When you’re at home your menopause symptoms are just about manageable right? Your family may tease you about your poor memory or roll their eyes at your grumpiness but they’re generally sympathetic. Home is a safe place where you can be your hormonal self.
At work it’s a different story. You absolutely do not want your colleagues to witness you continually losing your train of thought. You certainly don’t want your menopause rage rearing it’s head in the office and you definitely don’t want to be experiencing hot flushes during meetings.
So how can you manage your menopause at work?
The first place to start is to identify your triggers and I’m going to help you here.
One of the most common triggers for menopause symptoms in the office is stress and that stress can often come in the form of a particular person.
Is there somebody you interact with on a regular basis at work who annoys you so much they’re triggering symptoms?
There’s always that one person at work that winds you up right?
Well here’s the thing, if you’re regularly dealing with someone who upsets you, winds you up and stresses you out that’s going to make your menopause symptoms worse.
So what are you going to do? Unfortunately you can’t cut them out like you can with caffeine for example – another form of stress that will trigger symptoms including menopause weight gain.
It’s difficult to avoid a colleague, changing jobs is a bit extreme and there’ll be somebody at the new place who annoys you too because that’s just the way life is.
So you can’t avoid that annoying person but what you can do is manage how you react to them.
When you know you’re going to be dealing with the person who’s a trigger for you avoid focusing on them and how annoying they are and focus instead on you and staying calm.
Easier said than done I know, but I’ve got a ninja mindset trick to share with you that’s guaranteed to help.
When you feel yourself getting stressed, when you feel your symptoms emerging whether that’s a flush, anxiety or rage, I want to you to breathe.
Yes that’s right breathe. Breathe deeply. In through the nose and out through the mouth.
Four to six deep belly breaths can be enough to switch off your stress response and switch on your parasympathetic nervous system, which will calm you right down.
Simply breathing can stop a symptom in its track whether it’s a flush, rage or tears.
Yes it really is that simple.
Test me on this – next time you find yourself in a difficult situation with that person breathe. In through the nose and out through the mouth. Up to 6 times should do it.
And you’ll start to calm down again. Let me know how you get on.
