The Midlife Brain Remodel: How Menopause Rewires Your Identity with Dr. Mindy Pelz

A lot of your desires may not be yours. They may have been a desire of a parent, of a teacher, of a leader, of a culture, of something you thought you want, or maybe you desired something that you thought would make you happy, and then you get it and you realize you're not happy. But when that neurochemical armor shifts, so the big thing that I also brought forward in H like a girl, is that you're not just losing three sex hormones, estrogen stimulated a whole bunch of neurotransmitters. And so as you go through this rewirement, there's like this neurochemical armor that comes down, that gives you a very interesting moment to see yourself. And what a lot of women are seeing reflected back is they have not been living their life authentically. Your brain is wired for deception, but here's the truth. Patterns can be broken. The code can be rewritten. Once you hear the truth, you can't go back. So the only question is, are you ready to listen? Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Decoated. I'm busy gold and I'm here with a really exciting guest. And before we even got started, I was letting her know that it's just the way that the universe works. I hadn't been personally familiar with her work yet when the intro came in through my publicist. And that week, three separate clients really, have you ever heard of Dr. Mindy Palson? I'm like, well, yes, I have. She's coming on my show. So I am incredibly excited to have you here. This episode is called the Midlife Brain Remodel. And today's episode is a reframe that could genuinely change your life and your outlook around aging forevermore. We're going to be decoding how the midlife transition rewires the brain and your identity and how to actually work with that shift for clarity, study or mood and more durable energy. Our guest, as I mentioned, is Dr. Mindy Pals. She's a women's health educator, bestselling author and host of the Resetter podcast. Her new book, Age Like a Girl, makes a clear case. Midlife is a biologically timed reboot of the brain and identity. And it's an upgrade that you can actually leverage for clarity, study or mood and durable energy that actually works with your body's chemistry. She's the author of Fast Like A Girl. And Eat Like A Girl, both are the books that my clients brought to me. And they're like, these books changed my life. And she's also a huge on YouTube podcaster. This woman's been everywhere and she is a wealth of knowledge. Welcome to the show, Dr. Mindy Pals. Oh, thank you, busy. That was a great intro. I really love, especially with Age Like a Girl hearing like what you pulled from it. And you nailed it. That is exactly why I wrote that book. So thank you for that. I love it. So you frame Midlife as a biologically timed brain and identity reset, which I absolutely love. And in real life, I'm wondering what changes you would expect to occur biologically versus those that we may have been socially primed to fit into that box? Because I know with aging, there's kind of like these urban legends or myths or things that are kind of socially impressed upon us that we start to fear versus what to you are the naturally occurring real biological events that are worth expecting. Yeah. Okay. So that's such a good question. And I think the place to start with this conversation is to start with this idea that as estrogen goes down after 40, we're not talking 60, 70, 80 at after 40 as estrogen starts to make her natural decline. That triggers a rewiring of the brain. And so all these people that are complaining about depression and anxiety and irritability, what's happening is they're literally in the middle of a rewiring. It the brain is moving from being a relational brain, one that was more cross referenced, which is very, that's how a female brain works when estrogen comes in in our puberty years, we then become very used to using both the right and left hemisphere in every single decision that we make. And so that actually as great as that might sound, it turns us into people pleasers. It makes us want to fix everybody's problem. It makes us want to put everybody else ahead of our own because of the way our brain is designed mixed with the cultural messaging, which we can talk about in a moment. But when you go into menopause after 40 and estrogen declines, you move to a more lateralized brain where you're going to function more in neither your right hemisphere or you're going to function more in your left hemisphere. You're not always bringing both hemispheres of your brain into every decision you make. This rewiring is pivotal because all of a sudden, it is not neurochemically sticky for you to please everybody. In fact, look at what's going on in our culture right now. We've got Melanie Sanders who's out there. I don't know if you've seen her. She started a do not we do not care club. And I'm and I'm watching this on socials and I'm like, yes, that's it. Your design to not care. Your design to not put everybody's needs ahead of your own. That's the purpose of menopause is that you are rewiring to start to make decisions for yourself. You're rewiring to stand up for yourself to finally speak your truth. And so when we talk about this, this major transformation right now, we're only talking about, oh, God, you should get on some HRT. You got the wrong OB. And what I want to do with age like a girl is say, hey, this is your get out of jail free card. This is your moment. The brain is rewiring and you are primed to finally put yourself first. And that, that to me is both biological and cultural. In my work, we talk a lot about brain pattern typing and how that correlates to early childhood inputs. And I'm curious, my wheels were turning as you were saying that what about the people who are not people pleasing and don't go more into that kind of fond people pleasing response who are actually naturally more self centered, more dominant, more controlling, what might happen to a person like that one, their brain rewires. Yeah, it's a really good interesting question. And I think the best way can answer that is if we look at the purpose of the rewirement. So Lisa Misconi, who I don't know if you've had her on your show, but she's considered one of the top female brain researchers out there. And she says there's three times in our life that a woman's brain will rewire itself. Puberty is the first one. So estrogen comes in and then what happens is you move from a brain that was dependent upon somebody to a more independent brain. And that reason that we do that is because you need to be independent. I mean, you have a menstrual cycle now. You could get pregnant. You need to be a more independent human. Second time the brain rewires itself is postpartum. And what happens there is we start to get rid of neurons that kept you understanding your task list that told you where your keys were, that gave you all those logistical things throughout the day. That part of your brain rewires itself so you can be more intuitive. Because your baby isn't giving you verbal cues. So the mom has to be highly intuitive. So there's a purpose behind those two. So I think the question to ask us, and this is what I dove into really in all the research that I did on age like a girl is what's the purpose of the brain rewiring at menopause and the purpose is leadership. So we can, and I, in the book, I talk about a primal example, which is called the grandmother hypothesis, which we can dive into that shows that we are meant to move to a place of power in our culture. We're meant to move into a place of leadership. And that's what happened in the hunter gatherer days is that we were needed in a different way when we went into those postmenopausal years. So now to your point, you've got some people who are not people, pleasers. And you have some people that maybe are almost too self reference. They're too, too, have, have been boundaries up for a long time. What's happening when you get into menopause is that we're both coming to the center. We're both coming back to the middle. And so I guess, and you really offer me an interesting perspective because I see so many women in my work that, and I saw this in my clinic so much, where women could not save themselves. They could only save everybody around them. And then they would go through menopause and it's like they woke up and all of a sudden they started to put themselves first. So I feel like we come into a homeostasis. We come into a middle ground. But what's happening to the menopausal brain as it rewires itself is it is preparing itself for leadership. And, and we're not, we don't do it in our culture right now. I mean, so many people are scared of aging, but especially women, which is why I really wanted this book to come out because I want women to see you are actually your brain is its best when you move out of your reproductive years. How are you going to use that new brain? I love that and I turned 40 this year. So it is timely for me. Excellent. Ready. Let's go. Yeah. Right. Couple of things that came up while you were talking about that. One was if we look back over the ages, it seems to me that this age would maybe have been aligned with the grandparent years, although now it seems to be in many cases if I look at my friend group, I grew up in Connecticut, New York. Most of my friends are just now starting to have babies. So I wonder what happens here when people are just starting to have babies, but they're in this kind of grand, you know, grandparent midlife transition. How might this change the next generation of kids that are being raised because it sounds like now the timing of the brain is not matching what's happening in the physical world? Well, they're probably going to get a parent that's a little, a little more clear in their word and a little less, a little less of a desire to please the child and a little more of a desire to be a parental leader as they should be. And to set clear boundaries. I think older parents, I'm pretty good to me. Yeah. I don't. Like really like I can tell you as a parent myself, I watched a lot of different parenting styles. And I think that the ones with more clear boundaries were my friends who were five, 10 years older than me. And I hadn't really thought about that until you just said this that I wonder if it was easier for them to be clear and set boundaries because their brain was already rewiring itself. Whereas my brain was more still stuck in the people pleasing, which is not a good, that's not a good parental attribute for sure. Well, my oldest is turning 16 and my youngest is three. So I've essentially been both kids across all the age ranges. And it's hard to say when you've had kind of the multiple generations of kids because obviously now I have young kids where my brain would have been starting that rewiring period. And it's certainly easier to have boundaries, be very clear, et cetera, everything that you're saying is true. Then there's also the element of how much of that is, you know, trial by fire and actually learning from making mistakes on the older children. Sorry about it. Yeah, right. You know what? You're like, there's a learning curve there. I got to tell you a funny story on that. I had a patient come in who had three boys. And one day she came in and she was so distraught. And I said, what's going on? And she goes, well, my first born is failing out of college. And you know, is because he's not, you know, shown up for class and blah, blah. And you know, her heart was heavy and she goes, you know, those damn first pancakes. And I was like, what? She goes, you know, the first pancake, it never quite turns out right. And so that I got away from pan heats up. You know, you get the good flip. And so then we started talking about that in my family, my husband's a first pancake, my daughter is a first pancake. And so then we start, right. And so my son is the second child. And I'm a second child. We're like, well, you know what? It's not completely the pancakes fault because the pan wasn't hot enough. That's also a problem. It's such a good analogy. Yeah, it's really good. One of the things you're talking about a second ago with how it seems like a lot of your client base has had kind of that similar vein of issue around putting others first, the self sacrificing. I'm assuming high achiever because in general that that tends to correspond with the high achiever. And I wonder how much of that just because we are sample populations are pretty large. I wonder if that's also really just a testament to who you resonate with as an audience and as a leader because it might to some extent be a mirroring of you where people are like, she understands me. Because in my practice, for example, as a foil, I see a lot of the opposite. I see so many women who were raised to be incredibly self centered and over overburying and actually really struggle with finding. With finding ease learning to choose peace, learning to put others first and a lot of the cleanup that I have to do is around how that can really negatively impact parenting. And how you know how kids brain patterns are then being being created as they're aging. So it's just such an interesting counterpoint because I see that. But to me, I see that more as being attributed to brain pattern type than gender explicitly. I do think a lot of what we're told socially is kind of women are X and men are Y. And a lot of the data as I've gone through it has really confounded a lot of those social ideas because I've actually seen a lot of men present with those more feminine brain pattern types and types. Yeah. So you know, how old are these women just out of curiosity? Ranging all over the place, my youngest client is eight. The oldest is probably 78. So I mean, there's a very broad range. But I would say more often than not, some of what you're describing. So in my work and we'll get into it on your podcast, there's something called the brain pattern spectrum that helps us kind of understand based on what repetitive childhood inputs created what sort of childhood and adulthood outputs that plot you on that spectrum. And there is a very specific cluster on the left hand side that very accurately describes the women that you're talking about. And I think those do tend to be the self sacrificial, very loving, high achieving women that can really burn themselves out in the pursuit of like being a good wife, being a good mother. And there are so many women that unfortunately don't fit that though. I wish they did their lives might be better because of it. But to the point that you're talking about a lot of those women, I think then get set up for kind of chronic illness autoimmune disease, right? They push themselves to these outer limits and don't know how to stop. They're definitely are the opposite cluster too, which I'm it. It just it brings up an interesting counterpoint that now I'm so curious to go digging into it and I'll go look through the data and show you. Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to continue the conversation on this because there's a couple of things I looked at in researching this book and cultural influence was one of them. And I don't know if you were familiar with Carol Gilligan's work, but she is a feminist psychologist who studied girls in the 1980s. And her works very personal to me because I was born in 69. I was in my primitive years in the 70s and the 80s. And what was interesting is that she found when she asked a boy and a girl at eight or nine if what they wanted to eat this will just use this as an example. They both will tell you at eight or nine. This is what I want to eat. You ask that same question at 11. The boy will tell you exactly what he wants and the girl will start to go and she hesitates by 13. The boy still tells you what he wants. But the girl says, I don't know what are you eating? And so what Carol Gilligan came out of that her research and said that one of the things that the culture is doing. So this isn't even within the family structure. But that the culture, applaud women who do the right thing that look a certain way, that behave a certain way. And if you are quote unquote a good girl, then you will be loved. Now for me, I was raised by June Cleaver. Did you ever watch Leave It To Beaver? I'm very familiar with it, but I haven't personally watched it. Okay, my mom was classic June Cleaver 50s mom. And strangely, she was also woman's empowerment. She taught my sister and I, you're a woman. You can do anything you want to do. But there definitely was a proper way to do something and an improper way. So that influence mixed with the cultural influence mixed with what happened to my brain when I went into puberty and the brain and that relational brain that kicks in, I became a good student of pleasing everybody else. And then when I went through menopause, what shocked me is this incredible desire to withdraw from everybody. And I actually did this writing this book. I completely found an Airbnb by myself, got away from my husband, my kids, my friends, and I sat down and got to know myself in a different way. And I needed the noise of everybody around me to go away in order for me to hear my true self. So my question and my thought in the person who's not a people pleaser is the messaging of the parent I would assume is really important. And that messaging of that parent probably deflected whatever the culture was teaching because if my, I'm thinking if my mom had been a lot more like you'd be you, you do whatever you want, we might be having a different discussion here. But what is happening in this rewirement is you're waking up to patterns and you're waking up to traumas and you're waking up to finally figuring out what behaviors you have and you want to bring forward that you want to have in relationships and in your career that serve you. So if the person is constantly pushing somebody away, they're self-centered, they go through the rewirement, they may finally figure out, you know what, I actually want more connection. The whole oxytocin system changes when we go through metapause. So again, I come back to this. I think those of us on the extremes probably come back more into the center. And we take this messaging, whether it was through the culture or through our parents, and we finally are given an opportunity because of the rewirement of our brain to ask ourselves what do we want. I love that. That's beautiful. And as you're sharing that, I think I might be able to drop maybe one piece that'll make it all make sense. The number one input that would be correlated to more of the feminine brain pattern type that would naturally be more self-centered and more maybe dominant or overtly controlling would be parents that actually enabled that behavior, right. Which I think if you look generationally, that has become more and more prominent. Great. I was thinking the same thing. Yeah. Your spot on the culture influences it, you know, parenting style influences, all those are all inputs that we would consider even things like religion. Yeah. One of the things that we also look to would be gaps in understanding. So kind of the gaps that a child is filling in on their own, because their parents aren't answering questions. Because right then you're going to you're going to formulate an assumption. And if not open in questioning to other people, you're going to just decide that that's true. And then that will be encoded into your somatic system. And that will be the truth forever more, even if it's completely rational. Yeah. And so I love that you said that and just got my my will's turning. So I'll share some stuff with you offline. But I totally I'm on the same page with you about kind of this understanding that it creates this sort of plastic state where we're able to come back into the middle and understand where we may be in deficit or where we may need to self reflect and make some changes. And I think that opening space is so beautiful. I'm finding myself there right now. Yeah. So I'm loving it. And it's so well said. And this is something that I that I really want to bring forward to the culture is that in the changing and requirement of our brain, a lot of times beliefs that we grip to we do not we don't want to grip to them anymore. We're like why am I why am I doing that I'll give you an example in my household. I was actually ridiculed for sitting on the couch. So any time I was sitting on the couch my dad would come in and he'd be like, did you do your homework? Did you do your chores? And so every time I got on the couch, I had a parent that where my mom would come in and say, oh good, you're sitting. I need your help in the kitchen. And so every time I would sit on the couch, I was told that was wrong. So guess what I learned to not do. I can't sit. So this is why when you say, oh my god, you're everywhere. I'm like, yeah, you know, in my family, there was no reward for rest. When I went through Manipause in this removal of myself from everybody, I actually won the things I wanted to do is redefine my relationship to rest and remind my relationship to the couch. And I started literally taking the physical manifestation of the couch. And I would sit and read on it. I would sit and call friends and talk to friends on it. And I purposely wanted to change this relationship to the couch because every time I sat down on the couch, there was a panic that came over. We all have some version of that that when we go through Manipause, there's this natural introspection that kicks in. And we go, why do I do that? I don't want to do that anymore. I'm exhausted doing that. And I think that self inquiry is not getting enough oxygen in the culture right now. Instead we're like, oh, you're irritable. Well, you got the wrong doctor. You need better HRT. And I'm saying, you're irritable. Maybe you're discovering something about your life and the behaviors that you have been living and the messaging you have been given. And you don't want to keep thinking those thoughts. You don't want to keep having that behavior. So there's such an incredible self discovery process that happens when you go through Manipause that is fertile ground for the best version of you yet if you allow that to happen. I wonder, as you're bringing that up, we talked a little bit about the role-belief plays in how we kind of look at the aging process. What are some things that people, if you have maybe even some questions of self inquiry, what are some things that somebody that's in this kind of ripe time that's this plastic state? What are some things that they can ask themselves to kind of maybe pick apart how they've constructed their beliefs around Manipause or Perry Manipause? And how this almost might become more of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The first question and this wouldn't fit for the clients you're talking about. So let's let's kind of know I think we should. No, they matter. They matter. Because on the core for now. Exactly. I write about it an age like a girl that I have an incredible group of mental health experts of all different kinds I've worked with. One of them said it was actually my breath worker said to me one time, Mindy, what do you want? And I was like, what do you mean what do I want? She's like, your kids are grown. I had just closed my practice. Fast like a girl had just taken off. I had freedom of time. I had freedom of money. And I had freedom of creation. I could create whatever I wanted. And she said, what do you want? And I'm going to tell you, busy I could not answer that question. I sat with it for almost four weeks in depression because I had not exercised the muscle. What do you want? I can tell you exactly what I want now. And so it took time to keep saying what do you want? What do you want? I've even journaled. I've had patients journal. I've had we have a huge membership group where we're teaching women going through this process. We have them journal. What do you want? Because if you actually stop and look at your life. Let's take a quick pause to welcome a brand new sponsor to the show Manu Kura Honey. This is Manuka Honey from New Zealand. They approached me a few weeks ago and I got to try some of their products and I am absolutely in love. But the best part is aside from honey, obviously tasting good. We all love the taste of honey. The health benefits are out of this world. I honestly didn't really know that much about the benefits of honey until I started digging into it and all the literature that they provided to me. And there are different quality ratings of honey. One of the ratings that you can use is called an NGO rating. And as you can imagine the higher up you go, the better the quality of honey. And the honey that I was sent was over 800 MGO. When we are talking about Manuka Honey, we are talking about anti-inflammatory benefits, immune system benefits, GI tract benefits, and just from my past life in traditional Chinese medicine. It also can be used topically for different sorts of rashes and skin conditions. Aside from obviously tasting out of this world, this product is great to add into your daily regimen. I have been having my kids take it every single morning and literally every morning I hardly wake up and says, Mom, where is my honey spoon? So we are having a special offer for you guys today using the code BGHeal. This honey is incredible. I hope that you give it a try and thank you so much, Manu Kora. We can't wait to keep promoting your products. A lot of your desires may not be yours. They may have been a desire of a parent, of a teacher, of a leader, of a culture, of something you thought you want. Or maybe you desired something that you thought would make you happy and then you get it and you realize you are not happy. But when that neurochemical armor shifts, so the big thing that I also brought forward in age like a girl is that you are not just losing three sex hormones, estrogen stimulated a whole bunch of neurotransmitters. And so as you go through this rewirement, there's like this neurochemical armor that comes down that gives you a very interesting moment to see yourself. And what a lot of women are seeing reflected back is they have not been living their life authentically. They have not been doing the things they want to do. Now on the flip side that I want to talk about these because you have my brain thinking too about people who might be more self referenced or maybe even people have more of like anxious or an avoidant, probably be more of like an avoidant attachment style where they are there go to is always to move themselves away. The interesting part of this rewirement is that our whole oxytocin system changes. And so some of us who were getting oxytocin outside in the world from other people, maybe if we were codependent, we were like, hey, I'm just going to keep doing everything for everybody else and then I get a good dose of oxytocin. We learn as our oxytocin system changes that that doesn't it's not neurochemically sticky for us anymore. And what I've heard from a lot of women is this desire to connect to ourselves and that we actually get oxytocin from connecting and knowing ourselves and answering that question of what do I want. And whereas perhaps on the other end and I have some friends that have strong avoidant attachment styles and actually two of my best friends are your classic avoidant attachment style very good at putting themselves first. And what I hear in their language gene is a desire to actually connect to people because we're both seeking oxytocin in a different way because that system changed. So for me, I needed to stop connecting to everybody outside myself and connect to me. And then I felt peace and I felt oxytocin coming back within. Whereas the person who's maybe more avoidant is like, you know what? I actually think I want to connect to other people. So we're also regulating our oxytocin system. And I think that's a unifying factor of what you were talking about with the subset of people you see. And I do see so many of much higher concentration of clients in my practice that are between 40 and 50. That is the woke because I think that's our people are starting to ask these questions. As you were saying that I was wondering and I don't know of any, but I'm wondering if maybe you do have there ever been studies done on the average or median age of when a woman would initiate a divorce because this seems like it potentially could cause some high divorce. Yeah, as I'm as I'm thinking through it. So just to say I've heard one was that 70% of divorces after 40 are initiated by women. Make that make tracks the map is mapping as you were saying that but initially what I would have thought so. And it goes up to 90% after 50. Wow. So this is huge and I have been on a lot of podcasts with men and I'm like, y'all, if you're in a heterosexual relationship, like you need to wake up and in in the book, I put a whole appendix directly to men because yeah, because the men, my experience with the men we're talking to, they're confused. They're like, you were one way and now you're this way. What's going on? And let's use myself as an example. When all of a sudden I needed to pull away from everybody, I literally went and found an Airbnb and I sat in it. I finished writing this book and I hung by myself. That was very uncomfortable for my husband. That was very confusing for my family. Like you were always the one that was the life of the party. Why are you pulling yourself away? But I'm really blessed to have a husband that I could talk very openly to. And so we would have discussions like I would say I'm changing, I'm changing. I require a lot more alone time than I've ever required before and I, we met at 21 and I'm like that, that I don't know how to tell you it's like an internal craving that I have. My children, we had at one of those houses where everybody was welcome and which meant tons of kids in the house, tons of messes. And I hit a point somewhere in my late 40s where I had to look at my kids and say, I know I've been okay with a house that's not perfectly clean. But there's so much chaos going on up in my brain right now that I can't have chaos in the clutter in the kitchen. So these kind of discussions and this is another reason that I wanted to write age like a girl is so that we can have these discussions because if you don't, these divorce rates will continue. I love that and I absolutely love that you wrote a section of your book like husbands. Yeah, you need to read this part too. Thank you. I think a lot of my practice I tried to focus on saving marriages rather than being the impetus for somebody to potentially end a marriage that they've put so much time and effort into. So I love that perspective and that there's some insight there for men too because it can be really jarring to all the sudden, no somebody for 20 years and then wake up and have them change on you. Based on the man's brain pattern type, it would be really easy to make that seem like it's all about you when it likely has absolutely nothing to do with you. Do you know how many times I had to say to my husband, it's not about you. It's not about you. And I think for many men, that's hard to believe. It's like, what do you mean it's not about me? And you know, I'm so grateful that I took the time to remove myself from all the stimulus of life and really get to know myself because then when I came back, I was a way better partner for him to be around because I was knowing myself and I could put my boundaries up and I could tell him exactly what I wanted. One of my favorite realizations over the last couple of years is that, and I'm curious your opinion on this, is that when a woman and it could go for men too, but this happens in marriages a lot is that women will say yes when they really mean no. And the more yeses we say when we really mean no resentment builds. Oh yeah. And so then you get to this point where you're so resentful and that's not fair to the spouse, like they don't understand why you're so resentful. And so we actually, my husband and I sat down and I'm like, look, here are some scenarios that I've been saying yes and I don't want to say yes anymore. And so those hard conversations are blossoming a really beautiful new version of our 30 plus marriage, your marriage. And what a great way to mix it up and have a whole new relationship after that. That's right. We like finding a new partner because it's the new partner. But you're opposing patterns together. That's right. That was one of my favorite things that you were sharing about because it's such a foundational piece of the work that I do is the importance of opposing our patterns. And that what we naturally prefer and what we do automatically is often the exact opposite of what we need to be doing. And when we do the opposite very intentionally and very strategically, that is where we rewire. And that's where we do come back to center. So I love that everything you're talking about is kind of it's almost as if you hit 40. And then instead of kind of these little maybe chaotic pendulum swings that our brain kind of naturally tries to use to recalibrate all the sudden. It's like we have this big opportunity to inquire of self. Where do I need to naturally oppose my patterns and almost more of like a boldness to go step into that rewiring experience. And it's such an important reframe because I never would have considered that based on age before today. Yeah, it's just so powerful. Amazing. Thank you because this is like one of the things that I think we all we we never really ask authors like why do you write a book? And I can tell you why I write books is to start cultural conversations and to open a new thought up and then let everybody step into it. And I think it's really interesting that when a teenager a teenage girl goes through puberty and then she becomes snarky and then she becomes irritable. We all kind of go, eh, she's just been a teenager. We know what this is about. She's moof. She's pushing away from us. But when we give her grace, but we don't give that same grace to the Perry men, a puzzle, men, a puzzle woman. We don't sit and go, okay, are you hearing what you want? Are you wanting to change behaviors? Is this relationship need an upgrade? Does it need to be done differently? Like that's what's happening neurochemically for her is she's really whether she's aware of it or not re-evaluating so many aspects of her life. And if we as a culture as a therapist as a cut as a partner with a menopausal woman, like if we could actually sit with women as they go through this process and say, tell me what's not working. What do you really just get it out and then let's see if we can find a place where we can we can move to common ground and do this differently. As opposed to what do you mean we've been married for for 20 years and you always did it this way and what do you mean you don't want to do it that way anymore. To me those are the divorces that are happening. Absolutely. So I have two really close friends who were married to very, very successful men. And when they hit this spot of menopause, they really wanted to do their marriage different. And one friend went to counseling and tried to get her husband to understand it and all he could say was, what do you mean our life is amazing. What are you talking about you have every beautiful homes and beautiful cars and like, how could you be upset and when she tried to explain to him he didn't get it. And she eventually had to divorce him because he didn't get it. And then the other friend kept pulling her over achieving high performing mean husband that never paused to tend to her and kept saying, I want a deeper connection with you. Can we go to therapy? He wouldn't go. And so she finally left him in the day she left him. He's like, okay, wait, wait, I'll go to therapy. So this is why you know, be wary, be wary of the menopausal brain and transition because if you love that woman and you want to continue forward with her, you're going to need to put on some new glasses and start to see her differently because she's changing whether she wants to change or not. Great advice and so many of our listeners are both married and in this prime age range. So I hope everybody takes notice of this and proceeds with caution, maybe even share this episode with your husband so that they can be in the know as well. Because it does seem like we've been fed this caricature of what menopausal looks like and it's very much presented as this kind of you know crazy bloated unstable person that you know their life's now just going to go downhill and then their husband's going to replace them with a 20 year old version. That's right. And what a sad caricature to try to imprint in our collective memory and it's so beautiful that you're doing your part culturally to shift that because I've never personally bought into it. And I would say you know a lot of people when they see me and they're like wait you're 40 new four kids I feel like a lot of us are just naturally because we don't believe it. We're confounding some of the ideas of like what a 40 year old even looks like because it's just I do think that everything follows belief right it's all downstream of believe. So I think it's awesome that you're trying to kind of really get in there and like disrupt this caricature because it's it's not it's not a concrete definite. It's something that you might buy into accidentally and then walk that out because you bought it but you're offering people such a beautiful alternate perspective of looking at this time. Yeah I mean it you know two of the statistics that really initiated this whole book was that the most common time for a woman to commit suicide is from 45 to 55. That was the first one I was like what would make a 47 year old kill herself and that started me that actually led me to a research study I found on pub med that showed that when estrogen declines it's not just estrogen declining. She has a whole series of neurotransmitters dopamine serotonin acetycoline glutamate GABA oxytocin even BDNF things there's this massive neurochemical shift with in her. And so that has to be confusing we're not motivated we're not happy we can't remember we can't calm ourselves we can't focus. So if we don't bring that part of the conversation to light then what I see a lot of women do is they think it's their fault they're like oh I must have done something wrong. And then you know when we look at going back to the oxytocin system when we look at you know and I'm sure you know this but a woman's amygdala has more oxytocin receptor sites in it than a man's. And so we are more in general we tend to to move towards connection now I know that you have a subset of people that that don't do that but they must be connecting elsewhere like maybe they're deep into connection with themselves so that's where they get their oxytocin from. Well interestingly enough that subset does tend toward co-dependent and anxious attachment and I also yes what you were saying previously we're going to have a good second part conversation to this because you you it's I love when you connect with people. Who are dropping bread crumbs that are from a slightly different discipline and then all of a sudden it's helping you see your own work better so this has been that for me so thank you awesome yeah so and then you know I want to really speak to like to the men if they're listening to this and I hope that both men and women listen to this episode that a the woman in your life is confused she doesn't get what's going on these are why these people are killing themselves they're like they just all the sudden it's like it's almost like they we wake up and we go wait this life I created there's parts of it I don't want to I don't want to tend to anymore so a spouse having that opening like my husband says often to me and this happened a lot in the beginning he would say tell me about the new person you're becoming tell me what you're discovering and and I've spent a lot of time going back into my childhood and looking at patterns and how my brain became the way it became and so I would share with him like this is what I'm realized like one of the things I realized was that I didn't want because my dad threatened to hit me if I disappointed him. So I learned to be a very good student of authoritative men. And so then when I passed that into my marriage and my husband, we have a very equal footing in our relationship, but I didn't want to disappoint him. And so I had to learn how to stand up for myself even if it disappointed him. So the conversations really changed as I woke up. I mean, that's literally what these what we're doing is we are waking up and we're like, whoa, okay. I want to speak the truth. I want to take this part of my personality back. I don't want to keep doing everything for everybody else. I feel a new part of me emerging. And if the people closest to us don't initiate in those conversations, then we end up with women killing themselves and we end up with a divorce rate. That's what's at stake here. And what I love this idea of bringing multi many different versions of healthcare disciplines to the conversation. And what's interesting, busy, is that I've been saying for the last couple months, I need a mental health expert to take this information and translate it through their lens because I'm just opening the conversation up. And I want to move it away from, oh, you're suffering put a little more cream on. Like you're suffering. You're suffering because you're becoming more aware. What are you becoming aware of? Which then is why people like, you know, the work you do becomes so important and why couples need to change the type of conversation they're having. Yes. I love that. And one of the things that I try to focus on in my work that I think is an important reframe. And it's giving similar vibes to your book is this idea that really this moment in starting at kind of 40 and beyond, it's actually, I think, more a process of restoration. So it's like who you, what your potential was when you came into the world before these parenting styles, before your environment, before the culture, before all of that kind of impressed itself upon you adapted in response to that. So really this is kind of this unique opening for you to go back to your true essence. Like who were you meant to be before the world patterns? Yeah. And instead of like, I'm becoming this new person, which I think even just thinking about it from a man's perspective, because I do work actually predominantly with men, which is kind of an interesting model. That is interesting. Yeah. Men I think need to hear that. That this is, it's not like my wife has suddenly, you know, listened to a podcast and then got this wild hair to become somebody else, where it's like, no, I get to actually witness my wife returning to who she was always meant to be. Oh my God. So it's like this returning process. So I think that's, it's so beautiful what you're saying. And I'm more excited than ever to work with my 40 to 55 year old client. Yay, I love this. So this is why, I mean, we called it age like a girl because like a girl is our brand. But when I actually thought about it, that's what I'm, that's the meaning behind the title is what parts of you did you give away when your hormones come, came in and what parts of you do you get to take back? I'll use myself as an example, something that I decided to take back. I was very, very physical person growing up. Little girl, I was a tomb boy. I played all the sports with the boys. I, and in the 70s, tomb boys were not considered to be cute. They were, we were like anomalies. And my mom said to me, you know, when you're ready to be feminine, you let me know. And I will show you how to be feminine. And about, which is horrible. And at that time, I also decided I wanted to learn how to surf. I grew up in Malibu. And a beautiful dad in our community took me out to go learn to surf. First day I go out. A boy, this was I was in the seventh grade. A boy in my class was out there and he turned and he looked at me and he said, Mindy, what are you doing out here? Girls don't surf. And between the comments that my mom made and that experience, that was the day I shut down my tomb boy ways. I never surfed again. I was like, oh, I'm gonna hide the fact that I'm really athletic. I don't wanna be, you know, show up that maybe it was not acceptable to be a superstar athlete. And so now, ironically, two months ago, I started surfing. And for the first time, I'm in the water every single day. And in fact, I was there this morning. And you know, I come out of the water. I'm like, I'm so happy. Why am I so happy? And it's because this part of me was taken away. And now I took it back. And I decided, this is what I wanna try. I wanted to try surfing, but I was told I shouldn't because I'm a girl and my mom told me I shouldn't be athletic, that that's not okay. It's not feminine. So we all have stories like that. We all have some version that somebody somewhere said, this way your being doesn't work. And so we drop it. But then when we go into menopause, that's our opportunity to pull it back. And to really be able to stand in our truth in our authentic version. That's what aging like a girl to me means. Well, that was the mic drop moment. Thank you. What is the biggest takeaway, if somebody was considering getting the book, what do you think is the biggest takeaway that you intend for people to leave reading the book with? Such a good question. I think the biggest thing is that I want you to see what's right with menopause and what's happening to your brain is actually working in your favor as opposed to being stuck in your victim to menopause. You are not a victim to menopause. It is a requirement that is working in your favor. And if you're willing to crawl into yourself, if you're willing to take yourself on and get to know yourself in a new way, you will stand on the other side of it, the most powerful, the happiest, the most certain version of you. And that is what I'm wanting. The whole book is built around that idea of how to take yourself back and be the happiest person you can be when you land in your postmenopausal years. And what a stick it to the man that tried to get us convinced that menopause is our crazy bloated time. Thank you. I'm like a conjecture to the best time ever. Yep, thank you. I know my favorite thing when I go and speak is when younger women in their 30s come up to me and they go, I can't wait to go through menopause. Amazing. I mean, not having a period anymore does sound nice. It's nice. It's really nice. I'm sure it's nice. Yeah. When does the book officially come out? Because it's still, is it on pre sale right now? Yeah, it's on pre sale. It'll come out December 16th. Okay. So where can our listeners and viewers follow along with your work? And what are, what are the best ways for people to actually engage? Because I know that you like me. There's so many different things going on that sometimes the ecosystem can be overwhelming. What would be the best first step, the first dip in the toe? Yeah, such a good question. First I would say, you know, you can get the book anywhere books are sold. So, you know, you can go online and do that. Or you can go into the bookstore. What I would really ask is that people prioritize independent bookstores because those are mom and pop bookstores that people, families livelihood depends upon that. And you either have an independent bookstore by you or you can go to bookshop.org and you can order from an independent bookstore and have it sent to you. So that's the first thing that I wanna say. You know, the most prolific place to find me is really on my YouTube channel. I'm doing three to four videos a week. I'm just started doing a weekly live specifically on the new book. So that's a great place. And if you want community, I have a membership group called the Reset Academy. You can go to my web page. And this is where we have several thousand women in a group that are all exploring these ideas that we talked about today. Beautiful. I'm sure everyone is going to eat this up. And I am so excited. Like I said, it dropped so many breadcrumbs for me and I can't wait for our part two on your podcast. It's gonna be epic. Yeah, we do. Thank you so much for joining us for this episode. You are fabulous. And I feel like we're definitely kindred spirits. So thank you for just sharing so openly about your experience and what made the book come to life. And just thank you for putting it out there and shifting the cultural conversation because it sounds like it's very needed. Yeah, thank you, busy. I appreciate it. And I can't wait to collaborate with you more because literally when I wrote the book, I said to my publisher and agent, I'm like, we need more mental health experts to grab this and take their knowledge and expand upon it. So I can't wait to bring you on my podcast to talk about what you, what the breadcrumbs have done for you because then you're gonna only expand all of our consciousness on the topic. So thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Mendy. Again, thanks everybody. We'll see you next week. This episode is brought to you by Healing Asana, my absolute favorite sauna on the market, for a variety of reasons. Number one, my busy mom, I own a bunch of companies and despite my best efforts, I often don't know when I'm going to be able to sneak in 20 minutes of self-care. And if you ever owned another sort of infrared sauna, you know that you likely have to plan in advance because you're gonna have to heat it up for about an hour, if you like it hot. 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The code can be written. Once you hear the truth, you can't go back. So the only question is, are you ready to listen?