Tools to Navigate the Menopause-Stress Connection – with Chantal Donnelly

Dr. Mindy  

On this episode of The recenter podcast, I bring you Chantel Donnelly. Now what you’re going to hear in this conversation is really applicable to those of you over 40 that are struggling with stress management, anxiety, depression, you’re finding yourself caught in the stress loops, and you can’t seem to get yourself out of them. Why I wanted to bring Chantel on is that she really offers us a fresh perspective of looking at the stress that happens to women, as we move through the perimenopause and menopausal years. And she brings a different approach in the fact that she’s a physical therapist. And so she has some strategies that we can do with our body to affect our minds. So what you’re going to hear in this conversation is that she looks at stress not from the top down, meaning that is something stressful hits you. And so you have to work on your thoughts, you have to work on the patterns going on in your brain to be able to change your response patterns that we might typically have used something like therapy, or meditation or reading books, even to change our perspective, we often really think about stress from a mental place. What Shawntel really gives us is this understanding that we can actually change our wrist stress response by coming at it from a body level. So what you’re going to hear in this conversation is that she has some really cool hacks, like some massage hacks, some tapping hacks on the body, some breathing hacks that we can do, as we’re learning to navigate the loss of hormones through our menopausal experience. She also brings to light something that I don’t feel like we I’ve talked enough with you all about, which is our cortisol response when we are in our Peri menopausal years, as we lose estrogen and progesterone, cortisol actually takes over. And cortisol is job is to really help us see that there’s a threat going on in our world. And without the neurochemical protection of estrogen and progesterone, cortisol actually gets amplified. And so something that stresses us at 45 is going to have a stronger reaction on our brains and our bodies than that same stressor hitting us at 35. This is very much like I’ve been talking about in the menopause reset, which is the diet we have it 35 no longer works for us at 45. And what I learned from shantala, in this conversation that’s so interesting, is that the same applies to stress, that same stressor that hit hits us at 35, is amplified at 45. Because of the loss of estrogen and progesterone. This is profound. And what I really am hoping you will discover in this conversation is that you’ll get to know yourself a little deeper. And that’s really the point of a conversation like that is how do we start to look at the stress response throughout menopause with a new lens. And so I think you’re gonna really enjoy this conversation because it’s a whole new slant on the menopausal brain that I know I haven’t brought you. I know our culture is not having and she has some really incredible tools to help us all calm down and bring the joy back into our lives. So Sean tall Donnelly enjoy. This was a really good conversation for those of us that need to learn how to calm our menopausal brains down. So I hope you enjoy it as much as I loved chatting with her.

Dr. Mindy  

Hey, Dr. Mindy here and welcome to season four of the resetter podcast. Please know that this podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. If you have a passion for learning, if you’re looking to be in control of your health and take your power back this is the podcast for you. Enjoy

Dr. Mindy  

Okay, well so we’re gonna jump right into it. Honestly Sean tall this is a conversation that ironically, I feel like we don’t have in the men with menopausal women enough. So it’s it’s so crazy. I think it’s because stress is sort of given this like, you know, like everything is dumped under the category of

Speaker 2  

stress. And we don’t know what to do with that. And so it gets ignored when it comes to menopause. So, not only do I want to welcome you to the recenter podcast, but I really want to dive in to this topic on the intersection of stress and menopause. So thank you for being here. Thank you for joining me on this journey. So let’s start with a welcome. Oh, thank you so much. It’s such an honor to be here, honestly, Dr. Mindy, and it’s a conversation I’ve been wanting to have. I don’t think we’re talking about menopause enough. And no, I don’t think we’re talking about stress and menopause. And yeah, no, I like a man like both of those. And then you intersect them? And it’s like, oh, my gosh. So let’s start off with this. How did you even get involved, give us a little bit of a background on your journey and how you got passionate about the helping women handle stress as they go through menopause. Sure, I have been a physical therapist for over 20 years. And I work with a lot of chronic pain patients and a lot of women but also men, and I was starting to get really frustrated, I was finding that about approximately 70% of my patients were getting better in my clinic on my table, I could unwind their tissue and help them feel better. And life was winding their tissue back up again. And their pain was returning. And what I found is that it was their stressful job or their strained relationship, maybe they were taking care of parents, maybe they had Sick Kids, whatever it was in life that was stressing them out, was affecting their recovery in physical therapy. And so that’s where I started because I was really sort of frustrated and wanted to help people more. I wanted to, I felt like what I was doing was only a partial healing, if you will. And so I started getting into the science of stress, I did this deep dive into the science and I got certified in something called the resilience Toolkit, which is a way of addressing stress in the body. And I found that it really helped my patients. And what I found was that my women in menopause, were really finding it to be this effective tool for them. It really resonated with them. And that’s kind of how my journey began. You know, what’s interesting about the menopausal woman and the symptoms she has, is that often they are body symptoms first, and I would agree I saw the same thing in my clinic for years. It was like we had this huge biohacking center where we had all these really cool, like tricks and hacks we could do to get somebody to move in in a positive direction. But there are two things I noticed about my menopausal women. One is that they had more than one symptom. Often they had many, many symptoms. And those symptoms tended to keep growing, the deeper they went into menopause. So if I had seen them at 46, by the time they got to 48, like there were so many symptoms we were dealing with. And the second thing is exactly what you said, which is we as we go through menopause, it’s like the healing has to take a different turn, because menopause and that and that estrogen progesterone armor is what I look at, it starts to come down. And healing has to take a whole different approach. But because we’re not talking about it, it’s very difficult to address it. So talk a little bit about what you noticed from a body perspective with your menopausal women like, what was it that was different about them compared to your other clients? Because I think this is something that’s not being highlighted enough. Yeah, I think what was happening with my menopausal women is that they would come to me already stressed because most of us are pretty stressed out, right? Yeah. And so they’re swimming in this cortisol and then their sex hormones start to decline rapidly in perimenopause and menopause. And now they’ve got a double whammy, because now they’ve got cortisol, kind of having a heyday like, hey, sex hormones are gone. Now we get to play we got all of the foundational molecules that we need. And we’re going to be, you know, through the roof, and well said, and so it was like a double cortisol whammy. And so these poor women are involved in cortisol. And so if all of their symptoms are related to that, whether it’s the weight gain, the insomnia, the mood swings, the brain fog, all of that, as you know, and I know your listeners know this. It’s all related to cortisol and then insulin insensitivity, which is related to cortisol right? So we’re all circles around this. And

Chantal Donnelly  

what I was finding is that a lot Over women were starting to feel like there was something wrong with them. There was a bit of shame happening.

Dr. Mindy  

Yes, it happened. We turn on ourselves, we turn on ourselves. It’s so crazy. I, you’re the only other person I ever heard say that. Like, it’s crazy. We don’t think it’s somebody else’s problem. We started thinking, our own problem, which has to stop. But go ahead.

Chantal Donnelly  

Here’s the ironic thing. That shame spiral is a stress response, which just increases our cortisol. So it’s a negative feedback loop, we are just swimming in this stuff. And the more we don’t understand what’s happening to our bodies, and what a stress response is, and how that is different in menopause than when we’re not in menopause. Then we get into this, I’m, there’s something wrong with me, I am not trying hard enough, I don’t have enough willpower, I am weak, whatever it is that we’re saying to ourselves, that causes more cortisol. So this knowledge of what’s going on is so important to stop that to be.

Dr. Mindy  

So you know, it’s so interesting, because then what a lot of us do is we double down on our exercise we double down on like, well, if work is stressful, let me work more like we don’t go into ease we go into let me work harder, which only creates the stress spiral even more.

Chantal Donnelly  

Exactly, exactly. That’s exactly how I see it too. i It’s we become more intense. Yeah. And we become what it is that we’re the opposite of what we’re supposed to be doing. We’re supposed to be slowing and softening. And that is where our strength is as we age. Yeah. And instead, we get more intense and we increase our, our exercise, and we start feeling worse about what we’re putting in our bodies. And we beat ourselves up. Really Yeah.

Dr. Mindy  

And I want to highlight something that you said that to make sure that the listeners don’t lose sight of this is that in I’m writing a new book on on the mental health of mental health journey of the menopausal woman. And one of the things that I’m calling this piece of estrogen and progesterone going away, is it is a little bit like a neurochemical armor. It’s like it when we’re younger we have we have this, these hormones that actually help to secrete certain neurotransmitters that help us have well balanced reactions to stress. But when that goes away, when that armor starts to shed, we start to become very reactive to stress. And you just said something that I think is really important, which is, cortisol now is like, hey, I can play, I can really come out and do what I was designed to do. So I want to make sure that you we highlight why is it the cortisol reaction in our body different at 48, than it is at 28? Because I don’t think we recognize that enough. Explain that a little more.

Chantal Donnelly  

Yeah, I think, you know, you can go into menopause being in survival mode, or you can go into menopause, maybe having a little more control and body awareness. And maybe you’re not feeling as in survival mode as as, as a lot of other women, okay? Regardless, your cortisol is going to go up in menopause, just because of the decrease in sex hormones. We don’t have a choice. It’s not necessarily about our external environment, which are stressors normally come from our external environment. This is more of an internal environment issue now with menopause. And that’s what I was talking about with the double whammy. So for me, I in my 40s was in survival mode because I hadn’t come across this information yet. So I was already swimming in cortisol. Now you bring on my menopause and a pandemic at the same time, by the way. And now, I’ve got the external stressor from the pandemic, but I’ve also got my my sex hormones decreasing and therefore cortisol going up. And that’s the double whammy right there. And so, you know, women might say, like, I don’t have that much stress in my life, why do I feel all of these symptoms? Why do I feel like I’m stressed because you have cortisol in your body going up, even though you might not feel like you’re stressed up? It’s so it’s such a brilliant point. And I just don’t understand why we don’t highlight this and bring it to the surface so women can understand themselves. It’s, it’s really crazy. So you said something that I that I’ve really resonated with, which is when we get stressed out as menopausal women, we often try, we do try to turn towards things like yoga and meditation. But I found through and I’ve been doing yoga since I was in my early 20s. And I found that the deeper I got into menopause, the harder it was for my brain to calm and yoga, and meditation lit

Dr. Mindy  

really became nearly impossible, the monkey mind was just chatting at me. So explain to us a little bit why that is, and what can we do about that? What is it that we have accessible to us? To be able, if we can’t use those as tools? How do we start to create a toolbox, another toolbox that we can use?

Chantal Donnelly  

Yeah, meditation is what I would call a top down process. So it’s a brain down approach to dealing with stress. And there’s nothing wrong with a brain down approach. I in in this case, I have a book coming out called settled how to find calm in a stress inducing world in there, what I focus on is body up processes. And what I like to think is that these brain down processes and meet body up processes at the heart, and that’s really where we’re heading. So meditation can become difficult for a woman in menopause. Because of the increase in cortisol. The increase in cortisol is what causes our brain in our mind to ping pong all over the place with thoughts, right, those ruminations and all of that, that is the increase in cortisol. So we’re fighting against our biology. Yep, yep.

Dr. Mindy  

When you say that, I feel that I, you know, I feel like I was I always call myself like a lemonade gal, I could always make, you know, lemonade out of lemons. And somewhere along my menopausal journey, I stopped being able to make lemonade. So so I like that reframe where it’s not top down. It’s, you know, more bottom up, but, but these hormones are supposed to go away. So what what do we have available to us? To be able to handle stressors? Are we just doomed to deal with more stress?

Chantal Donnelly  

Absolutely not? No, in fact, there are some really simple tools that people can use that are literally 30 seconds long, like, this does not have to be complicated at all. Yeah. And so the body up processes are basically if, if, if you’re in survival mode, first of all, right, so if you go into menopause, already feeling super stressed, your body doesn’t feel safe. And therefore your brain is is active and comes down and tells the body yeah, we’re not safe. Definitely increase heart rate, all of that, right. So you get this amplifying effect from the mind. So if you are in menopause, you can decrease your overall survival mode symptoms by decreasing the cortisol that way, right? Because that cortisol has nothing to do with your sex hormones that was happening before menopause. Right? So that’s one way you can target the cortisol in your body through these body up processes.

Dr. Mindy  

What are give me an example of one of those ways? Like how would I know if it’s top down or body

Chantal Donnelly  

up? It’s always body up. So what happens is, it’s always body up. So stress starts in the body stress lives in the body. If you think about where the autonomic nervous system is, it’s in the body, right? Yeah, it’s your brainstem. So your parasympathetic nervous system is brainstem, vagus nerve. Primarily, there are some other nerves involved, that goes all the way through the body and touches almost every organ in your body. Sympathetic Nervous System is in your spine, primarily in the thoracic middle back area. Right, right. So it’s housed in the body. And all of those things like increase in heart rate, change in oxygenation, sweating, all of those things that we might physically describe as being under stress. Those go up to the brain, the brain is a prediction. entity, right? Yes, it is.

Dr. Mindy  

That’s a kind word. That’s a quite in phrase for it. But yeah, go ahead.

Chantal Donnelly  

So the brain is going to predict, oh, the last time I was wearing headphones, and about to go on to a podcast, it didn’t go well, let’s say right. So instead of my sympathetic nervous system, feeling excited, maybe now I feel a panic attack coming on. But that’s the brain predicting what’s going on. Okay, okay. And it’s predicting what’s going on in the body, but it’s started in the body. So if we can tell the body body up, that indeed, everything is fine, and we are okay, and we can calm the heart rate down a little bit. And when this analogy, if I’m on a podcast, I need a little bit of sympathetic energy, right? Yeah, I need some alertness. But I don’t want too much. I don’t want it to be so uncomfortable that I can’t sink. Right. So bringing that heart rate down is going to then tell the brain No, no, actually, we’re safe. Okay, we’re okay. Okay,

Dr. Mindy  

so let’s use an example. I’m 48 years old. I’m deep into menopause. And I’m finding that the stressors of life, I’m just getting more and more and more reactive, which by the way, that was me at 48. So just so we, we, you know, full transparency here and have

Chantal Donnelly  

been friends when I was 48. I was having this.

Dr. Mindy  

It’s like, this is the kind of stuff we got to highlight, because we’re not talking about it. But that was literally me, where I felt like my stress mechanisms have had left me. So in in that scenario where, you know, everybody’s irritating me, every stressful situation is taking me down where I’m becoming like my hypervigilant in my brain, the OCD looping is starting, and I’m starting to turn on myself, like all the panic and anxiety that happens in the menopausal brain. And then I’m like, Well, I have to change my brain. So let me go to therapy. Let me do breath work. Let me let me do all these things to work on the brain. What I hear you saying is, don’t start with the brain? Start with the body. So you stop sending stress signals up to the brain? If I’m hearing that, right, what’s the first step to start with the body?

Chantal Donnelly  

So let me say that the first step is always to know when, and why you are going to use a distressing tool before how. Okay, so what I mean by that is, I don’t want women to think that they always need to be calm. I don’t think we need to pathologize being stressed out anymore. No, I agree your scenario, you were very uncomfortable, and it was affecting the quality of your life. So yes, indeed. I would, if I knew you when you were 48. I would say do you feel like your stress right now? Your response to stress right now in your body is appropriate? Is it helping you? Or do you feel like you’re stuck? And maybe the response is too big for the given situation?

Dr. Mindy  

I think it’s hard to tell. I’m gonna be really honest. Like, I don’t think we could it took me several years deep into menopause to really acknowledge that the challenges I was having with stress and the light in my life or be were more my reaction to it, that my reaction had changed.

Chantal Donnelly  

Yes, absolutely. And I do think that when you’re in it, it is really hard to tell. And a lot of times so hard. And a lot of times when when women tell me, if I ask them that question, is your stress still still helping you right now in this moment? Is your stress helping you? If they can’t give me an absolute? Yes. 100%? Yes. If they say, I’m not sure maybe, or no, then I say try a tool. Okay. And most women in that situation will say, it feels a little bit too much, but I’m not sure. So if you’re not sure, try a tool.

Dr. Mindy  

Okay, so I want to point something else out that you said, if if the stress is not helping you now, most people would say, well, stress never helps me like what do you mean? If How would I know the difference? If you know, just how would I know if stress is helping me, it motivates me.

Chantal Donnelly  

So stress is designed to help you in the acute phase, meaning in the beginning stress, it’s designed to help you during an emergency, right. And so it helps you bring blood to your muscles to move, right fight or flight, right. So you’re gonna either have to run away, or you’re gonna have to fight. And that seems really odd to talk about in today’s modern world. But we are always in some kind of an emergency of some kind, whether it’s a deadline at work, or we have to go to the store before the pharmacy closes to get our child’s medication, whatever it is, right? There’s always these little sort of minor emergencies. What happens is that we as as humans get stuck, yep. And a stress response. So it’s no longer acute. So your stress goes from helping you focus, helping you think helping you decrease inflammation, boosting your immune system. All of that good stuff is what cortisol is actually designed to do. It’s supposed to do that. Yeah. But when you have cortisol in your system for too long, then you get something called an allostatic load. And an allostatic load is where cortisol now turns on the body, and now it becomes pro inflammatory. Now it’s going to create brain fog with that inflammation. It’s going to block your your cardiovascular system and cause cardiovascular disease. It’s going to cause dementia, all of these things that long down the line. That’s what stress can do and what cortisol specifically can do long term short term, it’s going to help you, it’s going to help you focus, it’s going to help you motivate, it’s going to help your performance.

Dr. Mindy  

So could it be as simple as if I’m in a stress response, and I feel like I need to move into action, then that would be helpful if I’m in a stress response. And I feel like I want to crawl in bed and withdraw. That would be not helpful. If I’m just looking at the characteristics of cortisol because cortisol will make us move it wants us to move. And yet there, you know, what we know from things like the polyvagal theory is like, there’s a point at which we’ve had so much cortisol that we go into freeze. Could that be a good measurement of either I want to move or I want to withdraw?

Chantal Donnelly  

I wish it was that simple. Andy, I wish it was that simple. Freeze, is a rest and recover and recuperate and recalibrate. Okay? So Freeze has its goodness, right? No stress response is bad. Okay. A stress response is only bad when we are stuck. And it’s no longer serving us. And yes, that the answer to that is, is my stress still helping me is a very gray area. And generally, if you feel like you have to bury yourself under the covers and bed and can’t get up to shower or do life, you’re probably in a freeze response that is no longer helping you. And it might still be it might be that you need to cocoon because you have burnout. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. And I think women are afraid to say, I’m burnt out and I need rest, right? Yeah. And so I don’t want to pathologize that. I want to say like, sometimes you need to cocoon. It’s your need to freeze.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, I actually believe if you look at hormones that women need to rest more than men. And one of the challenges that we have is that we live in a in a very patriarchal, masculine world that we’re trying to keep up in. And part of that is this overproduction. Go, go, go, go go. And it really you crash when you go into menopause. If you are in that hyper active performer mode, I think it’s really, really hard. So you know, I think what you’re saying is very valid.

Chantal Donnelly  

I mean, definitely rushing is built into our culture. So is top down processing. That’s a very masculine

Dr. Mindy  

thing who tell me Oh, that’s interesting. Tell me more on that.

Chantal Donnelly  

So if you think about the body, this is where our intuition lives. It’s touchy feely. It’s where our big emotions, anger, bliss, anything in between live in our body. And these are the types of things that are sort of told that we don’t don’t listen to your intuition. Listen to your rational mind, right? Yeah. Yep. And I think as menopausal women, we’re becoming more in tune with our bodies. Yep. Because we need to, but it’s also a really beautiful thing. Yeah. We’re going to learn these body at processes so we can feel it. We feel like we can live in our bodies again. Yeah. And then we can reconnect with our intuition and all of our touchy feely, sensuality, all of that stuff is really about what the second phase of your life is about.

Dr. Mindy  

Amen. Do you do you feel like postmenopausal women, once we get on the other side of menopause can settle in a little bit better into exactly what you said? We’re we’re very Intune we’re very intuitive. Do you see that? That maybe it’s the peri menopausal journey that is the hardest, but that the post menopausal years are much better.

Chantal Donnelly  

It’s such a wild ride that perimenopause is so wildly. Yeah. Yes, I think that it, you know, not to sugarcoat it. But I think the other side of menopause can be about reconnecting with your needs and your desires, and your body and your intuition and all that beautiful stuff that we tend to ignore earlier in life. Because sometimes we have to, because we have to worry about our kids stress and our husband’s stress and right, whatever our partner stress, you know. So yeah, I hope that’s where we’re heading for sure.

Dr. Mindy  

I have, I have a lot of postmenopausal friends that I’m like, tell me, tell me what it’s like on the other side, like, give me give me some hope here. Because I think that there’s a recalibration that has to happen. We have to learn how to handle the loss of hormones. It’s it’s a very difficult situation. So give me some tools. Like let’s talk about what kind of body tools we have. Knowing that this journey is going on. I think the first thing we really need to acknowledge that we’ve already acknowledged is that you are reacting to stress much differently in menopause. Now, what do we do about it?

Chantal Donnelly  

Okay, yeah, so we’ve decided that our reaction is too much, or we’re stuck. And so now we’re going to choose a tool. And the goal of the tool is to regulate the nervous system, we’ve decided that our nervous system is either in too high of sympathetic, which is otherwise known as fight or flight, or too high in freeze, which is a shutdown kind of a stet. Okay, yep. And we want to get out of it. So there are different techniques that involve the body. And I’m going to throw a couple at you that your, your listeners can follow along with and try if they want to as we go along here. So one thing we know is that bilateral alternating tactile stimulation,

Dr. Mindy  

that’s what an EMG that’s what EMDR is based off. Uh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, go ahead. That’s awesome.

Chantal Donnelly  

So Francine Shapiro design EMDR. And one of the tools we could do eye movements, but you can also do tactile stimulation, I find that the bilateral tactile stimulation is great, because you can literally do it at the grocery store in the line waiting to get through, and no one knows you’re doing it. Right. Yeah. And what the research shows is that it affects the amygdala, amygdala, it affects the insula, which our insula is going to help us have a better relationship with our body and what’s happening internally in our bodies so that we know if we’re under stress, and we know if we’re calming, okay, so easy, SHM easy, you take your right hand and you place it on your left shoulder, these are called arm sweeps. And one arm at a time, I’m gonna lift my arm up, but you don’t have to just so you can kind of see here, I’m looking at Yeah, I see you’re gonna bring your right arm and sweep it down your left arm, and then you switch left hand to right shoulder and sweep down to your fingers. Just do that a couple of times. Again, it feels good to get so what are you feeling in your body right now?

Dr. Mindy  

I feel like I’m I feel like somebody’s hugging me. Like I’m being nurtured, like, like, almost like, like a motherly kind of like, it’s gonna be okay, pat on my shoulder.

Chantal Donnelly  

Some people like to do it with little squeezes, even you don’t have to do the sweep down the arm, you can Schoolies do a little squeezes all the way down the arm. I like this one, when I am rushing, actually. So if I have if I am late to get to something in the car at a red light, and I can do this and it just tells my body, you know, yeah, you’ve got some adrenaline circulating in your body, but you are okay, everything’s fine and level adequate. So

Dr. Mindy  

it’s like, it’s like reminding your nervous system that it’s okay.

Chantal Donnelly  

Good, everything’s fine. And

Dr. Mindy  

do you think I’ve been thinking because I’ve been deep in EMDR therapy for about eight months now. And we use the tappers where it buzzes right to left and right to left. And of course, my neuroscience brain was like, why is this working? I you know, is what is going on here. And then when I started to look at our primitive design of our brain, when we scan left to right, left to right, what we’re doing is we are actually scanning for danger, and that calms the brain. Is that what this when you’re rubbing your shoulders alternating like that? Is that what’s going on? Is that you’re telling the brain it’s okay. We’re looking out for danger, you can relax,

Chantal Donnelly  

relax. Exactly, yeah. And there’s, I mean, we could talk about the benefits of touch. We could talk about the benefits of self touch. But if we’re specifically talking about the bilateral alternating stimulation, just like you do in the EMDR with the the alternating tapping that you do, it’s the exact same process. It is telling your brain that it can calm down so the amygdala actually settles Right. Right.

Dr. Mindy  

Okay, give me give me give me another tool. So that was good. That was an I don’t we’ve never talked about that one here. I talk a lot about walking and you know, I’ve like I I’ve walked more as a menopausal woman than I’ve ever walked in my entire life. And when I do I always scan right to left right to left like I I really use it as a as a real Primitive tool to be able to calm the nervous system. So I really liked that added added piece of hugging so so Okay, what else can we do?

Chantal Donnelly  

So when you are scanning right to left, you were actually also activating sternocleidomastoid? Your FCS All right. Okay. So the sternocleidomastoid is a really interesting muscle because it if it’s tight, it can constrict the vagus nerve behind the ear. Oh,

Dr. Mindy  

I’d never really thought about that.

Chantal Donnelly  

Okay. Yeah, yeah. And there’s another reason why it’s such a cool muscle. You had mentioned Steven Porges polyvagal theory. So Steven Porges talks about that. at secondary branch of the vagus nerve, and he talks about the ventral branch being our calming branch, right? And it’s not just the vagus nerve, he uses a term called the Social Engagement system. So it’s the vagus nerve, and four other cranial nerves that are part of the social engagement nervous system. Well, one of those cranial nerves is cranial nerve 11. What does cranial nerve 11 Feed the sternocleidomastoid muscle? Whew,

Dr. Mindy  

okay, keep going. You got my neurology brain all excited sided here.

Chantal Donnelly  

So I think of cranial nerve 11, and the upper traps and the sternocleidomastoid muscle, those two muscles that it innervates I think of that, that cranial nerve as being a portal to our calming nervous system. Okay. So if you do a sternocleidomastoid stretch, or a massage, or a combination thereof, you should out you’re massaging outside a mess, right?

Dr. Mindy  

So I want to experience it, go ahead. And yeah, and people who are listening you can we’ll try to describe it so.

Chantal Donnelly  

So the best way to find your sternocleidomastoid muscle is to turn your head to the opposite direction. So if I’m going to work on my right one, I’m going to turn my head to the left. And it’s that tight ropey band that kind of pops out, it goes from behind the ear. And if you just draw your fingers straight down from behind the ear to your collarbone, kind of where your collarbone kind of meets up near your throat, you will be basically on sternocleidomastoid SCM, we call it Hey, so all you really need to do is go from behind the year and kind of take your fingers and rake straight down towards the collarbone and you were getting to those muscles in that area and you’re crossing over stern Hokkaido. Okay. And a lot of people find that that is really calming the nervous system, they will feel various symptoms that allow them to know that they’re calming the nervous system, and we might want to talk about that. So if you feel a warmth, if you feel an expansive lightness in your body, if you start to yawn if you get tummy gurgles if you sigh if you burp, believe it or not. Burping is also a sign of downregulation of the nervous system. So all anything that is a rest or digest symptom. So think about burping as digesting tummy gurgles digesting, increased salivation digesting your body when it’s in survival mode doesn’t think about eating or sleeping. Yep. Don’t think about sex either. So I guess feeling horny could also be a sign that your nervous system is down regulating?

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, there’s no need to reproduce. Yeah, makes sense.

Chantal Donnelly  

Exactly. Right. So anything opposite to that survival mode, sleeping, eating, digesting, all of those types of things. So yawning, tummy gurgles, sighing, these are all signs that your nervous system likes what you’re doing. And it’s really important for people to figure out is this tool working for me because I can, I can give you a tool, Mindy, that actually makes you feel more anxious, even though the person next to you, it actually makes them feel really much better. Okay, so it’s important for for people to put on their little detective hats and go, is this tool working for me? Am I having any of those signs of downregulation? Or am I just having a softening in my body? Does this feel good? Or is my heart rate going up and I feel more anxious. And it’s, it’s not about you, it’s not about the tool, it’s just not the right tool for you.

Dr. Mindy  

Right? So I could so if I’m in a stressed state, and I’m having this really strong reaction, I can do the sliding of the of my hand down my opposite arm, I could do the tapping. Or I could come over and start start rubbing my sternocleidomastoid rubbing down on it. But what I’m looking for in that in all of these moments, is what is my how’s my body reacting?

Chantal Donnelly  

Absolutely. So and

Dr. Mindy  

this is probably you know, a lot of women struggle with sleep during menopause. So I’m thinking this might also be good as you’re learning. You know, sometimes, I find at the end of the day, I just can’t calm myself down. And so you know that for a lot of menopausal women, then we start reaching for a glass of wine, which creates more issue more problems than then then benefits. So could you end up doing a lot of this kind of work when at the end of the day when we’re trying to prepare ourselves for sleep? Oh, absolutely.

Chantal Donnelly  

Yeah, you can do it. At the end of the day. I recommend doing these type. Once you find a couple, let’s say two or three tools that actually work for you. There’s different ways to go about it. But what I recommend is once a day, or twice a day, if you can to try these tools, and they don’t take a long time, these are 32nd tools, right? So maybe after you brush your teeth, you do the arm sweeps. Maybe when you pull into the driveway, after coming home from work before you walk into the house, maybe you do the sternocleidomastoid massage, but a little sticky on the dashboard of your car to remind you, you know, throughout the day, some consistent times, and then what you’ll find is that you won’t need those tools as much because you won’t get as over reactive to

Dr. Mindy  

what’s preventing you preventative to do it with prevention in mind. That’s, that’s probably so loosely.

Chantal Donnelly  

And you can do it as a rescue practice. If you’re really feeling stressed, you got an email that stresses you out, you can do it then. Or if you’ve just had an argument with somebody you love, you can excuse yourself and do it. It works at any time. But really what I find is that the consistent daily or every other day practices over time, change your window of tolerance for what is stressful and what isn’t stressful.

Dr. Mindy  

I love that. Okay, give us another tool. And I assume all these tools are in your book you’ve written probably written them out. They are they are all Can you give us one more? I know I bet which is great. And we need a big toolbox. So what else do we have?

Chantal Donnelly  

We do? And as I said, it doesn’t not all of these tools are going to work for everybody. So the bigger the toolbox, the you get to choose what works for you. This one I call rotation resets. So breathing is actually a body up process, right. So when we when we breathe, we’re changing our oxygenation. And that’s going to tell the brain whether we are safe or not. Okay. So all of those breathing techniques are great. There’s a couple of breathing techniques that work better at different times. And we can get into that on another podcast maybe. But breathing is really helpful. Here’s the thing though. If you breathe from your upper chest, your neck and your upper chest, you are activating your fight or flight nervous system.

Dr. Mindy  

Interesting. If you breathe

Chantal Donnelly  

from your lower belly and lower ribcage, you are activating more of the calming nervous system that Okay, so why would somebody breathe from from their upper chest because a they’re stuck in fight flight. And those those muscles are tight. And it’s not just sternocleidomastoid in the neck area, it’s going to be the scalenes that are that are getting involved in breathing when they’re only supposed to do that during an emergency. Right? Those are accessory breathing muscles. Or it could be that their thoracic spine is so tight that their ribcage doesn’t move properly. And so for them to get enough air in when they inhale, they overuse that upper chest and neck region to try to get in enough air. So with your breathing, you might be trying to calm down but you might actually be going into fight flight because you’re over breathing from your chest and neck. Hmm. Okay, so the rotation reset is a way to get your ribcage more flexible. So that you can be sure to be able to breathe from the lower ribcage and the belly. Okay, so this is a Tai Chi warmup exercise, really. So if you’re standing, and you stand with your feet about hip width apart, you soften your knees, just bend them just a little bit. And then you’re going to rotate right around the middle back area, swinging your arms and you’re gonna look right, left as you rotate. So now when it does feel good, it feels good for a lot of reasons, for a lot of reasons. So that sympathetic nervous system, remember is housed in that middle back primarily in your thoracic spine. Okay, it’s housed elsewhere in the spine, but primarily in the thoracic spine. So I think of this as a massage for your sympathetic nervous system. And that seems a little weird to want to massage that because that’s our fight flight system. But we also need to dissipate the energy of that system. And so this just kind of moves that energy and it helps our breathing which is a gateway to our calming nervous system. I

Dr. Mindy  

love that and and how often so, I mean, all three of these are really easy, and I’ll incorporate them into my, into my daily schedule. How how often like if I have a I have a really strong morning practice, where I do breath work often I have a hyperbaric oxygen a lot of times I’ll get in that. Like I really am I put a lot of effort into the start of my day. If I throw these in on a regular basis in the beginning, will that be enough? Or do I need to like think about doing them throughout the day to keep training the nervous system? Like you’re okay, you’re okay. Is it best done separated out throughout the day?

Chantal Donnelly  

That’s a good question. I think it really depends on who you are and what your needs are and how your body responds to these tools. I don’t know that there’s any hard fast rule. I think everyone just kind of has to play with it and see what works best for them, I would recommend starting with one tool, and just do it in the morning, like I said, like right after you brush your teeth, but a little sticky on your mirror in your bathroom. And that should remind you to do it. And if you if do it a couple times, if it doesn’t feel good, right? Take a different way. Right? Right. And I have a whole chapter in my book on playing detective, because it’s so important that you really understand that not everything is going to feel good to you don’t probably

Dr. Mindy  

feels different, it feels different at different times, is what I’m thinking is what we’re thinking,

Chantal Donnelly  

yeah, for different situations to like, maybe if it’s a situation where you’re having a fight with a spouse, maybe that requires a different tool than if you are in a work stress situation. You know,

Dr. Mindy  

again, I’m gonna go back to have you seen in your experience, that if we start implementing these tools through the peri menopausal journey, and where it’s almost like we’re soothing the nervous system as it’s getting used to the change in hormones, then do we find that at postmenopausal maybe we don’t need to do do those tricks as much and use those tools as much have you? Have you noticed that at all?

Chantal Donnelly  

Yeah, it helped me for the beginning my perimenopausal you know, it still was this up and down, awful. roller coaster ride. I’m not gonna lie. But I think because I had the tools and I understood what was happening in my body. I think those two things that knowledge and the tools really did help. And what I really hope for is that it’s not in perimenopause, or even before perimenopause, that women are doing this. I mean, I’m teaching this to my 19 year old son,

Dr. Mindy  

what do you think for menopausal women? You know, in the discussion out there in the world right now, there’s a lot the primary discussion is around HRT and bioidenticals. And I think one of the things that’s happening to women is that they think, oh, that’s the solution is that if I’m struggling mentally, physically, during menopause, it must be that I need to decide if I’m going on HRT or no HRT, am I doing bioidenticals or no bioidenticals. But still, as we go through menopause, We’re never getting the same amount of estradiol back into our system, We’re never getting the same amount of progesterone back into our system. So there it is supposed to naturally decline. But in your experience, have you seen that women who do these medications, that their stress response is any different?

Chantal Donnelly  

I actually have found that the medications do help women with their stress responses. And I use that as an opportunity, because at some point, they’re going to get off the HRT so I’m using it as an opportunity to say, hey, you know, you’re not stressed right now. So let’s actually really explore your external stressors are still there. Let’s explore what works for you and what doesn’t, so that when you do slowly get off of HRT, you have right, a toolkit. Yeah, waiting for you, that you can use and a lot of women are finding that they feel safer getting off the medication that way, you know, they like is I think going into it when you get into perimenopause, if you’re not prepared for it, and you have no knowledge of what’s happening to your body. That’s where you want to go is give me give me that that patch or that pill that’s gonna help me and then you can sit back and go, Okay. I don’t know what that was. But let me gather myself a little bit and figure out what I need to do

Dr. Mindy  

so well, so that’s why I read the menopause reset, is I was like there’s a lifestyle shift that needs to happen as you go through this experience whether you do this medication, or you or you don’t do the medication. So I agree it it kind of sideswipes, us like out of nowhere. You’re like going along, you’re happy. You’re doing great and all of a sudden, you start to see like, oh my god, I’m reacting so strongly to stress. Oh my god. For some reason. I’m not happy as much as I as I used to be. Oh my god, I can’t hold on to information. It’s so insane. hideous, it just sort of gently comes in. And then before we know it, we’re in this place that we don’t really, really appreciate. When we look at the stress response to me that there’s two emotional patterns around it. One is this pattern of anxiety, where we are looking at like what we’re talking about, where I can’t calm my brain down and become hyper vigilant. And the other one that I see with a lot of menopausal women is depression, where they just go, I just don’t feel joyful anymore. You could give me you could line up everything in my life. And you can make it all perfect. And I still don’t feel joy. If I’m in a depressive state, will these tools still have me because they’re calming? And a lot of times in depression, we’re already calm. We just aren’t feeling joy. Will these tools or any other tool that you wrote about in your book help with lifting Joy

Chantal Donnelly  

up? Yes. And it’s a really interesting question. And and it’s a little complicated, but I’m going to try to make it as simple as possible. So depression is one thing. But is that depressive symptom in menopause, really a freeze response? And a lot of times it is, it’s, it’s free, it’s because that’s how you feel in freezes, you feel hopeless, you feel like you want to disconnect from everyone. You feel like there’s no reason to get out of bed in the morning, right? And it looks a lot like depression, but a lot of times it’s free. It’s and it has to do with the cortisol draw going up when our sex hormones go down. So here’s what happens when you come out of freeze. You go through fight flight to get out? Yes, yes. Okay. So what happens is women as they start to heal from that actually feel like they’re having a bit of a panic attack. So they go from feeling depressive. They’re not really depressed, but they feel depressed. And they come out of it, like one day, that’s like a little turtle pulling a tad out and go, Okay, I think I’m feeling better. Oh, no, no, I feel kind of anxious and panicky. But that’s actually part of the journey to get out of that phase. And so just knowing that can be helpful. And doing these little tools can be really helpful. And you had mentioned walking, and I think walking with a girlfriend, whom you feel comfortable on trust, is one of the best ways to get out of freeze. Because you dissipate that energy, that sympathetic energy, and you’ve got somebody that you trust, and feel safe with, like, golden tip,

Dr. Mindy  

I have a really good friend of mine, who’s also a therapist, and we’ve been friends forever. We’ve raised our kids together, and we go hiking all the time. And whenever I come back, I’m like, Oh, my God, I feel so good. And I finally decided it’s just the quality of our friendship mixed with the movement forward. And then we go and do it in the in the mountains, and we’re in nature and like the next thing you know, you’re like, All I needed was a walk with my friend. I think that’s such a powerful point.

Chantal Donnelly  

It really walk and talk is like a total game changer for people who are feeling like they’re in freeze. And here’s the other thing about your hikes. That was really interesting. When you are in fight flight, you are naturally and this is a survival mechanism, your vision goes into focus mode, right? So you have become more narrow, focused in your vision. And when you’re out in nature, what are your eyes naturally do they go to the horizon and they open up and that is a body up process telling your brain we are not stressed right now, because we are taking in 180 degree view. I

Dr. Mindy  

love that, and love that. So one other thing I wanted, I want to go back to just so we don’t lose this because I you’ve given so many good nuggets on strategies that women can use for this process. If I’m exhausted, and I’m depressed, and I decide to either rub my SEM, or I decide to start to do the tapping, or I start to do breath work from my belly, I may actually see that I come out of a depressive, low energy state and I go into a hypervigilant anxious state. And that’s actually from a nervous system standpoint, I’m moving in the right direction. Is that Is that correct? Because that would be an easy one to be like, oh, now I’m, I was depressed and low and energy. And now, all I want to do is, you know, chop everybody’s head off.

Chantal Donnelly  

That was a great summary. Yes, that is exactly what can happen. And that is why we kind of pop back into that frozen depressed state, because that’s kind of scary, to be panicky. Yeah. And that’s why getting out of freeze, can you need that social support, and something that’s going to sort of dissipate that sympathetic energy that you need and how long of your body do

Dr. Mindy  

you think if I’m moving from the frozen state to this flight, fight or flight And then I want to go back to the rest and digest. Do we have any idea? Like how long that takes? I know that’s a really big question that.

Chantal Donnelly  

So unfortunately, I wish I did have those answers, unfortunately, again, it is the it depends answer. It depends on the person. It depends on how stuck they were for how long? You know, it’s, yeah, it’s such a gray area. I have seen people who get nauseous coming out of freeze. Mm hmm. That usually is a sign that it’s going to take them a little while. A little bit longer. Good. Yeah,

Dr. Mindy  

that’s good. That’s been me a few times. That’s a good one. You know, I just have learned to navigate my nervous system through menopause. And sometimes, you know, you apply a tool and you do feel a little upset stomach, you’re like, I’m a little nauseous. What’s going on? And that was, that’s really helpful. Why do you think that is? Why do you think what is the nausea piece of it?

Chantal Donnelly  

You know, that’s a really good question. I am not sure. It might have something to do with in freeze, there’s a big connection with the the gut brain axis. So you know, in freeze, I’m gonna get kind of a kind of gross here, but in freeze, you get diarrhea or IBS, right? And then yeah, and then when you move into fight flight, that’s more the constipation phase. That’s a sign of being in hyper constant hyper or fight flight is constipation. So there’s something that’s going on with the digestion piece as you move through. And I’m really not sure why it looks like nausea and a lot of people not to say I’m not clear on that.

Dr. Mindy  

Well, I this is one of my missions in life is to help menopausal women understand themselves, because we aren’t having this conversation. And then, you know, once we understand ourselves, then we can help ourselves because I it’s not everybody else’s decision or, or task to heal us, we have to heal ourselves. So this, these tools are profound and so simple, and we can all do them. It’s like fasting. That’s why I love fasting. Everybody can do it. So everybody can tap their arms. Everybody can can breathe differently. Everybody can do the SCM. So this, this is super helpful. Remind me again, when does your book come out? Because I can see that would be a very helpful tool for menopausal women. Yeah, this episode will be out in early August. So when when does your book come out?

Chantal Donnelly  

My book will be out at the end of August, early September. It’s called settled how to find calm in a stress induced world. People can also find me on Instagram, I have a lot of videos on how to calm your nervous system there. It’s Body Insight, Inc. That’s beautiful. It’s my company Body Insight.

Dr. Mindy  

Well, here’s what I want to do. I want to finish up and I’m, I’m curious your answer to this. I want to finish up this season. I’ve been asking everybody about what their daily self love practices. So I’m sure there’s a lot of tools you wrote about in the book that you probably do on a regular basis. And if you had to pick one superpower that you have, in your in your that you bring to the world, what do you think your superpower is?

Chantal Donnelly  

I’m dyslexic? Yeah, and it’s a superpower.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is.

Chantal Donnelly  

Yeah, I can see things differently. And I see patterns and the way things are associated, which is really the definition of creativity. And yeah, I that is definitely a superpower for me. And I use a lot of that in my writing. I’m able to make associations. Yeah.

Dr. Mindy  

Beautiful. And what about self love? What do you do? What’s your self love practice?

Chantal Donnelly  

My self love practice changed during the pandemic. Or at least I added a new one I should say during the pandemic, I used to think that I was 100% extroverted person, I was an actress when I was younger, and a dancer I love a good spotlight. And I was always that extroverted person. And I always felt like maybe something was wrong with me when I wanted alone time. And what I realized during the pandemic is that I crave alone time. I really enjoy it. I love it. And really, I’m about 50% introverted, 50% extroverted, I just have different parts of me that I was ignoring that that part. And so that’s what I do for self care now is I make sure that I get that alone time.

Dr. Mindy  

You know, I’ve been I’ve been really focused on more alone time too. I really think that especially as your kids get older, like you have the opportunity for more alone time and menopause really demands it so yeah, I absolutely love that. Well, this this conversation was great. And I know it’s gonna give a lot of women some some tools they’re not they’re not hearing about that they’re not recognizing so I appreciate you having this conversation with me. Where do people find you?

Chantal Donnelly  

People can find me on it. Instagram. My company is called Body Insight. So my Instagram account is at Body Insight Inc, they can find me at my website body insight.com.

Dr. Mindy  

Beautiful. Well, thank you shantala. And I hope you keep screaming this message from the rooftops where we are more powerful together having this conversation. And the more we talk about it, the more we can heal women, the more we share episodes like this, I mean this has to we have to crack open this menopausal conversation and this was a really important one. So really appreciate you coming in and talking about this with me.

Chantal Donnelly  

Thank you, Mindy. I’m really happy that you are talking about this. I’m happy you’re writing about it. The menopause reset was a fantastic book and I’m just really excited that finally finally we are talking about menopause and stress.

Dr. Mindy  

Amen. Amen. Thank you Chantal. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me in today’s episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we’d love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.