A Compassionate Inquiry® Practitioner, Family Constellations Facilitator and Director of Spontaneous Theatre, trained in psychodrama, Inés holds Master’s degrees in Education and Systemic Therapy. She co-founded Bloom, a foundation promoting the research, study and responsible dissemination of information on psychedelic work. She also conducts assisted sessions, retreats and creates collective fields of human and equine energies through Horse-Assisted Constellation workshops.
This post is a short edited excerpt of Inés’ views on the impact of our ‘broken’ system’s beliefs around menopause and women’s lack of safe support. Hear her full interview on The Gifts of Trauma Podcast.
I feel I carry the voices of many women who are looking for an opening to start the conversations we have not been having. Since the very beginning, one of my passions has been to question. I’m a very curious creature.
I have so many aspects, as I was born in Bolivia and grew up between Mexico, Central America and Uruguay; made from melted circumstances and cultures. Since I was young I wanted to know; ‘What is this combination of things? How can I make sense of the way I think, the way I feel, the way I move, how I choose my relationships?’ Studying clinical psychology shifted my perspective. Rather than seeing the pieces, I saw the whole iceberg. The systemic approach showed me how the pieces relate to the whole. Family Constellations added an energetic factor by explaining how past generations’ information is transmitted into our bodies and life experiences. Today I facilitate opportunities for people to deepen their understanding of themselves and their worlds.
As a systems person, when I’m asked, “What is the whole system of menopause?” I begin rather formally by explaining that menopause starts after you’ve experienced irregular cycles for a year followed by a full year without a cycle. This explanation divides menopause into stages which, while useful from a biological and general health perspective, erase nature from this natural process. We’ve been treating menopause as a medical issue that we need to understand so we know what to do when it arrives. This approach is like seeing a flower bloom and trying to anticipate exactly when the fourth pedal will unfurl, so we can bring solutions to that unfurling.
Relating to our bodies and our natural cycles as problems that need solving has a long and brutal history. In Uruguay, when we first get our period, we are taught to say, ‘I’m sick,’ in a very low voice. So, when you’re 13 or 14, once a month you’re, ‘sick.’ Then you start numbing and pretending everything is alright. I’m not in menopause, but last year I started to relate to it as it’s coming, and supposedly, if I’m going to go for hormone replacement therapy, or if I’m going to go crazy, or if I need to go to the doctor, I have to get ready.
I find it so sad to live in a system that believes menopause will be so difficult and different… a system that teaches us to believe our bodies are working against us. Nobody’s saying, ‘Yes, it might be difficult, it might be different and it is going to be okay.’ We’re missing the sensitivity we need to feel safe in our own bodies, which are simply doing what nature intended. Instead, we believe our bodies are the enemy.
Menopause is the end of many things—of being a reproductive being, of being young… But seeing it as unwelcome or scary brings a brutal over-charge to our exhausted bodies that are already dealing with the history of everything we’ve done. We’re so tired, yet we’re supposed to keep going. What’s also missing in the feminist narratives about equal opportunities is the lack of support from the system in general and from men in particular. This creates a rupture and ushers in one of the most common trauma-related responses —the feeling that we’re alone. Despite being in a relationship, deep inside us a voice says, ‘I’m alone.’
I wonder about the organic, natural process of a body that, after giving life, offers us a time to deepen our connection with ourselves, the wisdom of nature and the wisdom of existence. But when the stress on our bodies and minds and spirits leads us to feel unsafe and alone… it’s brutal. But we don’t talk about it. It’s a conversation we have not been having, as we lack support systems that could transform our experience of menopause in beautiful ways.
In my work as a psychologist, I offer psychedelic assisted therapy. I’ve been in women’s retreats and mixed (men and women) retreats. The women’s retreats sound very different, in a way that gets under my skin. The way we women heal is with such loud screams, as we have been craving support forever.
A client’s stepfather was her boss at work. He had also abused her during her infancy. This is one of those cases where you wonder how our system can continue to pretend that we’re okay in situations that are never okay. Our sexuality and the ways we suppress our feelings about it start so early in life. When I ask a group, ‘Who suffered sexual abuse as a child?’ All but two or three raise their hands. This client, now a grown woman, went to my retreat and started connecting with the many times she had been abused, by her stepfather and others. Being held in the safety of the retreat space enabled her to have a full cathartic somatic and emotional release. She was finally able to do what she needed to do, to cry, to scream, to curse.
At the end of that process, she understood that she’d been in a perpetual state of vigilance. Her body constantly gave her signs that she wasn’t going to make it. Her conclusion at the end of the retreat was, ‘I need to do nothing. I need to experience the tiredness, the sadness and the grief for some time.’ Her mother and father supported her through that process. She did nothing but look after herself, and she found it luxurious. A woman almost never does nothing. We’re constantly doing something. So when we consult our doctor about experiencing menopause, we should hear, “It’s natural, you’re okay and I’m here to assist you. How would you like to be assisted?” Instead, our doctor writes us a prescription for antidepressants so we won’t feel the emotions that menopause brings. And so once again, we pretend we are fine. Again we buy into the beliefs and narratives of a broken system that says, ‘Just go with it and try to be functional,’ when stopping and not doing anything is the medicine we probably all need.
The Gifts of Trauma is a weekly podcast that features personal stories of trauma, transformation, healing, and the gifts revealed on the path to authenticity. Listen to the interview, and if you like it, please subscribe and share.
