03/12/2024
Following my last post, I started to think about one of the key issues for midlife women with ADHD and, in fact, all women, which is that having potentially born society’s expectations and pressure to fulfil certain roles and do the lion’s share of emotional labour, at perimenopause this pressure becomes too much to bear. I’m talking about things like remembering everyone’s birthdays and being responsible for buying the cards and gifts, being the primary carer for children, parents and other relatives, thinking about and organising the day-to-day running of a home, cleaning, food shopping, meal ideas and preparation, spending time on our appearance so that we look like we made an effort – BTW I’m not saying that many men don’t do all these things too, but the pressure to do so is not the same and often when men do take on these roles and responsibilities they are praised and celebrated – yay a man who does housework, isn’t he amazing! - I’ve never heard anyone say that about a woman; we’re just expected to do the things.
As we enter perimenopause, if we were struggling to fulfil these roles before, we may now feel like we’re drowning under the load, or maybe we were happily fulfilling the expected role, but now we don’t have the energy to keep performing in the way we once did. Maybe we’re still trying to perform the roles and feeling shame around how much we’re struggling or resentful, even angry, or maybe we’ve started to push back.
I wanted to let you know that we don’t ignore this on the Menopause Fit Programme. We support women to look at areas of their lives where they are struggling and/or feeling resentful and work out ways to let go of roles and behaviours that aren’t serving them, so they can feel more true to themselves. We support women in finding ways to share responsibilities more equally with others, improving relationships.
If you want to know more, please do comment or message us. We’d love to hear from you and see how our programme could work for you.
