this topic? I mean, it's not like it's, it's of course it's very big, but it's kind of very niche at the same time.

[00:14:20] You know what I mean? How, how come you're such an expert? Well, you 

[00:14:23] Clarissa: know, it's 17 years ago since I went through my own menopause. But when I was working as a mental health professional, so that's really my daytime job is that I'm a mindfulness practitioner and I work inside a mental health clinic, uh, supporting psychologists, psychiatrists and psychotherapists with mindfulness.

[00:14:46] And I kept getting all these women and they come to my own mindfulness classes. They were all midlife. They were all struggling. They were being told by the the professionals, ah, it's generalized anxiety disorder. But it was such a pattern of sleeplessness, anxiety, mild depression, not feeling I can focus, concentrate.

[00:15:06] I'm having issues in relationships, issues at work. And I started to think, well, this sounds like me. And I started to dig deeper and suddenly menopause was there and I actually then went on to train to become a menopause health coach that I would understand. I did training with the British Menopause Society with the Dr.

[00:15:27] Joanna Hobson too, so that I have a good baseline understanding, and I can actually speak about menopause, not as a clinician, but as a a educator. And also to work with the women who come to our clinic who need support. 

[00:15:43] Ingrid: That's fantastic. And are you using your own life experiences as well, or are you trying to kind of go, okay, well that's me, that's in my, and I.

[00:15:52] I'm trying to get a broad view or are you like, yes, I've been there. Well, 

[00:15:57] Clarissa: I'm a bit, yes, I've been there because I think that's the empathy piece. But of course, situations change. I mean, I'm in my sixties now and obviously I'm out of corporate life fully for many, many years. So how it's met at work now and the pressures that women experience are somehow similar but also somehow different.

[00:16:16] And so I tend to draw on what is. Latest thinking and practice knowledge science so that when we talk, we're talking from an impartial point of view. Because my experience is unique to me too, as it's unique to anybody that I'm working to or speaking to. We have our own journey because we've got to this point in our own unique way too.

[00:16:39] Yeah. 

[00:16:40] Ingrid: Well, listeners, I am, I. I think we need to go for a little break and I have a lot more questions, so I can't wait to come back. 'cause of course we need to know more about menopause and how it affects decluttering. So let's talk about that after the break.

[00:16:55] Welcome back everybody. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast about the menopause. And you might think, well, that's a bit random.

[00:17:02] I thought I was listening to a podcast about decluttering, an organizing, but when I heard the statistic that 1.2 billion women in the world are all, uh, in menopause at the moment, I thought, well, A lot of women who I have, um, struggled with clutter in disorganization in our membership in our Facebook group that listened to our podcast.

[00:17:22] There must be loads who are now as well in the middle of menopause. So I think it's very important to talk about this topic. So I invited Clarissa on and she kindly agreed and I've been absolutely been listening to everything she said so far. But Larissa, let's talk a little bit, because you talked about the symptoms that.

[00:17:42] Different women have? How does that affect people in their homes, in their lives and when they're decluttering and clutter in disorganization? 

[00:17:52] Clarissa: Well, I think that does that on lots of levels. I think on the one hand, it's a big change in the middle of our life and menopause often is that moment when we start to think.

[00:18:07] How do I want things to be? Because we are changing, you know, our brains are changing. Okay. We are foggy and we'll come back to that conversation in a minute, but actually we get a different sort of brain when we've been through this. It's much clearer, it's much more creative. It's much sharper. And we start to let go.

[00:18:27] We start to let go of roles that we've had. It comes at a time of life where if you've had a family or maybe a relationship or you've cared for your parents, you might start to say, well, actually that's now my past. Now how do I want things to be? And I think that also coincides with maybe how we want our homes to be, how we want our careers to be, and we start shedding and decluttering the things that don't serve us going forward.

[00:18:56] So I think it's intimately tied to that reevaluation of who we are and who we want to be. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

[00:19:04] Ingrid: Um, I think what we see a lot is that, um, a lot of women. Are still caring for children, whether they're younger teenagers or, you know, beginning twenties and they're trying to, the kids are trying to figure, um, themselves out after going to school.

[00:19:19] But on the other hand, women are, you know, parents are getting elderly, relatives are getting elderly. They take care of them as well. We're the famous sandwich generation, aren't we? We get pulled in lots of different ways. And then when, and your home is such an important part of mm-hmm. The place where you feel safe and happy.

[00:19:38] And when you struggle with clutter in this organization, it's really hard to keep all those balls in the air. And I'm thinking to myself, wow, if we then struggle with lack of sleep and, and stress and anxiety and a foggy brain, It must be it. It's, it's a lot, it's a lot to do and to take care of. Yeah, 

[00:20:00] Clarissa: definitely.

[00:20:01] And I think in the midst of that big hormonal change, we often feel so close to burnout. In fact, we know that midlife women are, are often diagnosed with burnout. They have, um, adrenal fatigue because just. Juggling too many balls in the air, and if everything is chaos in your home and there's all this clutter along with all the responsibility, it's just too much.

[00:20:27] I mean, the women that I see in the clinic, they're all burnt. They're burnt out. They're, they have had to have time off work. Sometimes they have to quit. 10% of menopausal women quit their jobs. Wow. Because they can't cope. Or they're looking and saying, well, maybe I have to put. Lots of things on the back burner or I have to go part-time.

[00:20:50] So there is this. Inability to cope with just so much responsibility that we have. And women are very unsupported. As you probably had on your podcast before. Women are very unsupported. We do 75% of all home related, uh, duties, whether they are physical or emotional, uh, down to women to do. And so when you are struggling with all these additional symptoms, It's just almost too much and we need more help.

[00:21:21] Ingrid: Yeah. Yeah. And, um, what can we do? What kind of help can we have? I mean, I. Does it start with finding a cleaner to help you clean your house? I mean, is that what I need to think about, for example? Or what kind of help are you thinking about? 

[00:21:38] Clarissa: You know, I sometimes think we have to do one thing first, and that's stop, you know, for a moment.

[00:21:43] Just if you can, I. Stop, even if it's for a short period and start to look. I work a lot with women where their energy is going and not going because if we're completely out of balance, we just continue in a spiral down to the bottom of the exhaustion funnel. So sometimes stopping and with the support of someone evaluate where I am, where is all my energy dissipating to.

[00:22:09] Can I give some of those jobs to other people? Find a voice that says, I need your support. We need to say, well, what's good for me? What makes me feel better? And how do I get more of that into my life so that we start to move into a more balanced situation between. Where we are and where we want to be.

[00:22:32] It won't be perfect, but that's what practices like mindfulness, um, and building more rest into our lives lets us do. That's, that's really a good baseline. Then you might decide, yes, these are tasks. I need a cleaner. I need help from a declutter. I probably need my, my partner and, and my family to help me.

[00:22:53] Now, not everybody who's in menopause, of course, is married and has children, but we still need help, and I think that's the big part of it. We can't do this journey on our own 

[00:23:03] Ingrid: anymore. I. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, I know that, um, uh, because you talked about it in your talk at the conference that how important sleep and rest is, but a lot of women in menopause, a lot of, a lot of them mentioned that sleep is like, yeah, right.

[00:23:20] Four o'clock in the morning and I'm like, why I brushy tails four o'clock in the morning? Why am I awake? Do you, do you encourage people to take like a nap throughout the day? To have just a rest moment? What, what would you, what would you say about that? I 

[00:23:35] Clarissa: think that I separate sleep from rest because I think they're quite different from each other.

[00:23:40] Okay. Um, but sleep, we need to have a very proactive approach to sleep. If we can't sleep, the biggest thing then becomes, Actually our mind. Our mind is like, you know, wise, wide open, every thought, every problem, everything. And actually there are very good techniques to learn how to sleep. And sometimes going to work with a sleep expert who helps you to rewire your sleep using cognitive behavioral therapy or acceptance commitment therapy.

[00:24:13] Is really beneficial. And I'd say to your listeners, check out the work of the Sleep school. Um, one of their founders came on my podcast, Dr. Catherine Laly. She's based in London, but they're an international and they teach people how to learn to accept if you're having sleep issues. And they've taught tens of thousands of people to sleep again.

[00:24:34] And I think that. Is a corrective and correct way to manage sleep better because it's very hard to do this and I'm a big component as, as cat, is that we shouldn't just then turn to relying on tablets and props and even meditations lovely as they are, are actually outside props. We haven't within ourselves to correct our sleep hard when you have very bad hot flashes.

[00:24:59] But then that's a conversation with your clinician too. But rest. Rest is taking time for yourself. Rest is stopping consciously and doing nothing, which is almost an ANA to our modern world. Do nothing but do nothing for 10 minutes. Every day is restorative for you. Just lying back and resting in a deep rest, um, approach that, that's when I teach yoga Nira techniques, because you can do 10 or 15 minutes of absolutely nothing, but listening to somebody's voice, know where to go, nowhere to be, and just let the system settle a bit and over time.

[00:25:44] That builds up to a different way of meeting the world. 

[00:25:49] Ingrid: It's interesting, isn't it? I think we always put ourselves last, don't we? We take care of everybody else and put ourselves last on the very, very long list. And one of the things that Lesley and I teach here in the Declutter Air Hub is. Be kind to yourself.

[00:26:10] Mm-hmm. You know, you're not going to change your house if it, if it has a lot of clutter in this organization. It's not going to happen overnight. So give yourself some grace and celebrate those wins. Be proud of what you've achieved. And it starts with being kind and not putting yourself down. And I think the same is very much related to menopause.

[00:26:29] It's like, yes it is here. Let's not fight against it, but let's see what we can do to make it better for ourselves. And you also mentioned that, um, uh, food and diet, of course is, is a very big part of that, don't you? 

[00:26:44] Clarissa: Absolutely. It's a holistic approach to managing this time of life, but you're so right.

[00:26:50] Ingrid kindness, putting yourself higher on the list and knowing that. This isn't going to be fixed overnight. This is a, this is years we're going to live like this. So, and we've had, we've had decades of being the other way as well, wired to being always on doing a million things that doesn't support us.

[00:27:12] So it's not going to be suddenly switched around from pressing a meditation app or just saying, you are going to do it, or I'm going to declutter, you know, a cupboard it takes. A lot of conscious effort. Intention and, and then action to change 

[00:27:28] Ingrid: things. Yeah. And um, what I remember from, uh, uh, the Venus TV program is for her also, exercise was a crucial part.

[00:27:38] Mm-hmm. Um, in, in her journey of kind of trying to make sense of it all and cope with everything better. 

[00:27:46] Clarissa: Absolutely. Exercise is vital for many different reasons. Firstly, it's good for our mental health because we actually lower our stress and therefore we lower stress. We're also helping our sleep, but we need to exercise because we lose muscle mass.

[00:28:03] Everybody who ages loses muscle mass. We need to keep that up and have strong core strength and good muscle mass because that's also a way to prevent us from having trips and falls. It's important for our heart, and it's important for our bone and bone strength and density because women are at high risk from heart disease and osteoporosis and dementia as we age relative to men.

[00:28:31] And exercise plays a key role along with nutrition. And stress management. 

[00:28:36] Ingrid: Yeah. Yeah. So now, Clarissa, you mentioned when we said, you know, we were talking about the podcast and what we wanted to talk about, you said, I really want to talk about becoming the wiser woman. I love that. But can you ex, can you expand on that?

[00:28:53] Clarissa: I think that's a lot to do with. What we want to be, what I talked about, what we want to be as we get older. I mean, we've lived a life. We've got a lot of wisdom and knowledge, and I think rather than seeing menopause as the end, which has been the conversation for a lot, this is the end of my life. My life is over.

[00:29:15] I'm now fading into invisibility. Women are now really changing and shifting that and becoming these wiser women. We see it happening, but. I'd say mostly in the us but it's happening in other places too, where we're stepping up and saying, I can now make a contribution that's different to my life, to my society, to my community.

[00:29:41] You know, we're not all going to be, you know, Kamala Harris, who's 55. We're not all going to be, you know, what is her name? Um, Iris, who's just done the thing with, uh, h and m. But we are going to be able to shift and change our careers. 60 isn't old now. Yeah. And there's a wonderful, uh, series running in the Guardian newspaper about people who've changed their life fundamentally.

[00:30:06] When they're each 60, they've, you know, completely or a bit older and completely upended it. Because we can. And I think that's being a wiser old woman. We're following our hearts. We are giving back to society, and maybe we are leaving a legacy 

[00:30:20] Ingrid: too. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. That, that's, that's lovely. Um, thank you so much for sharing, Clarissa.

[00:30:27] I really, really love that. Now you have got a, You've written two books about the menopause. You've got a podcast. Do you want to tell our listeners a little bit more about that so they can, if they're interested, they can follow you. We'll put all the details in the show notes. Don't worry, listeners, you don't have to.

[00:30:43] Um, now grab a pen or anything like that. We'll put everything in the show notes, thera.com/ 2 0 9, but Clarissa, tell us a little bit more about that. 

[00:30:53] Clarissa: Yes, so I've got a podcast called Thriving Through Menopause, where I interview beautiful guests from around the world and we talk about the whole aspects of menopause.

[00:31:05] So we are not so much focused on the medical side. There are lots of brilliant clinicians doing that, but we talk about. What it's like to be a woman at this stage. We talk about positive aging. We talk about important lifestyle factors. We talk about psychology and culture and society so that we talk about the things that really impact our life, and so listeners can find out how they can start.

[00:31:33] Reevaluating menopause, and rather than seeing, it's just this horrific thing I have to struggle through or resist. It's actually a way to take proactive action and become an advocate for themselves and work with maybe some of my wonderful experts who come on, share their own stories and share how they're helping women too.

[00:31:54] So that's my podcast. It's obviously everywhere you listen to podcasts. 

[00:31:58] Ingrid: Thank you. 

[00:31:59] Clarissa: Yeah. And then obviously I wrote two books. I wrote The Mind Menopause four years ago. I'm a mindfulness practitioner, so it's very much a mindfulness book as opposed to, shall we say, a menopause book. But it really shows how stepwise mindfulness can be a supportive way to approach this time of life.

[00:32:20] And then this year, actually when we were our way at the conference, I released the potent power of menopause, which is an anthology of people from around the world who are very culturally diverse because even though we are 1.2 billion women, the voices are very, at the moment, I'd say, Anglo-Saxon heteronormative and really menopause is a people's experience.

[00:32:44] So we have people from India, we have people from Sweden, from Filipinos backgrounds, people who are 80. We'll have a man author in there to begin to slowly unpick the different experiences and to maybe us, make us just think, wow, you know, menopause. Can be so different and yet so much the same because even though everybody's journey was fundamentally, you know, different in every way, and how they approached it was different.

[00:33:14] The transformation in their lives was there for each and every one of those authors. 

[00:33:20] Ingrid: Yeah. I, I rem um, when I was reading the, the book, I actually, I think there was one lady who said she was only mid thirties when she started having symptoms and she was like, I, I don't understand this at all. Uh, because we all think that menopause is something when you're 50 or 55.

[00:33:38] So she got, uh, I think she got sent around the houses for a while because nobody was like, could even phantom that she was having the menopause because she was still a lot younger. So I thought that was very interesting. Same on your podcast. I've been listening to a couple of your episodes and the stories are I.

[00:33:55] The same, but so different, isn't it? 

[00:33:58] Clarissa: Yeah. That's the real clue that we're, the stories of our lives are very different, but underneath it's very much the same. And I think that's the power, the collective power of 1.2 billion coming together and. Demanding that our voices are heard, that we are taken better care of, and that we can speak about this with a bigger 

[00:34:23] Ingrid: voice.

[00:34:24] Yeah. Yeah. So what would you advise our listeners, if our listeners are not sitting at home thinking, this all sounds familiar. This is me, the Clarissa describing me. What do you advise people to do? 

[00:34:38] Clarissa: I think the first thing is to really get to know yourself. I. Before you run to any clinician and start asking, get informed, find out about what's going on.

[00:34:51] There are good websites. Go to a nationally recognized one. North American Menopause Society. British Menopause Society. The facts on there are correct and then tune into yourself. Whatcha experiencing what's going on with you because there are things that you can do to change things. Yourself by being aware, um, you've maybe change your diet, cut back on your alcohol, think about what your exercise looks like, and then I would say, If you want help, go with an informed to your clinician and say, I'm experiencing X, Y, Z.

[00:35:28] I'm doing this, that, and the other. Now what can you do to help me? Because if we get there and say, well, I don't feel very well, then unfortunately many of us are just going to get pushed a medication and pushed out the door, or at best or ignored, which also unfortunately happens or gaslit because much as I love clinicians, that's.

[00:35:47] Quite common that women don't get the support they need. So we need to go more assertively and advocate for ourselves, but we can't do that from a place of no knowledge. 

[00:35:59] Ingrid: Well, I love that. So listeners, I hope that. This has been an informative podcast for you that maybe some light bulbs. We love our light bulbs in the Declutter Hub.

[00:36:11] You guys know that. So maybe you've had a light bulb while listening to Clarris and going, yes, that's me and I need to do something about this. And I'm going to take our advice on board and so many fantastic, um, um, uh, resources. Clarice has mentioned. And I will re-listen to this podcast and definitely put those in the show notes as well because I want to put them in, um, so you guys can find that.

[00:36:34] Well, Clarissa, thank you so much for your time and, and I know you are a very busy lady, so we appreciate you being here today and, and talking to our listeners. 

[00:36:44] Clarissa: Ingrid, thank you so much for inviting me onto the podcast. It's been a pleasure talking 

[00:36:49] Ingrid: to you. Well, listeners, let us know in the show notes your comments.

[00:36:55] I, I would love to read from you what you think and how you. Feel and what your next step is and what's happening with you. So leave us a comment. I'm I'm, I'm going to be on that. I want to see what you guys are saying to us.

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HOW MENOPAUSE AFFECTS HOW WE VIEW THINGS – A GUEST BLOG BY CLARISSA KRISTJANSSON

Clarissa Kristjansson Ph.D. is an internationally recognised menopause educator and certified mindfulness practitioner focused on the positive and transformative nature of this life transition. She is the host of the popular Thriving Thru Menopause podcast and author of the bestsellers, The Mindful Menopause and The Potent Power of Menopause: A Globally Diverse Perspective of Feminine Transformation.

In this blog, she introduces perimenopause and menopause and explains how it affects our relationship to things.

What is Perimenopause?

Perimenopause, when our hormones fluctuate wildly, is a time of significant challenge in our lives. Perimenopause often coincides with the period of life when women are at their busiest: managing children of various ages, caring for elderly parents and working in their chosen careers. In addition, women go through hormonal highs and lows. Commonly they are more anxious, struggling with fatigue that seems to come from nowhere and exhausted due to lack of sleep. And, of course, fogginess, that debilitating brain fog that 60% of women experience, that creates the inability to focus, concentrate or remember people's names. Let alone know how many appointments we have booked into our diaries. Or where we put essential documents or our keys.

How does perimenopause affect us?

For many women who have always been 'on top of their game,' this change can shatter their self-confidence. When our minds, life and home are cluttered, we feel we have lost control over essential parts of our lives. In return, this loss of control can exacerbate feelings of frustration, worry and anxiety or increase brain fog. Decluttering and organising systems and support can help with the overwhelm of untidiness and disorganisation and ease the added tension on perimenopausal symptoms.

How does menopause change our relationship to clutter?

But what about decluttering in menopause and beyond?…. When eventually, our hormones level out, and many of our symptoms fade away. As we enter our mid-fifties, this coincides with a junction in our lives when children, if we have them, start to leave home. And we often find ourselves questioning our career directions and our closest relationships. In fact, many divorces occur at this time, often initiated by women. And many women have resigned from corporate careers to pursue other avenues.

Controlling the compulsion to clear

I have heard this time referred to as The Yard Sale of Our Lives. The impulse to clear can be so fierce that we wake up one morning and know that the way we have done for years, highly competent and successful, is over and no longer who we are. So strong is that menopause imperative we can find ourselves seized by this urgency without due thought. We don't want that. Menopause and that time that follows are uncompromising. Our deep self delivers a solid and clear message that we can no longer compromise who we are and what we do. This is where we need allies that understand the process of menopause as a process of evolution. Declutterers and organisers can be highly supportive in helping us to release or let go of some of the outmoded or unwanted clutter or ways of doing things that no longer serve us.

Coming to terms with a course correction

Menopause is not called The Change for nothing. Think of it as leaving one country to find another. In this new land, there are new rules, which are all laid down by you! Menopause is ultimately about you coming home to yourself. A Midlife Course Correction where old identities are left behind, and we can stand more authentically in the world. Finally, recognise who we are and what is most important to us.

Ready to get started on your midlife course correction in a controlled way. Check out our Membership where we will support you every step of the way.

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Recent Posts

Episode 324 – How to repurpose rooms in your home

Episode 320 – What is clutter blindness and how to fix it?

Episode 319 – Katie Mortram from Good Housekeeping chats all things clutter

Episode 318 – What type of coat hangers are best?

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Gillian says:

5 October 2022 at 2:33 PM

Thank you so much for an amazing and relatable episode. My peri menopausal journey started about 4 years at 46 with high levels of anxiety, brain fog, difficulties at work but like others, however I didn’t recognise this as being peri menopausal, neither did my GP who diagnosed GAD and prescribed antidepressants. With 2 young children, working a demanding full time job in part-time hours I burnt out and left my job 6 months ago. To my surprise, anxiety levels increased further to a level that was affecting day to day tasks and couldn’t function. I hit 50 in the summer, spoke to a different GP and talked HRT. Within 2 weeks, my anxiety levels reduced as well as other symptoms and I’m looking to return to work with a new lease of life!
I know my story will be so similar to other women and trying not to feel frustrated that my journey could have been very different, had I not been diagnosed with GAD. I’m know feeling positive and feeling more like the ‘wise woman’ Clarissa spoke about. Thank you again 🙏🏻

Reply
1. Ingrid Jansen says:
  
  5 October 2022 at 3:19 PM
  
  Hi Gillian,
  
  Thank you so much for sharing! We appreciate you being so open and are delighted you're feeling much more positive now.
  
  Reply

Episode 209 – Decluttering During Perimenopause & Menopause with guest Clarissa Kristjansson

HOW MENOPAUSE AFFECTS HOW WE VIEW THINGS – A GUEST BLOG BY CLARISSA KRISTJANSSON

What is Perimenopause?

How does perimenopause affect us?

How does menopause change our relationship to clutter?

Controlling the compulsion to clear

Coming to terms with a course correction

Episode 324 – How to repurpose rooms in your home

Episode 320 – What is clutter blindness and how to fix it?

Episode 319 – Katie Mortram from Good Housekeeping chats all things clutter

Episode 318 – What type of coat hangers are best?

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