377: The Chemistry of Emotion at Midlife w/ Laini Gray

Transcripts are auto-generated.

Courtney Townley 0:01
The journey through menopause can leave many women feeling like they’ve lost control of their emotional well being, but there’s a scientific explanation for what’s happening in today’s episode, we are diving deep into the chemistry behind your midlife emotions and more importantly, how to regain your sense of balance and control through proven and practical strategies.

Courtney Townley 0:22
Welcome to the Grace and Grit Podcast made for women who want their healthiest years to be ahead of them, not behind them. Join your host, Courtney Townley right now as she breaks down the fairy tale health story you have been chasing all of your life into sensible action steps and lasting change.

Courtney Townley 0:49
Welcome to the Grace and Grit podcast. I’m your host, Courtney Townley, and I am thrilled to have my dear friend and colleague, Laini Gray, back, back on the show today and together, we’re going to be diving into a topic that affects millions of women managing emotions during the menopausal transition. If you’ve been feeling like your emotional responses are more intense as you travel through perimenopause and menopause, or you’re experiencing mood swings that seem to come out of nowhere, you’re not alone. The hormonal landscape of midlife can feel like navigating unchartered territory, often leaving women feeling frustrated and confused about their emotional well being. So in this episode, Laney and I are going to break down a little bit of a science behind why these emotional shifts happen, and explore how hormonal changes affect your brain chemistry, and, most importantly, share practical strategies that that have helped both of us and our clients regain emotional equilibrium during the season of life. We’re going to discuss everything from the role of estrogen in hormonal regulation to specific lifestyle practices that can help you to feel more grounded and in control, whether you’re in perimenopause, menopause or simply want a better understanding of what lies ahead for you, this conversation will provide you with valuable insights and actionable steps for maintaining emotional balance. Hi Laini.

Laini Gray 2:16
Hey, Courtney, how are you?

Courtney Townley 2:18
I’m great. How are you doing?

Laini Gray 2:20
Well, thanks.

Courtney Townley 2:20
Well, I’m happy to see we didn’t dress the same today, because

Laini Gray 2:22
I know I do have a little black on, but, you know, yeah, you do have a little black, yeah,

Courtney Townley 2:27
but we’re we definitely look like we’re wearing different clothes, which is great. Um, I’m so happy to be having this conversation, because I feel like this is one of the main areas that I try to focus on in my work with my clients, because I feel like if we are not able to find emotional stability, changing behavior on any front gets really challenging, and so it’s a really, really important cornerstone of behavior change, not to mention it just sucks To feel emotionally volatile all the time.

Laini Gray 3:01
Totally, totally, yeah, it’s uncomfortable. It makes you feel crazy. You don’t know what’s going on. It’s not a fun place to be. No.

Courtney Townley 3:09
And I want to read, as always, a few stats, because I think it’s really important that women hear how not alone they are in this. And you and I are going to share some personal stories here too, which I think will help with that. But here’s a few interesting tidbits of information. So research from the study of women’s health across the nation, which is Swan, indicates that up to 70% of women report increased mood swings and irritability during perimenopause. There was a Harvard study that found that women entering perimenopause were twice as likely to experience clinical, significant depressive symptoms. And the North American menopause society, which I believe now is just the menopause society, but they used to be known as the north the North American menopause society reports that approximately 45% of perimenopausal women experience heightened anxiety symptoms. I can so relate to that one. Well, we’ll get into that in just a second.

Courtney Townley 4:09
So I mentioned this to you before we hit record. But one of the frustrations that I have with this conversation is like so much of health and well being, we try to put all of our eggs in one basket. So when a woman is rumbling with her emotions at midlife, I feel like one of two things happen. A provider either tells her that she just needs to work on managing her brain right and working on her thoughts and maybe administering some better self care, or it’s that the other end of the conversation where all the biochemistry is disrupted, and it’s a chemical thing, and she has no control over it. And I don’t think it’s an either or conversation. I think it’s very much a both and conversation. And this has even frustrated me, I think in my education, because I have done programs. It’s where it’s like, no, it’s just all thoughts, or no, it’s just all chemistry. And it’s like, no, can it be both? It feels like it’s both. Yeah,

Laini Gray 5:07
it is. I mean, that’s, that’s our whole integrative approach to, you know, human health and women’s health, especially, it’s really integrated. Nothing is individual. Nothing is just off on its own. Your mind is connected to your gut, is connected to your behaviors, is connected to your sleep, is connected to your nutrition. So just thinking that one piece will solve everything is incorrect. Yeah, 100%

Courtney Townley 5:32
so of course, I knew you would be a great person to have this conversation with me. But again, as I’ve stressed so many times in our past conversations, I think that just us kind of pursuing different fields in in the wellness industry, makes us two people that are really good to bring together for this conversation, because you tend to focus on the biochemistry and I tend to focus on the behavior change part. And both matter. Both matter in terms of restoring our emotional stability. So curious to know from the outside of this conversation, like, what have your kind of emotional challenges been as you have traveled through perimenopause and into menopause?

Laini Gray 6:14
That’s a can of worms.

Laini Gray 6:16
Yeah, right. I know how much

Laini Gray 6:18
exactly subtle, so I would say, you know, entering my 40s, I felt pretty good, pretty confident. My work was good, my relationship was good, everything was good, and I started to feel a little more anxious, maybe a little more depressed, and I didn’t really know why, right? And then there were some shifts in my weight, so then that made me more depressed, right? So there was definitely something going on. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, you know, because I thought I was doing all the right things. And then I started to notice a little more, maybe brain frog and frog, brain frog. I think I have some of that today. So perfect, brain fog and irritability and then just being angry, right? So my emotions were kind of a little not acting normal. It didn’t feel right.

Laini Gray 7:03
So as I started to understand, oh, things are shifting and things are happening, I’m like, Oh, I gotta double down on eating, well, trying to get my sleep and all of these things so I can manage this. So then, you know, this is just life. This is life, and you talked about it today on one of your posts on Instagram, you feel like you kind of got it handled, and then something happens. So in my case, we decided we were going to build a house, and in this I had mom with chronic illness. We visited her in the hospital. She then passed away, which was hugely emotional. Navigating grief is really hard, no matter what age it is, right? And as we’re navigating grief, or me, mostly me navigating grief, I’m we’re trying to remodel a house, get all these things going, contractors, all this, and then I have a sequel, volus. So my colon twisted, and I ended up in the ER with emergency surgery. So now I’m recovering from a surgery. My mom has passed away, and we’re building a new house three hours from where we live.

Courtney Townley 8:00
So it was the problem, nothing,

Laini Gray 8:04
yeah, and I was having hot flashes. It was great, right? Yeah. So, so it was, it was all of these things compounded at one time. And then, then we moved. So if you’ve moved, you know, so all of these things happen. And so in midlife, things seem to, I don’t even know how to describe it, but it seems worse sometimes, right? So there is that biochemical component, but there’s a lifestyle component too, and how do you navigate that? So I’m excited we’re going to talk about this today. Yeah,

Courtney Townley 8:31
for sure. So it’s interesting, because I feel like I carried anger through my life, which tells me that it’s more of a mindset thing, like I know the anger for me was is very much a mindset thing, and it’s been a rumble I’ve had my whole life, and I what I really started to figure out is that I was using anger to not have to feel anything else, because how convenient, right? Anger is a strong emotion. It repels kind of everything and everyone. So it just really does a good job. Yes, if you want to be alone and miserable, I don’t know. So that that was, like, kind of an interesting insight that I didn’t really have until mid life. But I can’t say that it was because of my hormones.

Courtney Townley 9:11
It was really, I think, just the way I was thinking about life, the way I was, the skills that I lacked to take care of my emotional landscape. And then I’m not to the other side of menopause yet, like I’m still very much in the throes of perimenopause. And I would say that the biggest things for me have been the anxiety is very new. I’ve never had anxiety in my life, and I noticed that right before a bleed, right before a period, I just tend to get really worried about things in my life, in my business, that I’m generally not worried about. Yeah, so that’s a whole new thing.

Courtney Townley 9:46
And then also, I would just say the reactivity, because if I don’t sleep well, if I’m just chemically not well taken care of for whatever reason, then I definitely find I get shorter with everyone around. Me, and I’m just, I’m either, if I’m quicker to cry, I’m quicker to anger, I’m quicker for everything, all emotions. Yeah, so I would say for me, those have been like the highlights, at least. That’s what came that’s kind of what came to mind right before we hopped on this call. So let’s start diving into kind of the chemical side of emotions. So there is obviously chemistry shifting at midlife, and we’ve talked a lot, you and I in every conversation we’ve ever had about progesterone and estrogen and even testosterone starting to shift, and all of those have a impact on biochemistry. Yeah. So can we open that can of worms and just, let’s do it. We’re gonna go down that, that road. Yeah, so

Laini Gray 10:45
we’ve talked about this before. Those beautiful hormones, right? They ebb and flow throughout the month when we have a cycle, and they actually affect our mood, our metabolism, all these things. So as we’re talking about mood and emotions today, estrogen really helps us feel positive, confident, happy. Let’s go get it done. We feel really good about things. Progesterone keeps us calm and collected, right? So we have that cool, that coolness about us. Testosterone gives us some drive. Thyroid just makes everything better. And at midlife, all of that kind of shifts around, declines, fluctuates, does all kinds of things. And so we’re left feeling not as confident, way more anxious about things we were never anxious about before. Yeah, not really motivated to do things, and then just feeling blah,

Courtney Townley 11:31
yeah, right. And I hear that a lot at midlife, people just not having motivation.

Laini Gray 11:35
Yeah, it’s just, and it’s, it’s kind of, it’s a weird thing to describe, because you’re like, nothing’s wrong, but I just feel blah, yeah, right, because most of us will think, no, I’m healthy. Life is okay. What? Why am I not excited? So someone would will say they just don’t feel excited about life,

Courtney Townley 11:55
yeah, and I was reading earlier today too about estrogens effect on neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine. So these are drivers right for us to to go out and pursue things and and when we don’t have those on board, we definitely feel more flat. And it’s not that we don’t have them on board, it’s that we don’t have them, maybe in the quantities that we once did, simply because it’s not just the estrogen departing, but maybe speak a little bit to what estrogen does to our gut health, because that’s where a lot of like our serotonin is created, yeah?

Laini Gray 12:26
Well, as you’re speaking about this, it’s like this recipe, right? So neurotransmitters have all these things that combine together to build serotonin, right? So we have our hormones, we have our amino acids, and then we have a healthy gut, and all of this makes us feel happy, right? So when estrogen leaves or fluctuates, we have disrupted gut health. Great. We have less estrogen in that serotonin cycle. Yeah, we feel a little bit depressed. We’re not eating well, so now we’re not even getting the building blocks of neurotransmitters from our intake of protein and healthy foods, right?

Laini Gray 12:59
So that it’s really a multi faceted piece. It’s not just the estrogen. But what’s interesting is our gut and our brain are connected. So we’ve heard it. It’s the gut brain access. People talk about it. They’re talking about it a lot. So what happens in the gut doesn’t stay there. It actually goes right to your brain. This is pretty powerful, so it travels off the vagus nerve. And when I first learned about this, in my mind, I visualized a highway where, you know, it’s a it’s an even exchange of information from the gut to the brain. Well, that’s not true. That’s not true. Did you know that? Courtney, no, I didn’t know that. Yeah. So upwards of 70 to 80% on that highway is gut to brain. Oh, interesting. Less than 10% is actually brain coming down to the gut. Fascinating. So if you have chronic constipation, diarrhea, irritable bowel, inflammation in your gut and stomach and all of that that is getting on that nervous system, traveling up to the brain, and now it’s affecting what’s happening in your brain. Yeah, so. And if you think about that, when you are constipated and feeling stuck like you don’t want to move, what is your mood? Like?

Courtney Townley 14:10
Not good. I’m definitely not motivated, right? An irritable probably more than anything, totally

Laini Gray 14:15
and on the other end of the spectrum. And if you’re bloated and gassy, like, think about how you feel, they’re intricately related. So, yeah, so estrogen, gut health, brain health, all related,

Courtney Townley 14:24
yeah, and now we’re calling the gut Well, at least I’ve heard it alluded to at the second brain, right? Yeah, it’s totally It’s that powerful, and it is so interesting. The clients that I’ve worked with over the years where I’ve seen it work both ways. I’ve had young clients, actually, who are incredibly like in college, first jobs incredibly stressed to the point that they have gut disruption. Yeah, right. And then I’ve seen, of course, a lot of the fallout that happens at midlife, where women are they don’t have the microbiome they once did. They have dysbiosis. They’re more constipated than they’ve ever been.

Courtney Townley 15:00
And and then, of course, that’s affecting the way that they’re thinking, and it’s affecting their moods and all the things, yeah, so I love this, okay, so then also we have this whole player of cortisol being probably more elevated than ever because we don’t have the estrogen and progesterone on on board to help temper the cortisol, yeah, which is then contributing to things like sleep disruption, yes, right?

Laini Gray 15:28
More gut dysfunction, more gut dysfunction and inhibiting our thyroid function. Yeah. Oh,

Laini Gray 15:34
great, yeah. Such a great recipe. So it

Laini Gray 15:37
is right. So the estrogen, progesterone really build our resilience and we take that for granted. You say it perfectly that you you talk about skills that we should have had on board, yeah, and all of a sudden at midlife, you’re like, oh, no, this isn’t a should have. This is have to, yeah, right. This is a skill I really have to put into practice, because my resilience has changed, so the biochemistry has changed, but I do have some control. So to your point, it’s not just the biochemistry changes, it’s it’s over. No, this is a call to action that now you really have to dial in your lifestyle.

Courtney Townley 16:10
I so appreciate you say that like I was talking about that with someone earlier today, about how it’s great that we’re having all these conversations about menopause, right? And there’s also a dysfunction around it, where I feel like people are almost using it as a diagnosis, right? Well, because I’m in menopause, I can’t X, Y and Z, right? Or it’s being sometimes even used as an identity, like we’re so attached to being in the idea of menopause, even though we don’t like it, we’re identifying with it so strongly, it’s actually getting in the way of us making progress in the ways that we can

Courtney Townley 16:43
Yeah, and I also think when it comes to biochemistry, and this is what I so appreciate about what you do is that, yes, absolutely what you just said, it is a call to take better care of yourself than perhaps you ever have right. At the very least, it’s a call to start taking care of yourself if you never have right at the very least.

Courtney Townley 17:05
But sometimes that is feels so difficult without additional supports, right? And this is where the supplementation, the HRT, these other modalities, can be really impactful, certainly not my zone of genius, but out of curiosity, like, what would you tell a listener in terms of as we’re talking about this disruption, we’re talking about the estrogen departing, we’re talking about the gut health being jacked up, cortisol rising. What are some of like, the common supplemental supports that you are giving to clients in order to help them through this phase.

Laini Gray 17:44
So first, I would say, we always want to double down on the lifestyle first. Yeah, right. So are you exercising? Are you taking a walk every day? We know that that’s the most under prescribed antidepressant, yeah, moving your body. Are you eating adequate protein to make the neurotransmitters that help you have a good mood and a calm mind. Are you focused on your gut health so that you can absorb the nutrients to make the neurotransmitters to have a calm mind? Yeah. Are you sleeping enough so that everything that you’re eating and all the movement you’re doing is able to work properly, right? We have to do that. Are you taking deep breaths and having some stress management into your daily life? These are all important pieces.

Courtney Townley 18:28
But, you know, there’s women listening to this that are like Laney, if I’m not sleeping, there’s no I can’t take a deep breath. I can’t eat well tomorrow, because I’m just so reactive to everything around me. Yes, and so, because I, you know, I’m 100% with you on the lifestyle piece, but sometimes I feel like the precursor almost has to be a little additional support. Yeah, in order to get us I always call it like. I always say that the the difference between like therapy and coaching is that therapists help people to get on the trampoline of life, and coaches help people to jump higher, yeah, right. But in this conversation, I think it’s very similar. Sometimes, like the supplements and the medical community is able to help us get on the trampoline, yes, right? And then the health coaches can help you take it a little bit further by helping you to deepen your self care with your lifestyle.

Laini Gray 19:20
Yes. So if we think about brain nutrients, just in general, magnesium is a really big one. Yeah, so midlife women need to be supplementing with magnesium. Probably across the board, we’re all deficient, but that helps with our calmness. It helps us sleep better. There are a lot of calming herbs that can be really helpful, Passion Flower l theanine, all of these different calming nutrients. Sometimes, adaptogens like Rhodiola or ashwagandha can help and calming down once again, the amino acids like tyrosine can help with a little energy and motivation in the morning. So there is a lot of things that you can do, and then even supplementing with probiotics to really support your microbiome. Yeah,

Courtney Townley 20:01
right? A little bit, yeah, just because you mentioned probiotics. And I feel like it’s one of those things where I feel like nobody did them for a long time because we didn’t know enough, and then everybody did them all, you know, they’re all like, everyone was so Pro, pro probiotic. And then we moved into this phase of like, oh, probiotics aren’t really doing much, right? But it really boils down to the type of probiotic you’re doing, yeah. Will you just speak a little bit to that? Like, if someone is going to try a probiotic, how do they choose a quality product, and what should they be looking for?

Laini Gray 20:34
So as always, what is your goal? What are you looking for? That’s really determinant, because probiotics are different across the board. So when we think, when we’re thinking about live strains like the ones that are most popular, like lactobacillus, Bifido bacillus, those all have research that show they can help your mood. They can help with this. They can help with that, right? It totally works. You can take those probiotics to support whatever you’re trying to improve in that moment. Yeah. Now the flip side of that is those probiotics go in support your body, and then they leave, so they don’t actually help diversify the gut microbiome. Okay, right?

Laini Gray 21:10
So if we want to have a healthy microbiome, we need to use a variety of probiotics. I personally like spore biotics, because they go in and kind of re seed the garden. So when we have, you know, a garden full of different strains of probiotics, they help everything else flourish. So then the overall picture is better as a whole. Yeah, so there’s, there’s a, there’s an argument or a, you know, we could talk about both sides, sometimes even taking both, depending on the situation. But just know, they’re a little bit different. They both have purposes. You can use one either or both together, depending on what’s happening,

Courtney Townley 21:46
yeah, and probably in more extreme cases, right? Doing like a fecal test or something where people can really see, like, what is actually missing from their specific microbiome,

Laini Gray 21:56
definitely, yeah, because there’s a lot of strains specific for women, for vaginal health, those kind of things. So we can, we might be taking two different kinds of support depending on what our goal is,

Courtney Townley 22:07
yeah. So if there was a woman listening right now who is just like, Okay, first of all, she tuned into this particular episode because she’s like, I do not have emotional stability right now, and I am desperate for help, and she’s listening to this conversation about the chemical side of it, like, what would be your number? Like, where would you recommend someone starts? Like, if she’s just like, scrambling, she feels like she has no idea where to begin, especially with the chemical side of this. What would be like the ignition.

Laini Gray 22:38
So I personally believe everybody should test my guests or work with a practitioner. Totally right. So that’s where I would start, because we can talk about magnesium and omega threes and vitamin D and probiotics and tyrosine and l theanine and melatonin, and we could talk about these all day long. And yes, they all work. But what do you specifically need, right? Like, let’s get their face happening. What’s really happening and so, and you’ve seen this too, and we call it that, throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.

Laini Gray 23:09
Yeah, because I’ve talked to 1000s of women who are like, I tried that it didn’t help me sleep. I tried that it didn’t I tried that it didn’t help me sleep. There’s so much more to the picture. When we look at some in depth blood chemistry. When we start assessing the lifestyle, we look at how the digestive system is working, we can usually bring it down and say, Okay, let’s work on gut health stress management and add these supplements, right? So we can’t do that, but you’ve got to really invest in figuring out what’s the best strategy for yourself.

Courtney Townley 23:36
Yeah, absolutely like anything, right? I mean, it’s kind of you can go broad, but also broad. And like you said, throwing skinny at the wall, it kind of some things might work, some things might stick, but it just takes you longer to get there. But when you really work with a practitioner, things start to accelerate quite quickly. On that note, I just want to remind listeners that we have a coaching offer through grace and grit that is specifically for Laney and her services as a Functional Diagnostic practitioner, so she can help with the testing. And then also the package includes some consultations for like, like, obviously, what kind of supplements you would need, and then follow up in terms of how those things are working for you.

Courtney Townley 24:17
So if someone’s interested in finding out more about that, just head on over to grace and grit.com and if you just go to the programs tab of the website, you’ll see the coaching option at the bottom, and we’re both on that page. Just click on her services and you can read about it. But I think that that’s a really good piece of advice. And you’re right. It’s totally an investment, right? Like we’re not, we’re not saying it’s not an investment, but think of all the things that we do, like, the things we spend money on in our life. Like we take care of our cars, we take care of our homes, we invest in these things and because we want a certain outcome, right? We want to live, live in a clean space. We want to run a. Car that’s reliable, and if we want to get to the root of these problems quicker, it makes a whole lot of sense that you invest with somebody

Laini Gray 25:08
Yeah, no. And on that same token, what I see often, you probably do as well. Most of us think that going to our doctor is going to get us the help that we need. Yeah, and our physicians are there to help us, but they’re doing the same thing. They’re just seeing what will work. So I’ve worked with a lot of women who say, Well, I’ve tried this antidepressant or this anti anxiety or this sleep medication, but I feel terrible, or it’s still not helping me. I still feel anxiety because medications don’t work the same for every person, either. So it really is, do you want to keep taking chances of going the doctor here and trying this here and doing this one, because it was the latest Instagram, you know, success of here’s what you need to order, or really dive in and figure it out for yourself. Yeah?

Courtney Townley 25:53
Hopefully it’s the latter. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So just to kind of recap that cascade, right? We have hormones dropping, we have microbiome shifting. We have cortisol rising, which then affects our sleep. And then, if we all know what happens when sleep is not on par, right? When sleep is suffering, everything suffers, yeah, right. And self care gets very challenging to administer. So this is, this is really the reason why I wanted to have this kind of chemistry, biochemistry conversation going into this, because I think that as much as I believe in learning the skill sets of managing your mind, which I call parenting the brain, and learning how to befriend your Emotions, it’s very difficult to do that work when you’re chemically reactive, yeah. And so I feel like the chemistry is almost a precursor, at least, they probably should be done side by side, like I think both camps of work are incredibly important, but sometimes we need a little bit of that chemical support in order to get on the trampoline.

Laini Gray 27:00
Definitely, yeah, definitely. And I mean, to your point, that’s what’s so hard for women, as they get caught in this cycle in midlife, and they just feel like, I don’t know, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. What’s wrong? Am I broken? You literally feel broken. That’s what I hear. I feel blah. I feel not like myself. What’s wrong?

Laini Gray 27:19
And the reality is things are shifting and changing. If you don’t speak up and look for help or look for resources, it just you suffer in silence. And that’s not what we want. That’s why we’re having these conversations, to let you know you’re not alone. This happens to more women than you are even aware of, and there’s lots of options and lots of things you can do. And then circling back to what we talked about previously, as far as the lifestyle and this midlife calling us to take responsibility for our health 100% if we were having this conversation with 32 year olds, what would we be talking about for mood stability, you need to eat a well balanced meal. Put yourself to not have a bunch of sugar and alcohol and bread, right? That’s not gonna help your mood. You need to go to bed, you need to exercise. And now in midlife, the chemistry matters. Hormones matter, but so does the lifestyle

Courtney Townley 28:10
absolutely so let’s talk about that side of it like I always call it the self leadership side, right? Because the chemistry we don’t always have control over, but the self leadership side, we do there are there’s always something that we can do, even if it is just putting ourselves to bed 30 minutes earlier, right? Or eating one less cookie or drinking one more glass of water, there is always something that we can do. And I think that when we think about self leadership and we think about emotional reactivity part of the we’re contributing to our own suffering in a few ways.

Courtney Townley 28:47
Number one, we’re neglecting our own self care, right? And we’ll get into that here in just a second. We’re not parenting our brain, like I said earlier, and then we’re also not feeling our emotions. We’re numbing them. We’re escaping them. We’re doing everything and anything to avoid the hell out of them, and furthermore, we’re making the mean really terrible things, which just generates more stress. So there is a lot that we are contributing to when it comes to emotional reactivity. So let’s talk about that now that we’ve kind of like established that absolutely biochemistry plays a role here. And anyone who tells you it doesn’t, I think maybe needs to read some other books. Right.

Courtney Townley 29:30
On that note, by the way, do you have any great reads that you suggest, like, I’m thinking estrogen matters is probably a great book for women to check out. I don’t know how much I’m trying to think of the new menopause with Dr haver. I don’t think she speaks a lot to emotions in that book, but I’m sure there is a little bit, there’s

Laini Gray 29:47
near the mirror, there’s, I mean, there’s a little bit everywhere. Even Moscone is talking about how, yeah, the brain is affected, right? For

Courtney Townley 29:54
sure. Lisa Mosconi, yeah.

Laini Gray 29:58
Felice Gersh, if you follow. Her, she has some really great insight into, you know, just how our mood and everything is affected. So there are a lot of great resources, does

Courtney Townley 30:06
Gersh, do you know,

Laini Gray 30:09
not specifically, she has a smaller book that talks about menopause symptoms and what’s okay, focused on, but not specifically on emotions. Yeah.

Courtney Townley 30:17
And Sarah Godfrey, I know too, like, she has quite a bit and, you know, I love her, hate her. Like, sometimes I’m, you know, sometimes I think she says, like, I generally like her message. I think she has a lot of great information, and sometimes I think she’s going off the deep end. But

Laini Gray 30:31
there was just recently, Dr Jolene Brighton and Dr Carrie Jones podcast interview all about progesterone and GABA and minds and emotions that was pretty powerful. Yeah, for sure, that was Yeah. Because

Courtney Townley 30:45
I think education is a big piece of this. I think that when we can understand what is actually happening, it enables us to extend ourselves more compassion and not make up all these stories in our head, like I am broken or something is seriously wrong with me, we can really understand the chemistry that’s behind it, and hopefully extend a lot more grace to ourselves. Yeah, so let’s talk about the neglect of self care, because I think that, of course, a lot of people roll into midlife and they are either not taking care of themselves because they’re taking care of everyone else, or they’re trying to take care of themselves like they did when they were 20 years old, and wondering why it’s not working right.

Courtney Townley 31:25
So when we say Take care of yourselves, like administer self care, it really means meeting yourself where you’re at, yeah, and truly checking in with your current resource availability. Like, how many resources do I actually have on board to improve my diet, to take on exercise, because you’ll you can always do something. But can you do the hardest workout on the planet? Or should you be doing that workout? I would say probably not. If you’re not sleeping and you feel really emotionally reactive, yeah, it may not be the best plan. Yeah.

Courtney Townley 32:00
We spoke earlier to inadequate sleep disrupts our cortisol rhythms and hormone production, yep, so definitely doing what you can to help yourself with the sleep cycle. I know we’re going to sound like a broken record here, because I feel like we go through these things every time you and I talk, but I think it’s just so important, sleep matters. And a lot of women don’t have routines around sleep, or they’re constantly compromising their bedtime, which leads to a lot more chemical disruption the next day. Skipping meals or not giving yourself proper nutrition can definitely hijack your hormones, and it hugely affects insulin regulation, right, which affects everything else in the body. So definitely making time to eat throughout the day and also making sure you have well balanced plates.

Courtney Townley 32:47
I know I’m not telling listeners anything they don’t know right now, a lack of movement can create hormonal sensitivity and make us more emotionally reactive. I will say I will go through periods, especially in this whole book writing process, where I was sitting for long periods of time, and after a few days, I would just be like, Why do I feel so bad? Yeah, like, kind of I’m not. I would never say I’ve experienced depression the way a lot of people have, but my the closest I have been to it is probably in those periods where I was incredibly immobile, yeah, and I just felt, I just felt like a caged animal.

Courtney Townley 33:26
So definitely movement can can help our moods significantly, and just also just reminding listeners that chronic stress is not your friend, no, especially with emotional volatility, because we up our cortisol production even more, then we struggle with sleep even more, and then we neglect self care even more, and it just creates this terrible cascade of negative consequences.

Laini Gray 33:52
Yes, oh my gosh, all of those things, all of those things, they can’t even say it enough. It is so important. And I love that you always say, parenting yourself, because bringing that example up when a six year old is having a panic attack or flailing or really angry, what are the strategies we use? Go lay down, go sit down, go for a walk. Breathe through your nose. Let’s get you something to eat. Why are we not doing that for ourselves totally

Courtney Townley 34:21
and the other thing too is like, I mean, I think something that I’m understanding more and more all the time is that those chronically elevated periods of stress, and some people just making it a habit, right? Some people are living like they literally have made a habit out of stress. They have lived so stressed out for so long, they don’t even know what the other side feels like, yeah, like, they literally feel normal. They would say, I’m not stressed out. But then once they taste the other side, they’re like, Oh, now I know what you’re talking about, right? Yes, but the other piece of it that I was, I was trying to get to, is just the nervous system, right?

Courtney Townley 34:55
That when we’re in a conics chronic state of stress, we really dysregulate the. Nervous System, so we’re not oscillating between the parasympathetic and the sympathetic, which also hijacks the brain. So you don’t hear that thinking in what and the digestive Oh, for sure, your digestive system, all your organs, all your systems. But when we’re talking about parenting yourself mentally, it’s almost impossible to do. I don’t want to say impossible. It’s very hard to do when you’re in a state of fight or flight all the time. Yeah, right.

Courtney Townley 35:26
We have to be able to access our prefrontal cortex, and the prefrontal cortex is not fully online when we’re in a state of fight or flight. So it is important that we are starting at midlife if we haven’t already had a practice of this, of learning how to pollinate moments in our day that help us to dip into the parasympathetic, the rest and digest. Like, what are the things in the day that help you to feel restored? Like, what are your some of your go tos going

Laini Gray 35:55
for a walk? Number one, sure. And then to your point. So when I sit at the desk and I’m online for a long time, I actually ache. I actually have more low back pain, you know, all of those things. So getting up and going for a walk, going into the kitchen, and actually, you know, cooking and meal prepping, I actually like that, because I get lost in it. And then I love music. Put the freaking music on, have a dance party in the kitchen. Like we forget that. We used to do that all the time as a teenager and as in our 20s, then we always had music on to lift our mood, and then we go through a dig, and why am I so grumpy? Turn the music on right? So I collect records.

Laini Gray 36:29
I’ve been like trying to put on a record every evening and meal prep and sing, you know, 80s songs to records, you know, and then hope it doesn’t skip, you know, me out. Oh crap, finding time for exercise every day, just those basic things, but giving myself permission to take a break. Because the reality is, when I sit down and eat my lunch, it’s amazing that I really only spend less than 15 minutes, and I feel completely refreshed. Yeah, rather than walking through the lunch hour trying to get everything done, and feeling discombobulated and trying to multitask and not doing any of it. Well, yeah, I love

Courtney Townley 37:07
that. The first thing you mentioned was walking, and especially walking outside, because I Silke and I just did an interview two weeks ago for the podcast. It was the last episode, so if someone wants to go back and listen to it, you certainly can. But we were talking about nature therapy and how I don’t know that there’s anything that restores me as quickly in terms of my nervous system as nature does. Like nature is so good at that. I was sharing with a client the other day. I read an article a while back. I don’t remember where it was, and I should have taken better note of it, but it was talking about how, like, even birds chirping is very soothing to the nervous system, because, think about it, birds only chirp when they’re safe, right?

Courtney Townley 37:47
Like they they make their pretty songs, and they have different chirps, probably when they’re in distress. But the bird chirping that we love so much is usually because they’re relaxed, right? And so when we hear that, there’s the CO regulation that we too, feel relaxed, and then there’s, you know, chemicals that are emitted from trees that help our immune system, the sunlight in our eyes, the groundedness under our feet. Like I just think that if you want to get the biggest bang for your buck in terms of helping to regulate your nervous system, spend more time in nature. Yes,

Laini Gray 38:24
I agree wholeheartedly. And just a thought on that same token, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, that they’ve, you know, outlawed incandescent light bulbs in our homes. They really know that. So when we’re inside, we’re not even getting a natural spectrum of light at all. It’s crazy. LED lights are not great. LED lights, and that’s all you can you can’t even buy an incandescent bulb for your house.

Laini Gray 38:48
When you think about that, you have to, for your health, get outside and get full spectrum light from the sun. Yeah, you know, and when it’s nice, or when it starts to be nice, I literally go outside and sit in the sun for three to five minutes and recharge, because we really are charged by the sun. So taking that time to get outside is super important. It does so much for our mood and emotions.

Courtney Townley 39:09
Yeah, and I love that just the term of the junk light like, because that’s really what indoor light is. It’s like junk food. It’s not giving your body the lighting it needs to generate all the chemistry and all the beautiful things that it does inside of our bodies. So I think it’s a really important note.

Courtney Townley 39:26
The second thing that I wanted to talk about was this whole parenting your brain piece, because this is, of course, a big part of the work that I do with my clients. And I’m curious to know, like, when you’re working with clients, what are some of what I call thought errors that you often hear, like ways of thinking that, you know, is causing unnecessary suffering in that person.

Laini Gray 39:48
What I see the most are women that don’t think anything can get done without them. Yeah, if I don’t do it, it’ll never get done if I don’t do it today, the whole world. Will fall apart. If I don’t keep moving, I’ll die. I have to stay in motion. I have to do the things. It has to be perfect. It has to be done today, this whole fallacy of perfection, doing it now and forgetting we talked about this last one Courtney sees get degrees. Yeah,

Laini Gray 40:18
You don’t have to do the dishes every night, you don’t have to have laundry done on a specific day every week, you can choose to take a break. You can choose to delegate. You can choose to have a date night or get a sitter for the kids. There are things you can choose to do to change your schedule. So that’s not always this, go, go, go, go, go, but you have to parrot your brain and make that a priority and put it in your schedule to do that. And we get so caught in that cycle that it really does take sitting down and being intentional to plan those moments of self care. Absolutely,

Courtney Townley 40:55
I have a laundry list of thought errors that I hear, and I’ve talked about them a lot on the show, so I won’t go too deep into it here, but one that I do want to mention here, because it’s probably one that I don’t talk about as much, but I think it is so powerful, is women saying, If I’m nice to myself or I accept where I am right now, it means I’m never going To change right like, what? Like that that is not how behavior change works. You’re actually creating such a bigger roadblock by being a jerk to yourself, but just that belief that I can’t be nice to myself, if I, if I, if I respect myself, if I’m compassionate to myself, I’ll just get complacent.

Courtney Townley 41:38
Well, maybe you should try it and see if that’s true, because I have yet to see that that’s true. But then there’s a whole litany, right, of like, exactly what you said, that things can’t get done without me. I have too much to do. There’s never enough time. I’m always gonna be x, y and z. This is just who I am, totally I mean, there are so many thoughts that generate, again, not only road blocks, but also generate a lot more unnecessary stress, which, of course, is only further disrupting our chemistry.

Courtney Townley 42:10
So your brain does not know the difference between real and imagined stress. And man, are we awesome at conjuring up a lot of unnecessary stress in the brain, and then the body just perceives that like all other stress. And so we set off the same cascade of hormonal chaos. You know, we send our blood sugar through the roof. We can’t access our prefrontal cortex like there’s so much fallout from not thinking in a way that is useful to you. And I want to repeat that, because that is everything. We’re not saying think positive. I’m saying think in ways that are useful to you. So if you wake up tomorrow morning and you only you had a really terrible night of sleep, and you have exercise first thing in the morning, and you just tell yourself, you’re such a loser, you’re never going to be healthy. Life is always going to be so hard, right? That is not useful to you, but talking to yourself in a way that, Hey, girl, I see you like that sucks that you had a bad night’s sleep, right?

Courtney Townley 43:15
Again, here we are again, and maybe what self care looks like today is just going for a walk this morning, rather than doing the extreme thing that you had planned. And we’re just gonna call that good for today. That is useful, because it gets you out of the all or nothing frame of mind, and it gets you into what I can do, even though all this other stuff is also true. So parenting the brain, very big deal, because I truly believe the way that you think about the midlife transition, the way you think about the work that the midlife transition is calling you into because it’s calling us all into work, and the way we think about those things has everything to do with whether we will show up or not.

Courtney Townley 43:59
Keep checking the tape that’s playing in your head, and here’s a great way to check the tape that’s playing in your head when you are not doing the things that you say you will do for yourself, when you are not keeping the promises that you make to yourself, it’s time to check the tape in your brain if you are in lieu of this conversation of emotions, if you are feeling super anxious, super stressed, super angry, how might you be contributing to that through the way that you’re thinking? Right?

Courtney Townley 44:33
Because when I’m pissed, I’m thinking like, he’s just an asshole, totally right? Like, that’s the thought. And then it’s like, okay, well, how is that useful to me? It’s not right, yeah, so when I call myself out on that, it’s like, okay, well, how else could I think about this that at least helps me out a little bit? Okay, this guy is probably having a bad day. He’s not he’s not doing his best right now, and I’m just gonna pivot into something else. Yeah? But me focus. Focusing on that one thought is only going to generate more anger. So as much as chemistry feeds into our emotions, we are generating a lot of emotions all the time by the tape that’s playing in our head. Yeah. Anything you want to add to that? As

Laini Gray 45:17
you were talking, I was just thinking of Dr Amon, who talks about brain health all the time, and he said the brain has to be told what to do, yeah. And he says, really, when you wake up in the morning, the first thing you should say is, today is going to be a good day, yeah? And turns your brain on to having a good day, yes? Because if you let it run wherever it wants to run, that’s where it will go. But you have more power over how your brain reacts and how you think and how you feel than we realize we really, really do.

Laini Gray 45:44
And you know, this is so such an important conversation, and not to negate the value of hormones or those kind of things, invest in those and yes, without a doubt, hormone replacement therapy can be very helpful, yeah, but it is the icing on the cake. Yeah, all the hormone replacement in the world is not going to work if your diet’s not good, if you’re not sleeping, if you’re thinking terrible thoughts about yourself, if you know all of the things. So it’s, it’s just a whole it’s a whole cake. Well, it’s kind of like when you’re only

Courtney Townley 46:17
taking supplements, but you’re not taking responsibility for the lifestyle habits like parenting your brain and friending emotions. I’ve always heard that analogy that I love so much. It’s like mowing your lawn while your house is on fire, like the supplements are mowing the lawn, like the lawn might look nice, but you’re burning your house down because you’re right, like you’re not taking care of the things that you can take care of. So it’s both in we want to mow the lawn and we want to have the house that’s not burning. Yes,

Laini Gray 46:44
I just thought of one Courtney, because, right, you’re like, check in with your emotions. And I was just thinking, you know, we take all these things together to make a cake, this beautiful cake, you need all the ingredients. Yeah, what do you do when you’re making a cake? Do you ever test it? Do you ever taste test to make sure the water is good? That’s like, checking in with your emotions. Yeah, take a minute to check in. What is this emotion? What am I feeling? Is this good or bad? Do I need to add something? Do I need to take something away? Yeah, you know, you’re in the process of building something. Check in. It’s okay to feel them. It’s okay to acknowledge them. But then, as you said, what’s the emotion that’s gonna help me? What thinking pattern is gonna help move me forward to continue this in a positive way. Yeah?

Courtney Townley 47:23
And one thing I want to offer listeners, because this was so powerful for me, is that, because I think a lot of us fear our emotions like we like the happy and the joy and those things, but we fear the other side so much, the sadness, the grief, the fear, the self doubt that we spend a lot of our life running from those things to the point. And here’s I truly believe that when you’re not able to feel the hard stuff, you’ll never feel the height of the good stuff. When you numb one emotion, you numb all emotion, yeah, like you’ll become really awesome at generally not feeling so we have to open ourselves to the full spectrum of human emotion, and that’s hard to do when you’ve spent the bulk of your life kind of running from things. So the thing that really helped me is that emotions are a sign of aliveness, right?

Courtney Townley 48:17
Emotions are energy, emotions are Intel emotions are messengers about what’s going on in your life, how you’re interpreting your life, where you might need a little extra support, and when we shut out the messenger, we can’t use the Intel right, and we’re the person who’s suffering for that no one else. Well, that’s not true. I think my husband suffers when I right like I definitely think people around me suffer when I’m not taking responsibility for my emotional landscape. But I just want to offer here, when I say that phrase, befriend emotions, I just mean that number one, what you said is perfect, because it’s exactly where I encourage my clients to start, which is just the naming and noticing. What am I feeling? Don’t judge it. Don’t fix it. Just name it. And a lot of people can’t even do that because they haven’t been naming emotions for most of their life.

Courtney Townley 49:09
So can you describe it? Can you describe what you’re feeling? Can you allow yourself to feel it for a few minutes? Where in your body is it like? Just get curious about it. And I always tell my clients, it’s kind of like someone knocking on the door, and instead of like slamming the door in their face, you invite them in and you allow them a seat at the table, and that’s all we’re asking you to do with emotion, is just start to be curious, like, Oh, why are you here? Why are you here today? Is it because I didn’t sleep last night. Is it because this, this topic, or this thing that’s happening is really important to me, and I don’t like the way that it’s going? Right?

Courtney Townley 49:51
We don’t always have to spin ourselves out of difficult emotion, but we do need to be curious about why it’s there in the first place, and I think that the more. We show curiosity, the less we fear the emotion, right? We grit the emotion with curiosity, and over time, we stop fearing it so much. And when you stop fearing emotion, you start living your life full out. Because think about this like what would be different for you if there was no emotion that you feared. How would your life be different? What would you go after? Like, what conversations would you have? Everything.

Laini Gray 50:27
Yeah. There’s nothing attached to it. Yeah.

Courtney Townley 50:31
So it’s yes, there is a chemical side to emotional disruption at midlife. But man, emotions are also just like this magic potion. And if we can learn how to like, befriend them, and better yet, generate them, because that we have that power, we can generate our own emotional landscape by the way that we think, by the way that we take care of ourselves. And that is true personal power in my book, like that is power when you can generate that kind of energy. So let’s do more of that, and hopefully this podcast episode today gave people some avenues for doing that. I’m just thinking at my notes here to see if there’s anything else. Well, strategies, let’s kind of finish with that really quickly. We talked about the supplemental support. We talked about working with someone to help you sort that out.

Courtney Townley 51:20
Certainly, HRT is an option for some people that is going to offer some some softening of, maybe the emotions that people are experiencing. And then we also just talked about these last three layers, like, definitely the lifestyle behavior changes, taking, like, not neglecting your self care, but really going all in at this stage of life, and then really learning how to manage your thinking and how to manage your emotions.

Courtney Townley 51:45
And if anyone is listening to this, especially the second half of this podcast, where we’re talking about the self leadership piece of emotions, this is the master class that we’re teaching next month inside of rumble and rise, which people can purchase, even if you’re not a rumble and rise member. If you go to grace and grit.com and you go to the programs tab, you’ll see master classes, and you can just click, there’s a whole slew of master classes you can purchase, but the one that I’m teaching in April is basically Emotional Wellness Essentials, and it’s a class that I taught last year, but I’ll be teaching it again live this year. And you can also find it by just going to graceandgrit.com/masterclasses, and it’ll take you right there, but that it’s a $29 investment, and it will give you a lifetime of benefit, because I think these skills have changed my life more than any other thing that I’ve done for my health and well being, because it finally gave number one, I stopped being so afraid of my emotions. I got to ditch my anger because I wasn’t so afraid to feel other things, which solved a lot of problems and life just got bigger because I wasn’t afraid to go after things and not saying that. I was not afraid of certain emotions. Of course, we all are, but at least I know what’s happening now, and I have more tools on board to help me work through that. So if you are looking for a little help with that, consider joining us next month, and I think that’s it. Is there anything you want to say in closing?

Laini Gray 53:16
No, I think this is just really powerful because, because as women, we forget to share our emotions, to experience them, to become friends with them, because when we do, we get to know ourselves a lot better. Yeah, and once again, that’s that this call of midlife, this is the call everything is shifting, and you get to choose what you want to turn into, right? You get to choose which path we’re going to take, how emotionally Well, we’re going to be moving into that next chapter. It’s pretty exciting. So just shift your thinking. And this is awesome. We have so many great tools for you, and you’re if you’re in this community, you are lucky. Courtney is one of the most brilliant minds I know. Stop it. No, you stop it anyway. But these kinds of classes are so important, so don’t miss this opportunity, because this is a powerful piece that all of us need.

Courtney Townley 54:05
Yeah, and I would, I think I would just close by saying, Stop apologizing for your emotions too, right? Women do that all the time, especially with tears. I’m so sorry. I’m crying. Why you’re feeling something that’s amazing. Yeah, you’re having a sign of life right now, that’s great.

Laini Gray 54:21
Yeah, I had this conversation with a friend just a couple days ago who had lost a son. Yeah, and grief is strange, ladies, and we all have grief in midlife. There’s lots of things that could come up. And she says it just comes out of nowhere. And I said, Yeah, you’re supposed to express it, right? And we have to be, if not, be afraid to express it in front of our friends and in front of other people, that’s an invitation for them to be able to get more close to emotions as well.

Courtney Townley 54:47
It’s true because we’re showing people who we really are. Like, this is my truth right now. I’m really sad. Wow. And that’s hold space for me in that. Yeah.

Laini Gray 54:54
But if we always fake it and hold it in, then we’re not allowing other people to be true to themselves either.

Courtney Townley 54:59
So. true Laini.

Courtney Townley 55:00
It’s very true, important. All right, my friend, well, I always appreciate these conversations. Hopefully listeners will get a lot out of this, and I will see you very soon. Take care.

Courtney Townley 55:18
Thank you for listening to the Grace and Grit Podcast, it is time to mend the fabric of the female health story, and it starts with you taking radical responsibility for your own self care. You are worth the effort, and with a little grace and grit, anything is possible.