Day 7: What Is CBT and How It Can Help With Menopausal Symptoms

When you think of menopause and all that comes with it, therapy might not be the first, or even the second thing that comes to mind. You might be thinking more of hormonal treatment, herbal remedies or even practices like yoga or acupuncture. And if you chose any of those options, you wouldn’t be wrong. Menopause can be approached from lots of different angles, and different things work for different women.

So what about therapy? Well, it’s not just any therapy. Cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT is a special type of therapy that focuses on the relationship between our feelings, out thoughts and our responses or behaviors. It is one of the most studied and most popular therapeutic approaches, and for good reason. It has been extensively studied and found to be highly effective in reducing symptoms for a number of health conditions. Recently, it’s actually been used to help women deal with symptoms of menopause. And the results are pretty awesome.

Without getting all sciency, the underlying foundation of CBT is that each person has the power within themselves to control how they feel about something, how they think about that thing, and most importantly, how they respond to it. And those “hows” matter.

Basically, how you think, so shall you respond. For example, if you’re convinced that a hot flash is the most awful, scary experience EVER and that you’ll surely combust, you’re likely to feel the sensations more intensely and react more intensely. Your anxiety will be running wild at the first prickle of heat. On the other hand, if you know hot flashes are going to happen and yeah, you’re gonna sweat for a few minutes, that first prickle of heat is not going to send you swirling. In fact, you might not even notice it at first. Once you notice it, you might try an effective breathing technique, and go on about your business. The intensity may be no different in either scenario. How you view the hot flash and how you handle it makes the difference in how you experience it.

When we engage in negative thoughts, we tend to distort our thinking about something. In other words, it’s inaccurate. CBT calls those kinds of thoughts cognitive distortions. There are a couple of different examples of this.

First, there’s All-or-Nothing thinking. Things are viewed in a rigid way. Black and white. Good or bad. There is no in-between. You’ll often use words like “always” or “never” . For example, “This hot flash will never end.”

Then there’s Catastrophizing – If the thing you don’t want to happen, happens, it will be the worst thing EVER! You won’t be able to deal. For example: If I have a hot flash while I’m in public that would be the worst thing EVER!

There’s also Fortune Telling – Predicting that things will not go well. For example: I just know it…I’m going to have a hot flash right in the middle of my presentation.

Another type is Mind reading – Imagining what others are thinking about you and assuming it’s negative. For example: If I have a hot flash at the supermarket, everyone will think I’m weird.

And lastly, there’s personalization – Negatively judging yourself. For example: I’m useless, I can’t even handle a hot flash.

This gives you the idea of the kinds of things we tell ourselves. And when that happens, our brains believe it. Funny thing about brains…they believe what they are told.

So, if your brain continually hears, “This hot flash is going to go on forever!” “OMG I’m going to pass out!” “Everyone’s looking at me!” “I can’t do anything right”, it’s going to believe you the first time and act accordingly. The brain will send out those pesky neurotransmitters and next thing you know, that hot flash does feel like it’s going on forever (when it’s not really). You might feel it more intensely. Your “fight or flight” response is triggered and now you’re feeling like a failure. All because of what your brain heard.

The goal of CBT is to take all those negative thoughts and feelings you’re experiencing about your menopausal process and change or reframe the way you think. When you change the way you think, you change your responses and your experience.

So, now you know what CBT is and how we can apply it to menopause. Next you can start thinking about the cognitive distortions you might have about your specific symptoms, and how they might be affecting you. In the next few courses, we’ll learn how to apply CBT techniques to help you think and behave differently towards your symptoms, and help you start managing them better.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this first course. Feel free to come back to these lessons any time.