FIRST AID FOR YOUR MENOPAUSE EMOTIONS is a supportive guide for getting through menopause without feeling like you're losing your mind. If you're new to menopause symptoms, there's a run-down of the unpleasant feelings that might make their presence felt. If you're fed up with menopause in all its forms you'll find lots of empathy and simple, direct steps you can take to banish the bummers and go back to making the most of these important years. Somewhere between your fortieth and fiftieth birthdays, you wake up one morning and break a nail, and everything falls apart, nobody loves you, the world is one giant catastrophe just moments away from auto-ignition, and your whole life has lost its meaning. So, what happened? Did the magnetic poles shift, or the Earth come out of its orbit? No, all that happened is, your hormone levels shifted. You may be going through your day feeling perfectly normal when suddenly someone says just the wrong thing and your eyes glaze over, you double in height, turn green, and bite them in two. And then-you feel fine again. Back to normal. Or you find yourself falling asleep at 8PM, or waking up at 3AM, unable to get back to sleep. Or you go into a funk that lasts for days, dragging you down into an emotional sink before it goes away as quickly and mysteriously as it came....Would you like to have some insight into the feelings you are having ? Would you like to have ways to deal with your emotions when they seem to take over your interactions with others? Would you like to understand those days you lose to depressions that come and go of their own accord? Would you like to be able to cool down and think clearly when everything around you is driving you to distraction? If you are experiencing symptoms of menopause, you should congratulate yourself-you are a SURVIVOR. You have gone over enough hurdles to qualify for the Olympics. You have survived zits, periods, school, perhaps marriage, parenthood, and in-laws, and/or many years of jobs, bosses, and personnel reviews. But whether you have had children or not, you will in the foreseeable future reach a point where only a miracle could make you pregnant. You will say goodbye to your youth, your skin tone, some part of your ambitions, your old hopes and dreams, possibly your hair, and getting carded....But there's more to you than you think. You have lived long enough and through enough experiences that along with the wrinkles and stretch marks, you possess a breadth and depth of wisdom and understanding that you probably underestimate. And now suddenly, if you have never had to before, you have to pay attention to your feelings, to your needs. You have to start taking care of yourself mentally and emotionally, the same way you have been taking care of the other people in your life-your spouse, your kids, your friends, your boss and coworkers. FIRST AID FOR YOUR MENOPAUSE EMOTIONS gives you a simple, straightforward guide for dealing with your feelings in your own way, on your own time. It can help you remember your most important priorities when emotional overload seems like the only option left in your playbook.
Patricia M. Ryan was an early boomer, and a late bloomer. She grew up in a relatively adventurous Air Force family with two much smarter brothers and a series of long-suffering dachshunds. Despite her early wishes to become a nurse or a commercial artist or a scientist, she ended up weaseling her way into software engineering, where she learned most of what she knows about men, women, and deadlines. She managed to reach retirement without getting too awfully banged up, and now pursues her passions for plants, gardening, making art, and writing about all of it, in between watching movies on tv.
