Menopause Hypnotherapy Training: Supporting Women Through Menopause at Work

For many women, menopause happens at a particularly busy stage of working life. They may have considerable responsibility, manage other people, run their own business or have reached a point in their career where they have a great deal of experience and confidence in what they do. At the same time, there may be a lot happening outside work. Children may be becoming more independent, parents may need more support, relationships can be changing and women may be thinking differently about ageing and what they want from the next stage of their life.

Work can be very tied up with all of this. It can be an important part of identity, independence and confidence, and somewhere a woman has spent many years building up knowledge and experience. For some women, work also provides a degree of continuity at a time when other areas of life are changing. So if menopause starts to affect how a woman experiences herself at work, the impact can extend far beyond managing individual symptoms.

Poor sleep can make it harder to concentrate and maintain energy throughout the day. Changes in memory and word retrieval can be particularly unsettling for someone who has always relied on being able to think quickly. Hot flushes can be uncomfortable or embarrassing in meetings or client-facing situations, while changes in anxiety, mood and confidence can affect situations that previously wouldn't have caused any concern.

None of this necessarily means that a woman is less capable of doing her job. But it can start to feel that way, particularly if she doesn't understand why things have changed or has begun interpreting every difficulty as evidence that she isn't functioning as well as she used to.

Menopause at work is talked about far more openly now than it was when I first started specialising in this area over ten years ago. That's an important change. But from a therapeutic perspective, knowing that menopause can affect women at work is only the starting point. We need to understand how it is affecting the particular woman we're working with, what work means to her, what she needs and what she has started to think, feel or do differently as a result.

For practitioners undertaking menopause hypnotherapy training, this gives us a much wider area to work with than simply learning techniques for reducing individual symptoms.

Menopause Hypnotherapy Training: Supporting Women When Menopause Starts to Affect Confidence at Work

One woman I worked with, who I'll call Louise, had been in a senior professional role for many years. She was experienced, good at her job and used to managing meetings and making decisions. During perimenopause, she began noticing that her concentration wasn't quite as reliable and that she sometimes struggled to find the word she wanted.

These weren't major problems and there was no suggestion from her colleagues that her work was suffering. But Louise became increasingly conscious of them. If she forgot someone's name or couldn't immediately find the right word during a meeting, she would become flustered. Once that happened, it became harder to concentrate on the meeting itself because part of her attention was now focused on whether other people had noticed.

She also began preparing far more extensively for situations she had previously managed without difficulty. Meetings that she would once have gone into feeling confident started to require a lot of preparation because she no longer completely trusted herself to manage in the moment.

As we talked, it became clear that this was about more than concentration. Louise had always seen herself as someone who was capable and professionally confident. Her career was an important part of how she thought about herself. At a time when she was already becoming more aware of ageing and thinking about what the next stage of her life might look like, these relatively small changes at work had started to take on a much bigger meaning.

Part of our work involved helping Louise separate what was actually happening from the conclusions she had started drawing from it. Occasionally struggling to retrieve a word was real. The conclusion that she was no longer capable of doing her job was something quite different.

We could also look practically at what might make work easier. Did she need to do everything in exactly the same way she always had? Were there situations where she could give herself more preparation time without viewing that as a failure? Were there things she could ask for at work? What would make the working day more manageable while her symptoms were particularly difficult?

These conversations are an important part of therapy for me. We're not only changing how someone thinks about a problem; we're looking at whether anything practical can change as well.

Menopause at Work Is About More Than Hot Flushes

Hot flushes are probably still the symptom most strongly associated with menopause, and there is good evidence supporting the use of clinical hypnosis for reducing them. But if we concentrate entirely on hot flushes, we can easily miss the wider ways in which menopause affects someone's working life.

Sleep is an obvious example. A woman who is waking repeatedly during the night may arrive at work already exhausted. Concentrating for long periods can become harder, patience may be reduced and tasks she normally manages without much thought can require considerably more effort.

Some women also experience increased anxiety during perimenopause, including women who haven't previously thought of themselves as particularly anxious. Others notice changes in mood, motivation or emotional regulation. Physical symptoms such as headaches, joint and muscle pain, fatigue and heavy or unpredictable periods can add another layer.

But the symptom itself is only part of what we need to understand. How does it affect this particular woman and the work she does?

Someone who has always derived a great deal of confidence from being highly organised may find forgetfulness particularly difficult. A woman who has built her professional identity around being calm under pressure may be unsettled by feeling more anxious or emotionally reactive. Someone who has always had enormous physical energy may find fatigue difficult to reconcile with how she thinks of herself.

The workplace makes a difference too. Someone working from home with a degree of control over her environment is having a very different experience from someone wearing a uniform, working shifts, standing for long periods or having limited access to breaks and toilets. Understanding that context helps us identify what we can work on therapeutically and what might need to change practically.

When Worrying About Symptoms Creates Another Problem

Another client, who I'll call Helen, experienced very noticeable hot flushes. Her face and neck became red and she sometimes perspired heavily. At home, she found the flushes uncomfortable but generally manageable. At work, she found them much more difficult.

Helen worked with clients and had become very self-conscious about other people noticing when she was having a flush. Before meetings, she would think about whether the room was likely to be warm and where she could sit. During meetings, she monitored how hot she felt and became very aware of any change in temperature.

Over time, the anticipation became almost as difficult as the hot flush itself. As soon as Helen noticed herself feeling slightly warm, she started wondering whether a flush was beginning. Her anxiety increased and she became more focused on what was happening in her body and less focused on the person she was talking to.

There were several things we could work with here. We could use hypnosis as part of our work with the hot flushes themselves, but we could also address the anticipatory anxiety and the amount of attention Helen was giving to changes in her body. We could explore why being visibly menopausal in front of clients felt so uncomfortable and what she imagined other people were thinking about her.

But we could also talk about practical changes. Was there anything about the meeting environment that could be altered? Could she sit nearer a window or have access to a fan? Could she have water with her? Did she feel able to tell anyone at work that menopause was affecting her?

Sometimes what emerges from these conversations isn't that an adjustment is unavailable, but that the woman doesn't feel comfortable asking for it. She may worry about drawing attention to herself, appearing less professional or being viewed differently by colleagues. That becomes something we can work with too.

The Impact of Poor Sleep at Work

Sleep deserves particular attention because it can affect so many other aspects of how someone functions at work. Night sweats can obviously disturb sleep, but women may also develop difficulties falling asleep, wake more frequently or find it difficult to get back to sleep once they're awake.

After several nights of poor sleep, difficulties with concentration and memory aren't particularly surprising. But the woman experiencing them may not necessarily make that connection. Instead, she may start worrying that she's becoming forgetful or isn't functioning as well as she used to.

This can create its own cycle. If she becomes less confident in her ability to perform at work, she may start checking things more frequently or spending longer preparing. She may worry about how she's going to cope the following day when she wakes during the night, which makes returning to sleep even more difficult.

There may also be practical boundaries that need looking at. A woman who has slept for four hours may still expect herself to work at exactly the same pace as she did after a good night's sleep. She may routinely work late, take work home or say yes to additional responsibilities because that is what she has always done.

Part of the therapeutic work can involve helping her recognise that making adjustments doesn't mean she has become incapable. It may simply mean responding realistically to what she needs at this point in her life.

Menopause Hypnotherapy Training: Looking Beyond Individual Symptoms

Good menopause hypnotherapy training needs to give practitioners an understanding of menopause itself, but it also needs to help them understand the woman experiencing it.

If a woman tells us that menopause is affecting her work, we need to find out what that actually means. She may be exhausted because she's sleeping badly, anxious about having a hot flush in front of other people, worried about her concentration or increasingly doubtful about her professional abilities. She may have started avoiding situations she previously managed easily. She may need practical changes at work but feel unable to ask for them. Or she may be questioning whether the work she has done for years still fits the person she is becoming.

These are different therapeutic issues, and our work needs to reflect that.

With someone like Louise, hypnosis can be useful for rehearsing meetings and presentations, but I wouldn't necessarily want her to imagine herself performing perfectly. It can be more useful for her to imagine briefly losing a word, remaining calm, finding another way of expressing herself and carrying on.

We can also use hypnosis to rehearse very practical situations. If Louise needs to speak to her manager about changing something at work, we can explore what she wants to ask for and then rehearse that conversation. She can imagine explaining what has been happening without apologising for it, asking clearly for what she needs and dealing with the different ways the conversation might unfold.

This type of rehearsal can be extremely useful when someone knows what would help but lacks the confidence to ask for it.

The same applies to boundaries. A client might recognise that taking on another project isn't realistic at the moment but find saying no extremely difficult. We can explore the beliefs behind that, decide what an appropriate boundary would look like and then rehearse putting it into practice.

Hypnotherapy isn't therefore something we do instead of making practical changes. Very often, it can help someone feel more able to make those changes.

When Work, Identity and Midlife Become Mixed Together

Menopause can also coincide with a much wider period of reassessment. Some women begin questioning their career, relationships, responsibilities and what they want the next stage of their life to look like.

Work can be particularly complicated because it may be both something a woman values enormously and something she is beginning to feel differently about.

A woman may have twenty or thirty years of professional experience behind her, but a period of poor sleep, difficulty concentrating or occasional problems retrieving words can make her question abilities she has relied on for years. We need to be careful that she doesn't make major decisions from the assumption that menopause has somehow made her less capable.

At the same time, we don't need to assume that every woman wants to return to exactly the working life she had before. Some women genuinely reach a point where they want different boundaries, less responsibility, a new direction or more time for other areas of life.

Therapy gives us room to explore the difference.

Is she stepping back because she genuinely wants something different, or because she has lost confidence? Does she want to leave a particular role, or does she simply need more support to make it manageable? Is she tired of the work itself, or exhausted because she's sleeping badly and taking on too much?

These aren't questions we need to answer for the client. But we can help her think them through without automatically treating either staying or changing direction as the “right” outcome.

Bringing Therapeutic Work and Practical Change Together

Much of my work with clients involves thinking about what can actually change outside the therapy room as well as what we can work with within it.

Sometimes that means recognising that the client needs support or adjustments at work. Depending on the woman and her job, that might involve greater flexibility around working hours, changes to uniforms, access to drinking water or toilets, temperature control, opportunities for breaks or some flexibility following particularly difficult nights.

But identifying what would help is only part of the process. The client then has to feel able to ask for it.

For some women, that is difficult. They may have spent years being the person who copes, takes on responsibility and doesn't ask for help. They may worry that mentioning menopause will affect how colleagues see them, particularly if they already feel less confident because of their symptoms.

That gives us very practical therapeutic work to do. We can talk through what the client wants to ask for and what she is worried might happen. We can look at whether those fears are realistic, explore her boundaries and help her find language she feels comfortable using.

Hypnosis can also be useful for rehearsing these conversations. The client can imagine speaking to a manager, asking for an adjustment, explaining a boundary or responding to questions. Rather than simply imagining the conversation going perfectly, we can rehearse different possibilities and help her experience herself managing them confidently.

For another client, the practical change may be recognising that she doesn't have to continue saying yes to everything. Therapy might involve helping her establish what she can realistically manage, recognise where her boundaries are and practise communicating them without feeling that she is letting people down.

Therapeutic change and practical change therefore go hand in hand. Sometimes feeling less anxious makes it easier to ask for what is needed. Sometimes having a practical problem addressed reduces the anxiety. Often we are working on both at the same time.

Appropriate medical support can be part of that wider picture too, particularly when symptoms are significantly affecting everyday life. Hypnotherapy doesn't need to compete with medical care or workplace support. It can sit alongside both.

Supporting Women Through Menopause at Work

Menopause at work is an interesting area therapeutically because symptoms, confidence, work, identity and midlife can all become connected. We're rarely dealing with a hot flush, a poor night's sleep or a forgotten word completely in isolation. We're also dealing with what those experiences mean to the woman and what she starts doing differently because of them.

For Louise, progress didn't depend on never experiencing another problem with concentration or word retrieval. She became better able to deal with those moments without immediately questioning her wider professional competence. She could also begin thinking more clearly about what she wanted from work and what might make it easier, rather than assuming she simply needed to try harder.

For Helen, the work wasn't only about reducing hot flushes. It involved reducing the anxiety that had built up around them, helping her feel less self-conscious and looking practically at what could make her working environment more comfortable.

My HypnoMenopause® training takes this wider approach to working with menopause. We look at the evidence for hypnosis and specific symptoms, but also at the woman experiencing them and the context of her life. That includes sleep, anxiety, confidence, relationships, work, identity and the changes that can accompany midlife.

Importantly, we also look at what the client can do differently in the real world. Therapy can help someone manage a symptom, but it can also help her ask for support, have a difficult conversation, establish a boundary or feel confident enough to make a practical change that makes everyday life easier.

That's an important part of what good menopause support can look like.

Common Questions About Menopause Hypnotherapy

Can hypnotherapy help with menopause symptoms?

Hypnotherapy can be used to support a range of difficulties associated with menopause, including hot flushes, anxiety, sleep difficulties and changes in confidence. There is particularly encouraging research into clinical hypnosis for reducing hot flushes, although treatment should always be tailored to the individual woman rather than assuming that every woman experiences menopause in the same way.

Can hypnotherapy help with menopause at work?

Hypnotherapy can help with some of the difficulties associated with menopause at work, including anxiety around symptoms, sleep-related difficulties, reduced confidence and anticipatory anxiety. It can also be used to rehearse workplace conversations, establish boundaries and help clients feel more confident asking for practical support or adjustments where these are needed.

What should menopause hypnotherapy training cover?

Menopause hypnotherapy training should include an understanding of menopause as well as practical therapeutic approaches. Practitioners need to understand physical and psychological symptoms, the evidence for hypnosis and the ways in which menopause can affect sleep, confidence, work, relationships and identity. Training should also consider the practical context of a client's life and how therapeutic work can support appropriate real-world change.

References

Elkins, G. R., Fisher, W. I., Johnson, A. K., Carpenter, J. S., & Keith, T. Z. (2013). Clinical hypnosis in the treatment of postmenopausal hot flashes: A randomized controlled trial. Menopause, 20(3), 291–298.

National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). Menopause: identification and management (NG23).

NHS. Menopause.

British Menopause Society. Menopause and the workplace.