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Episode Transcript

Trauma Can Wreck Your Hormones - Here's How to Heal for Alienated Parent

You are listening to the Beyond The High Road Podcast with Shelby Milford, episode number 186. Stay tuned.

Hey y'all, how we doing? So I'm gonna get right into it. If you've been around this podcast for a while now, you've, I'm sure that you've heard me talk about how grief and complex trauma can hijack your mind and how our bodies can almost get addicted to chaos. We went into all of that in the January episode. I, it was called How Grief and Complex Trauma Hijack Your Mind. and also talked about this, I talked about this with you guys in the Chaos series that I believe was BA maybe back in September, October, around that timeframe. , And so today I wanna add another layer to the conversation, okay? And we're gonna start with your body, not just what you think and you feel, but actually what it feels like to live in your body when you're an alienated parent, which we talk about all the time.

But for a lot of you What this looks like is bone deep exhaustion. You wake up tired, your muscles feel heavy, your brain feels foggy and slow. Like you can't formulate a sentence, which I know I've talked about a million times with you guys because this was a real problem for me for a really long time.

Like maybe almost, maybe not a decade, but it was a good five years or so that this was a problem for me. But it's not just exhaustion, it's an maybe unexplained pain, that you might feel tightness, soreness, it's sleep that never feels restorative. Like you could sleep for days, right? And wake up still exhausted and people say that's because you slept too much, but it maybe not

It's anxiety too that seems to come out of nowhere. Or on the other hand, it's also a gray sort of flat depression that makes everything feel pointless. It's sex drive that has vanished, maybe, or a sense that your spark, your youness has gone missing. Sometimes this comes out like with the clients that I speak with as like, oh, well, I'm old now.

I'm old, I'm washed up. They may not use those words, but that's the idea. and I believed that about myself too, um, for a long period of time. I have , an explanation for that if you haven't already, um, explored this for yourself today. because you love your kids. You turn all of this.

Basically what I was just saying, you turn all of this back on yourself many times you say, if I really cared, I wouldn't be this drained. If I were stronger, . I wouldn't be this anxious or numb too, if I was a good parent, I would be able to push through this. What I wanna offer you in this episode is a completely different story, I wanna show you that there are real understandable reasons your body feels this way. Reasons that have everything to do with chronic stress, your hormones and bonding, and nothing to do with you being weak or failing. So my goal isn't to turn you into an endocrinologist throughout this episode,

you know that I am not a doctor, I'm a life coach who specializes in grief and post-traumatic. Stress, post-traumatic growth. my goal is to give you a simple map of what is happening inside your stress system and in your sex hormones, and also in your bonding hormones, so that you can see your symptoms as information, as data, not as a verdict of your worth.

I think it's just helpful to know, like label things in a way that helps you in the moment when you see yourself going through something like you're noticing symptoms come up. And you may attribute that all to alienation or all to the abuse or all to you, yourself. And instead, I wanna give you some alternatives to that.

it can be really helpful so that you, you, you. It's not necessarily a diagnosis by any means of, for, surely not a diagnosis, but it's something that you can also, um, begin to work with maybe doctors if you haven't already, or just, um, to help you develop more compassion for your whole experience, your body's experience of this.

so, , I am still, I'm at war with this brand new camera that I have. I think that the coloring is odd and the, I don't know, it's, it's very strange. And so also my notes are way down low and the camera is positioned up high. I really, I'm having a time of it, but, , I'm working on it guys. So if you're noticing that it seems a little different, this is why.

So let's start today with the stress piece that you've heard me talk about before. I'm just gonna do a quick overview, and then I'll link it to hormones like estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. , So inside your body you have a stress circuit, right? Often called the HPA axis. You don't have to remember the acronym, right? You don't have to remember even the letters, but they basically stand for a hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenal. Think of this as your internal emergency generator.

When something feels dangerous, a threatening text from your ex, a court notice, your child not showing up for a visit, your brain flips that generator on. The hypothalamus sends a signal, The pituitary boosts it, and your adrenal glands release cortisol so that you can deal with the attack.

. In a short term crisis, it's a good thing. The generator comes on, you get a burst of power, and then it turns off again. It's efficient, The problem, and, and with alienation that we all deal with is that there was no clean end point. And I know that you guys know this because you're living it all the time, and maybe you notice it more when we're talking about there's no ending, there's no closure.

It just keeps going on. I hear this over and over, described and read, um, people saying that it's like, the same as a death, except for it's not because there is no closure. It just keeps going on. It's like Groundhog Day over and over again. Well, the same thing is going on inside your body. Um, and I'm not telling you this to commiserate with you or make it worse.

I'm actually, uh, you'll see. But I wanna present this to you in a way that hopefully helps you to advocate for yourself, um, even better than maybe you are right now. So, your relationship with your child, that core attachment bond is under threat, obviously, over and over and over again, and your emergency system keeps getting triggered.

At first. It can feel like being wired and hyper alert. You're doing, doing, doing, calling lawyers, reading everything, reacting to every message, you know how it goes. But emergency generators aren't meant to run nonstop, I live in Florida, so we have, you know, hurricanes, we all have our own, you know, either, uh, uh, mobile generator, like one that you can take places or what generator for the house.

You can't just run on that the whole time. It burns it out super quick. Right? Over time, that constant activation starts to wear on this system. Your sleep gets disrupted, your digestion change, your baseline mood shifts, eventually you move from wired to wiped out that tired, but you can't rest state that I know that many of you know.

Oh, so well. So now right next to that stress system, you have another loop running. So you have your HPA access. Then you have your sex hormone system, and it's known in the medical world as your HPG axis. So hypothalamus, pituitary, and gonads a woman that means ovaries and a men, that means your testes, This system doesn't just control your, all of the functions related to sex. Yes, it does. It's main controls, like the HPG axis does control your hormones like estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, but estrogen, all three of those do much more than just. Raise or lower your libido and change a woman's mood during a premenstrual cycle and what have you, It can affect every area of your health, when they fluctuate. Okay, so those, I forget what I write again. Those hormones do far more than run your period or your fertility. They're involved in your energy, your muscle strength. And this is just a, just a few to name your muscle strength, your bone health, your libido, your pain levels, your mood, how clear or foggy your thinking feels.

They are part of what gives you your sense of vitality. Or on the flip side, that sense that your body has lost its spark.

The important piece here though is that these two systems, your stress axis and your sex hormone axis are in constant conversation. When your stress axis has been screaming for months or years because of alienation, court battles ongoing conflict, you name it, you know, it doesn't end up staying in its own lane.

High chronic stress signals can turn down the brain messages that tell your ovaries or your testes, your sex hormone or your sex organs, how much hormone to make. Over time, that can lead to lower or more chaotic levels of estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. it also works in the other direction too.

Your sex hormones change how sensitive. Um, this is where you guys all know this change, how sensitive your stress response is and how quickly you come back down after a trigger. Certain phases with higher estrogen can make your stress response more reactive.

And I know that you guys know this low or dropping estrogen can make your mood heavier or more depressed. Right? Shifts in progesterone can change how well you sleep, and how subtle or anxious you feel. Okay. Changes in testosterone in both men and women can change your drive, your motivation and your ability to bounce back.

Oh, testosterone actually affects a lot more than just that, but I'm gonna leave it at that now and then, um, if I have time, I'll discuss it in a little bit when we get down to the testosterone section. Um. So if you've noticed that on some days that you can, you can get a nasty message from your ex and somehow still stay grounded and on other days the tiniest thing sends you into a rage or despair, that is not you being, being inconsistent or unstable or dramatic or turned off like removed, right?

I mean, it may be that you, uh, distance yourself, but it's not just you, it's not a personality flaw or, um, uh, mood disorder. It doesn't have to be just that. That could very well be a different hormonal weather system moving through the same exact stress climate.

Okay, so there's one more player that I wanna put on the board before we talk specifically about men and women. And that is your bonding chemistry, especially oxytocin, oxytocin is often called the bonding hormone. It's involved in feeling close and connected to people and trusting others things like childbirth and breastfeeding, and cuddling in sex, and in the sense of warmth you feel when you're with someone that you love.

It's released with eye contact, touch, affectionate interaction, and caregiving. Okay, just a little factoid here is that adults who have experienced parental divorce, like as children, like they experienced their own parents getting a divorce, have been found to, to have significantly lower oxytocin levels in their urine, , compared to those with intact.

Family systems. And those lower levels correlate with less secure attachment and more relational difficulty. That's just a little fact for you. 'cause I know that we have some, um, adult alienated children that are listening. Not only that, maybe that you're alienated now as a, as a parent, but maybe also you experienced alienation as a child.

Um, and then also it's just nice to know, maybe it's not nice to know, but it's, it's beneficial I think, to know what our children's experience of this could be too. And so basically what I'm saying is just in childhood ACEs like adverse, , childhood experiences or anything, any sort of extended trauma as a child that wasn't, , processed through.

Like maybe it's one thing to have situational trauma. But if there wasn't a parent or loved one there to help you as a child, help you or the child work that out process through it, then it could have contributed to low oxytocin levels starting from an early age, which is OI mean, it's maybe not okay, but there are things that you can do.

Okay? So

in a healthy parent-child relationship, there is a natural oxytocin loop. Okay? You see your child that you respond to their cues, that you comfort them, they settle on both of your nervous systems regulate together. That loop repeats thousands of times, as you probably know, and becomes part of your baseline sense of safety, and then enter an alienation and that loop is interrupted or weapon weaponized.

You may have long stretches of no contact at all. And when you do see your child, it either may be hostile, scrutinized, or painfully brief. Or, um, your connection, sense of connection may be interrupted even when they're right in front of you. For many reasons. In alienation, for some of you, you get those tiny bursts of closeness.

You get a hug, a text, a few hours together, and then it's ripped away again. Each of those moments can give you a surge of oxytocin, right? Followed by a crash when the contact is cut off or when your child pulls back under pressure. Over time. That can feel like craving contact and then feeling shattered afterwards, or like you've started to go numb, um, because it hurts too much to keep opening and closing like that.

so what I'm saying is here, your usual oxytocin, oxytocin, anchored, caregiving sequence is see your child attend to them. You have sort of a touch, reciprocation, comfort, mutual regulation. All of that is disrupted. And over time, this can shape a painful bonding hunger.

Like a hunger for your bonding. And I've talked with a got one client in mind right now that she mentions this quite a bit. You know who you are. Um, a longing for closeness that is repeatedly frustrated, and then it can also shape, um, deep mistrust or guardedness in other relationships, including romantic and friendship bonds.

This I see a lot. It always makes me sad because, I mean, I was there too, but I see it a lot. Um, the distrust, mistrust, however you wanna say that. Um, of all the other relations relationships that alienated parents have and they become a little bit more paranoid and unsure and then end up just closing themselves in.

And it makes me really sad because, because you know why? Um, because we can all benefit from really close and supportive friendships, but when we're looking out and saying everybody's dangerous, then it's really difficult to develop those, obviously, those relationships and feel supported, you know? So it's kind of a vicious cycle.

But anyway, um, garden this and other relationships, including Roman Romantic and friendship bonds. Okay. Um, another way is avoidance of triggers. This is what the. , Disrupted oxytocin production can lead to avoidance of triggers, photos, school events, places tied to memories, that sort of thing to, and you, we you do that, we do that.

I've done that before. Uh, to protect from the crash after the oxytocin spike. It's almost like the same thing as, um, uh, the, the way that I just said it reminded me of the abuse cycle, how I used to call them my Christmases. I'd be so excited because they, he would go back to his, not my daughter's father, the other guy.

He would go back to his, like lovey-dovey, you know, um, love bombing phase. And before I really knew anything about the, the cycle that was happening, I was always craving that, And then, once I caught onto it, then I didn't even wanna. I didn't want him being loving towards me because I knew that loving towards me meant that we are getting ready to enter a whole new cycle.

And it's sort of the same thing with, um, the avoidance of triggers, you know, for us, because we, we've already started to look and that's what the stress hormones, the HPAA axis will do is like you, the stress hormones will start flooding the system as we anticipate what's to come. Right? So we live our lives on guard like that, anticipating the next shoe drop, you know?

So anyway, you're not just dealing with stress in a vague sense. You're dealing with a stressed out emergency system, a sex hormone system that has been pulled off balance and a broken bonding loop.

Okay? That combination shows up as exhaustion, pain, sleep problems, mood swings, anxiety, depression, numbness, and changes in your desire for touch and intimacy to name a few. And none of this that I'm telling you, as I already said in the beginning, and I say it almost every episode, makes you weak or flawed, It makes you human dealing with a tragedy.

[00:17:56] Women

So from here, I wanna make this even more concrete by talking about how this tends to show up in real bodies, like starting with women. We're gonna go and then we're gonna go to men. I'm gonna focus on, what it feels like, like the symptoms, right? And then we'll briefly connect them back to the hormones so you can start to see the patterns in your own experience.

like I said, I'm gonna start with women. Um, first I wanna point out too that fluctuating levels that when I was writing out this episode, I just did it and doing the research even too. I want to make sure, and maybe I should have said this right in the beginning, that y'all understand.

I think most of us do, but I need, it needs to be said. This isn't just about aging and like hormones now declining, you know, at my age or whoever's age, you know, hormones can start fluctuating the sex, the, the sex, the second that, um, stress becomes chronic. Okay? And so if you are an extended sort of stress response.

Um, and especially also depending on childhood and what you've worked through today, you could be entirely dysregulated now. And when I said that, I don't mean to say that you're entirely dysregulated, it just mean it could mean that like all the systems are not, uh, communicating to each other, um, in the most efficient, effective way.

And so when I'm talking with you guys about, like, when I'm talking about women, I just want you to know that your estrogen levels can plummet as early as your early thirties, early mid thirties. Um, and they can go up and down. And it doesn't mean that you're going through early menopause if that starts for you or maybe you don't even know.

And so I wanna give you the signs, some of the si, some of the signs you really. Um, I should maybe put in a couple links for some good videos for you to go, maybe watch. I'm thinking of one in particular, doctor. Um, I'll put it in the notes. Okay. To watch so that you can get more information about the signs for low estrogen, all the low sex hormones, , just so that you can support yourself in the best way possible.

And also support whoever is in your life. If you, if you're a guy who I'm gonna talk with you guys in a minute, , you dads about how fluctuating hormones can affect you. But if you have a partner, then obviously you're dealing also, it's affecting you, um, female partner, their fluctuating hormones is gonna affect you.

Of course. You know, Basically what I'm saying is this isn't just a conversation about menopause or aging in men. Okay? Um, if you're a woman living through alienation, you might not be walking around and thinking, wow, my HPA axis and my HPG axis are really dysregulated today. You're not gonna say that.

Obviously, you're gonna be thinking things like, why am I so tired? Why do I wake up exhausted every day? I'm so tired and I slept 10 hours last night. You know, why does my body ache or hurt so much? why is my brain so foggy? God, all of these things I've said, um, why on repeat? Why am I either snapping at everyone or totally shutting down?

Where did my sex drive go? Why can't I make myself do the things that I know that I need to do? That cluster of symptoms is what we're gonna unpack, First we're gonna talk about estrogen. Estrogen does a lot more than run your cycle. As I kind of pointed out earlier, it supports serotonin, One of the key chemicals involved in your mood and it influences how your brain processes emotion, how clearly you think, how sensitive you are to pain, what have you, It also helps to protect your joints, your bones, and your blood vessels. So when estrogen is low or is dropping,

and that can start, like I said, just a minute ago, and that can start in your thirties and ramp up into perimenopause and menopause. You might notice heavier sadness or more crying spouse, This is low estrogen. more anxiety or intrusive negative thought. More joint and muscle pain or stiffness that didn't use to be there.

Especially if you guys notice I, I'm seeing this from experience and then from my own research overall this time with my own inflammation story, low estrogen or fluctuating estrogen. Um, if you notice that you have bilateral stiffness, aching pain, this might be something that you go get checked out and I will talk about the solutions in a little bit.

pain that just shows up outta nowhere, basically. Like all of a sudden you're now aching where you weren't injured before and whatever. And especially if it's bilateral, like systemic, you know, hot flashes, obvi or night sweats. Changes in your body shape, especially more if you're getting more weight around the middle, which a lot of us already know.

And that could be linked to high cortisol levels too, which basically, well, I'm gonna talk about it in a minute. I think, I don't know if I wrote that in there or not, but yeah, basically once your cortisol, did I talk about this? I don't know if I have it actually in today's episode because I have it in other ones, but, um, when your cortisol raises after some time of leaving it, like if you're an extended period of, um, you know, chronic trauma situation, then your cortisol levels will raise and they can, they'll keep, your body is producing so much cortisol, but then your body will become desensitized to that cortisol.

And cortisol usually is an anti anti-inflammatory. That's why drugs like, um, prednisone and also cortisone. , like that's, those are the synthetic versions of . cortisol, okay? And so prednisone, if you've ever been on Predni, prednisone, you know exactly what I'm talking about. That, that gives you that tired and wired sort of feeling or like really wired and anxiety driven and all that sort of stuff is because it's from, it's derived or it's supposed to be, it's mimics cortisol, right?

Which is basically just a stress hormone, right? It just ramps your body up, but then you can't sleep very well and all the things. And so what I was just getting at, is when your cortisol is high, this also, It affects your estrogen, so now let's put this around everything I just said. The changes in your body shape, your hot flashes, the joint and muscle stiffness and all that sort of stuff. Um, let's put it in the context of alienation. That same court update, that same silence from your child or look that you get from them, um, the same hostile exchange can feel much more unbearable in a body that's low on estrogen and low on Serotonin, so when estrogen is high, serotonin is high. When estrogen is low, serotonin is low. And now it's not always great to be high on estrogen either, and we'll go there in a minute. So the story in your head, oh my gosh, this will never change. I was just also, texting with two clients over this weekend that this was happening with them both, women moms.

This will never change. I'm losing my child. I'm failing. Can feel heavier and more convincing on those days where you're low estrogen. Okay, so like the, forget it. I don't even know there's hopeless. That's what will happen for low estrogen. There were also times in a normal menstrual cycle when estrogen is higher, right?

Like I was juststarting to mention, research shows that in certain higher estrogen phases, women's stress response can actually fire more strongly to the same trigger. So in those windows you might notice more intense reactions, more anger, more panic, more emotional overwhelm, even if nothing external has changed.

Because also, even though serotonin could be putting out a lot, like when estrogen's higher. Serotonin. Too much serotonin will also cause excitability irritability, anxiety. Really? Okay. So with estrogen, there are two things really to notice here. Low or dropping levels can make everything feel heavier and more painful.

And then some higher estrogen windows can make stress feel sharper and more explosive. Okay? Both are happening on top of a chronic alienation sort of stress that it's already pushing your system to the limits. my whole point of this episode, before I even go any further is to show you how you're dealing with biologically likely.

If you're going through this and you're noticing anything I've already mentioned here and guys do, um, you're not, it's not just some personality thing or some mental or emotional thing. Chemically physically, there are changes inside of you that are affecting the way that you perceive what's going on, and then now also how you react.

And I do wanna say react here, um, rather than respond. another thing to note too is that if you are very thin, like if you are, okay, the reason I wrote this is because, um, in my thirties I was doing fitness competitions and where I was really strict on diet, really strict to, um, like bodybuilding competitions, right?

Uh, competitions. And when I did that for me, it really messed with my hormones and I did not know that. Or if I did, then I didn't know to the extent that it actually messed with my hormones. I di I remember being super depressed afterwards. Being warned about that, but not taking it seriously 'cause thinking it wasn't gonna happen to me, but it did.

Anyway. My point here is if you are thin or you just have always been not one that doesn't carry weight on you, or if you've lost a lot of weight under stress, there's another little twist, which I've already kind of said, body fat helps to produce estrogen, Very low body fat can mean less estrogen overall, and that can start at whatever age.

More regular cycles as well in fact, back then I know that I knew that I was, this is, I don't know, I've never had an eating disorder or anything like that, but I do remember knowing and thinking it was so great that when I stopped having a cycle, then I was at the right body fat. To go on stage. Like I was like, whoop, lost my cycle. That means I'm ready to compete. Which I thought it was like I got like a dopamine hit. I was like, yay.. So excited. But I wasn't taking into consideration all of the effects that that can actually have on, you know, estrogen production and what that does to the system.

Anyway, it's no surprise that I did actually go into early menopause. Um, nobody else in my family did, but I think it has to do with that. My, figure competition stuff and then also all of the stress of alienation and what I didn't do with it, like didn't help myself in the beginning anyway. I don't know if I said this part or not. Very low body fat can mean less estrogen overall, more regular cycles and more emotional and physical vulnerability to stress. That's the part I don't think I said. And it's not a vanity issue, you know, being like thin or whatever. It's part of your hormonal foundation.

[00:29:17] Progesterone

So next we're gonna talk about progesterone. Progesterone is often thought of as the calming hormone.

One of its breakdown products interacts with the same calming system in your brain that many anti-anxiety medications target. When progesterone is at healthy levels and follows a healthy rhythm, it helps your brain shift into rest mode and supports deeper sleep.

When progesterone is low or swinging, you know a lot, especially in the second half of your cycle during pen perimenopause, you might notice feeling tired, but wired at night, exhausted, but unable to fall asleep or stay asleep. That was a big one for me even up until, um, last fall, I was able to fall asleep.

But staying asleep was a problem. Huge problem. Um, more frequent awakenings and lighter sleep so that you feel wake up feeling unre refreshed. It's the same thing, basically more irritability or anxiety, particularly on the days before your period or door during. If you're don't have your period, then during hormone transitions.

so in the context of alienation that might look like you finally get into bed. Your body is done, but your brain will not shut off. You replay conversations, court hearings, things your child said or didn't say, you scroll or stare at the ceiling, what have you. sometimes it's not even, I'm speaking from experience here too, is that you sometimes, it's not even that your brain is going a million miles an hour, though.

It can in the context of alienation depends on where you are with this. I, you might also just notice that like your body is like, almost like restless leg. You know, you just can't stop moving even though, or peeing even though, um, you're exhausted, you know? So your stress system is still pumping. And your progesterone isn't giving your brain the same calming cue and your internal clock gets more and more out of sync the next day. You don't just feel tired, you feel frayed, raw, and less able to think clearly or respond thoughtfully.

[00:31:17] Circadian Rhythm

Progesterone and your stress system are both tied to your circadian rhythm. Which is of course you guys know, is your internal body clock that tells you when to feel awake and when to start feeling sleepy, chronic stress, scrolling late into the night, replaying court scenes in your mind.

All of that confuses your internal clock. , When your circadian rhythm is off. Your cortisol does not rise and fall at the right times. We need cortisol. We need absolutely need it, but we need it in the morning. Because it's what tells your body to get up and get going, moving, but we don't need it when we're trying to fall asleep at night.

And your sex hormones can even get more out of sync as a result of not, sleeping at night and being exhausted during the day. So basically what I'm saying is, is that that's why you, part of why you can't fall asleep when you're exhausted or you wake up at 3:00 AM in a panic, or you crash mid-afternoon and then get a second wind at midnight.

This was me. You know, I would be exhausted all day long and then. 10 o'clock at night came around, or maybe sometimes even a little earlier, and I was bing wide awake, couldn't go to sleep wide awake, you know? it's not you being undisciplined, which is where I thought I was. It's your clock being a scrambled by long-term stress.

I just want you to, if this is you and your clock has been all out of whack and you're up at all times of the night, I, I just want you to know that because it can feel, we have this, and I do think it's good. We need to sleep at night, and it's just the way that our bodies are made sleep at night and do things stay active during the day.

But we also, I know for me, let me speak for me, is that I had so many judgements on myself when I was falling asleep late. Late at night or in the early morning, right when I finally fell asleep. And so I made myself get up super early just to try to get myself back on track, which is not a problem to do.

But I also then judged myself when I wasn't waking up at the time that I thought labeled the responsible time, but then I wasn't getting the sleep that I needed, which created this whole other loop. So anyway, just have some, uh, compassion for yourself. Okay. Give yourself some grace. Um, and then there's testosterone, which most women were never told as a part of their story.

I didn't really know that for up until, I don't know the last few years probably, that women produce testosterone too. in our ovaries. In our adrenal glands too. It helps with energy and stamina, with motivation and drive with muscle and bone strength, and also with libido, of course, for your, desire for sex and intimacy.

Okay. When women's testosterone is low, it usually doesn't happen overnight. It creeps in. You might notice persistent fatigue that doesn't match what you're doing. Feeling physically weaker, losing muscle, having a harder time building strength, your body, feeling softer, even when the scale hasn't changed a lot.

Thinning hair, dryer skin, a sex drive that has faded or disappeared and more , difficulty getting aroused or reaching orgasm, um, emotionally. More flatness and irritability. That happens with low t, more brain fog and lack of motivation. That feeling of I know what I need to do, but I just cannot make myself do it.

That coupled with maybe extended freeze really makes things complicates or compounds things quite a bit. Many of those symptoms are very easy to label as just depression or just burnout, and a lot of women are given antidepressants or anti-anxiety meds, without anyone ever checking their testosterone or other hormones.

This, this is what happened with me, you know, is I, so I'm, again, this is just my opinion, so obviously go check with your doctor, but if you notice you've been on SSRIs for some time now and there has been literally no change or seeing no change, it might be a good idea to go get your stuff checked.

it can't hurt to ask the questions. It is your body, and I'm gonna talk about that in a minute. So. if you're an alienated mother living with relentless stress, your stress system can absolutely affect these hormones. Like I've been saying this whole time over time, chronic stress can change the signals your brain sends to your ovaries, right?

An adrenal glands low testosterone in that context doesn't mean you don't care. Obviously. It could mean that your system has been running on empty for a long time. You lose your playfulness also too, when you're low testosterone. So testosterone is really, it's an essential part. An essential hormone for us as women, um, relationally.

Okay? So when you put all this together it might look like this certain days or phases where low or dropping estrogen makes everything feel heavier, more painful, and more hopeless. Other points where higher estrogen makes your stress reactions feel more intense and explosive. Progesterone shifts keep you from getting deep restorative sleep, leaving you tired, edgy and foggy. low testosterone, quietly draining your energy, your motivation, your sex drive, and your sense of spark. And all of that is happening in a body that has been living with chronic relational trauma, with alienation, with court battles, with being erased or misrepresented.

So, if you've been blaming yourself for being exhausted, for not bouncing back, for not feeling like the mother that you wanna feel like or be, I want you to hear this very clearly.

There are biological reasons that your body feels the way that it does. What I'm saying, doesn't fix the injustice, but it does mean that your symptoms are not proof that you're weak, that you're lazy, or that you don't love your child enough, that you're not, motivated enough, whatever.

Okay? There's signs that your body has been trying to survive, a war that it never asked for. I'm not saying that to victimize you, I'm saying that because that's true. It can be true for most of you in don't wanna tell you what's true for you, but I have a feeling, So in a bit, we'll talk about what you can do about all of this, how to track your patterns, how to talk to the doctors about hormones and how to soften the way that you talk to yourself on hard days. But before that, I just wanna turn toward the men listening because your hormone systems are deeply affected by alienation also, you know,

[00:37:41] Dads

it's just happens in a slightly different pattern. So now I'm speaking to you guys, you dads out there, and also to the women who love them. So just like with women, we're gonna start with what this actually feels like in a man's body under alienation. And obviously I don't know this from experience, but I did enough research on it, um, to give you the basics here. . And then I'll connect that to hormones so that you can see the pattern and also I know this just from also talking with my clients on a daily basis. for many alienated fathers, it looks something like this. It could be that you're exhausted, but you can't seem to sleep deeply. Restoratively, okay? You're patient patience might be thin, you might snap more easily or feel irritated more often, You might notice your motivation dropping things that you used to tackle head on now feel overwhelming. Your sex drive may be isn't what it used to be, and you might feel embarrassed or confused about that. From what I understand, you feel weaker in your body. Maybe you're losing muscle more easily, and you gain fat more easily, especially around the middle.

It's harder to gain the muscle. And underneath all of that, there might be this quiet sense of failure, like you're not the father or the man that you thought you would be. You lose your desire to lead

so if all this sounds familiar, you're not alone and you're not crazy. Your hormones are just as much of a part of this as women's are.

So when we're talking about low testosterone, it's obviously not just a sex hormone. It's deeply involved in energy initiative, muscle strength, bone health, red blood cell production, and mood. Okay. It's part of what gives you that inner sense of, I can get things done, I can move towards goals, I can protect, I can provide, that sort of thing.

When T is low, um, or dropping in men, common symptoms can include persistent fatigue and low energy. Even when you're not doing physically demanding work, you're just petered out. Maybe all the time or many times, you know, you maybe have lower motivation and drive procrastinating, more struggling to start tasks, you know, that are important.

, Depressed mood or emotional flatness, sometimes mixed with irritability, reduced libido. This is an obvious one. Or difficulty with erections, which can create shame and strain in relationships, which is not often talked about. loss of muscle mass and strength, more belly fat and sometimes joint aches. Trouble with focus and memory, feeling foggy or slower mentally.

Remember that stress axis we talked about earlier? Chronic activation of that system, months or even years of feeling like you're in a legal and emotional war over your own children can suppress the signals from your brain that tell your testes to make testosterone over time.

That can quietly push you into a low T state, in real life, what that looks like is you used to be the guy who jumped on problems. Now you sit in front of an email from your lawyer and feel paralyzed. Maybe another way is that you used to enjoy sex. Now you avoid it because your desire is low, because you're worried that your body won't cooperate.

Maybe another way is that you used to feel powerful in your body. Now you feel softer, slower, and even older than you think that you should. It is very easy to turn that into a story of personal failure, especially for men. Okay. Testosterone is like a, it is, it becomes an identity testosterone production.

And that what testosterone does for men, it becomes, it's an identity, thing, right? And so it does contribute to assertiveness and like,, I keep saying playfulness, but it really does, and a desire to lead, And when you have low T though, you may want to, um, maybe or maybe not want to mentally be more hands on. The rest of you just doesn't have the desire to do it, you know? So mentally you could desire it, but physically you're just spent and you. Don't, you're easier to let things pass things off to somebody else. Um, but that also can take a toll on the way that you see yourself as a man. And again, obviously not speaking from experience, just from research and with my clients, with my dad, clients.

It's like I was just starting to say, it's very easy to turn that into a story of personal failure. I'm weak, I'm not a real man. I must not care enough. Or I'd be trying harder.

But part of what's happening is that your stress system and your testosterone have been battered by a prolonged relational trauma. It's not your fault. It could just be that you're, all of the cortisol that's been pumping through you, all of the, the stress has interrupted your testosterone production.

. So, testosterone production in men is closely tied to your circadian rhythm and your sleep. Just like when I was talking about, with women, and progesterone. most of your daily testosterone is made at night during deep sleep.

when stress and worry keep you up, or when your sleep is fragmented, your testosterone drops. That's one of the ways that it drops. When testosterone is low, sleep often gets even more disrupted, which becomes this whole vicious cycle. Stress not sleeping lower t lower T equals worse sleep, worse mood, less energy.

So when you're lying there at 3:00 AM replaying court documents in your head, that's not just overthinking all the time, It's your stress axis, your hormones and your nervous system all caught in a loop that no one ever warned you about. So next we're gonna talk about men and estrogen because the balance matters there too.

You guys make estradiol in your system. Okay? We don't talk about this enough, but men need estrogen. Two in men, much of your estrogen is made by converting testosterone into estradiol, that estradiol helps with bone health, brain , function, and metabolic health. When testosterone is low, the balance between testosterone and estrogen can get completely thrown off.

And some then that means relatively low, estradiol too, which can affect mood, and your bones.

In other men, especially with when they, there's been some central weight gain right around your midsection. Weight gain, more testosterone is converted to estrogen in your fat tissue, remember I mentioned that fat helps to produce estrogen. and that can also affect your mood, your libido, and how you feel inside of your own body.

You don't need to know all of the chemistry, but you do need to know this. Men's emotional and physical health depends on a healthy balance between testosterone and estradiol or estrogen. Okay? Chronic stress and weight changes can distort that balance. that distortion can feel like mood instability, low drive, and not recognizing your own body anymore.

It doesn't, well, I'm, I'm gonna leave it alone. Um, I wanna talk to right now about identity, anger, and even numbness on top of the pure biology. There's an identity piece that I kind of already mentioned and forgot that I put it in here again. For many fathers, testosterone is wrapped up with a sense of being a protector, a doer, a problem solver.

Alienation strikes right at that identity, You're trying to protect your relationship with your child and being blocked by systems that. See you or don't believe you. When you combine that constant relational defeat with hormonal changes, it's common to see two different extremes, periods of intense fight energy, Rage obsession with the case, wanting to smash through every barrier, like 

ugh, 

wanting to get it all done, right? Go, go, go. Followed by long periods of collapse, no energy, no drive, wanting to disappear, not answering calls, feeling like there is no point.

That doesn't mean that you're unstable or even dangerous like you might be being called. It means that your nervous system and your hormones are swinging between fight and shutdown in response to an impossible situation.

if you're recognizing yourself in this, please hear this, you guys, these symptoms do not mean that you're weak or that you love your kids any less These symptoms are what a human body does under long-term relational stress. So what do you do with all this? First, I want you to, um, use this information to change the way that you talk to yourself. You guys, I could have done so much here, but it's already such a long episode. I really could have gotten into the, like the nooks and crannies of like when estrogen is low and progesterone is high, or like the mi the opposite, what happens and what you'll see the cues.

I could have done that, but I would've made this episode super long. If you want me to do an episode like that, I do know from personal experience at least the woman's side of things. If you want more on this, just either shoot me an email or actually even better if you're on Spotify, or YouTube, you can just type in a comment saying more on hormones.

Okay. That you would like more on hormones, and I will absolutely do another episode on this. I think this was a good introduction. Okay. Anyway, um, so I just wanna be able to have you guys use this. I want you to use this for yourself as information, as data so that you can change the way that you talk with yourself, okay?

Instead of, I'm lazy, I'm weak, I'm dramatic. I want you to practice. My body has been through a war, and I don't want you to use that against yourself. I want you to use it for you to support you moving forward, to advocate for yourself in the most effective way. Okay? my stress system and my hormones have been under siege.

No wonder I feel this way. It makes sense that I feel this way. Always start all of this. With some understanding and compassion for where you currently are. The beating yourself up does not ever teach you a lesson. It only actually, they, there's several studies on this, about how negative self-talk, though people think that they will learn a lesson when they speak to themselves in a very authoritative, punitive way, so that they remember how they screwed up before it actually does the opposite.

It creates more shame, which shame wants to stay hidden, which makes you want to deny whatever thing you're telling yourself you've done wrong, and then in the end, you either do the thing again or it doesn't get addressed and it ends up compounding all of your issues. The reason I'm saying that, it's just have some compassion for yourself.

There's a reason why, you're feeling the way that you're feeling, and it's not just because of some mental or emotional like, um, emotional childhood that you're in, it's a combination of everything together, alienation, the predicament that we're in with alienation is that it attacks the very systems that we need, to use to effectively advocate for ourselves and move us like out of it, process through, do you see what I'm saying?

Like, the very, tools, inner tools that we need to,

survive relational crises or whatever it is. Those tools are taken offline. Just by the nature of this phenomenon or this predicament, this type of abuse that we're in. And so in order, it's your job if you want to start ag advocating effectively for yourself. It's your job to understand why that's happening.

And then one by one, bring those systems back online, , with staying power so that you're not burning yourself out. I hope I'm making sense here. It's like almost like we've been handicapped one limb at a time. And so now that you know that this is where I say personal responsibility comes in to bring those limbs or those systems back on one by one.

And so it's not, it isn't just about mind management, it's about learning. How to advocate for yourself in each of the ways, and I'm gonna go into that now, but it's a holistic, approach, is what I'm saying. It's not just taking meds like, um, SSRIs or something to suppress the moods or, depression or whatever it is.

It's not just about that, though. Those, those tools, those meds can be very effective and really, really helpful. Save a lot of lives, um, for a short period of time. or for however long you're prescribed the medications. It's, it's fine, but I think that it's not just medication that'll work and it's not just thought management.

That'll work. It's everything combined, right. Getting with your doctors and what have you. Okay.

Where was I in my notes? No wonder I feel this way. . Having compassion for ourself. It's not gonna magically fix anything, but it removes a layer of shame that makes everything harder. So second, you wanna start getting curious about these patterns.

Instead of judging individual days, which is what I used to do, I used to just judge the symptoms for what they were day by day. I never kept track of anything, which made it really difficult and sort of chaotic. , So if you're a woman, you might track a couple of months. Where am I in my cycle? Depending on your age, right?

Where am I in my cycle? How is my mood? Is it anxious? Is it flat? Is it irritable? Okay, where are you? How is your pain? Today is another, um, question you could ask yourself, like just a repeated set of questions. It would be, where am I in my cycle? How is my mood? And just provide four different moods so that you could just quickly answer those.

You could also do this, I think iPhone, apple products have something built in. I think maybe it's in the mindfulness or the health app, something like that. But you could also, there's lots of apps that can support this. Um, how's my pain today? How's my sleep, my libido, my energy? I have, let me go back on on this.

I have only recently, because I'm A DHD and I just never really gave a shit about doing any of this stuff, but that also proved to be obviously ineffective. And because I was just day to day looking at symptoms and wondering why am I feeling like this today? And not adding it all together. I started making spreadsheets for this, like about pain levels and um, mood and what have you, so that I could track it.

And it's really freaking helpful. You guys. I also started doing this back, um. At the end of all of the stuff that was going on with logging, this is off topic, but also on topic with logging patterns of behavior with the custody situation. Making spreadsheets really, really helps to organize your thoughts around everything that's going on and helps you to keep everything in a chronological order.

Okay? Now, over time you might see that certain days or phases are just harder, more pain, more hopelessness, more reactivity. That doesn't mean that you can't do anything in those windows, right? But it does mean that you can offer yourself more compassion and where possible, not schedule the hardest tasks in those periods of time.

Okay? Many of you women are probably already doing this to some extent. I just never did because of my trauma, unhealed trauma and A DHD for a long time, you know, until, you know, recent years. Okay. So if you're a guy, if you're to my dad's out there, you might pay attention to how's your energy and motivation?

How is it changing week to week? Okay. Day to day, week to week, something like that. You could just have either a checklist. Guys are usually more wanting something more straight and direct. Either a checklist of like good, bad, high, low, whatever. What was your sleep like? I have a sleep app that I track everything in.

It's really helpful. what's happening with your libido and with your mood, and are they correlating, are they not? , If you've noticed a long-term pattern of low energy, low drive, low libido, and feeling completely flat, that's a cue to talk to a doctor who actually understands hormones. Not just someone who will write a quick antidepressant prescription and move on.

, That's the , third piece of this is advocating for full body care medications for anxiety and depression can be super helpful. And sometimes lifesaving for real. There's absolutely no shame in taking any medication you're prescribed.

Okay? But if you're living with the kind of chronic stress that you and I have been talking about here in this episode and all the episodes, it's also reasonable to ask, can we check to your doctor? Can we check my hormones? Like for women, what are my estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and maybe even thyroid.

I would not even say, maybe even. Absolutely. Periodically check your thyroid and other markers. Where are they sitting at at least, I mean, I would say once every six months, but once a year. It's up to you. for men, where is my testosterone at? You know, what's my levels and what about estradiol and other basic labs.

. You deserve pres providers who don't just see anxious or depressed or tired or whiny, complaining, getting gaslit, for the fact that you have these symptoms. Um, I don't mean to single or leave you guys out of this, but it, this is a typical thing for women to go through. I know, um, at the doctor's little gaslighting around that so you deserve providers who don't just see anxious, depressed, or tired, but who ask what chronic relational trauma has done to your whole system. If the first person that you ask, this is super important to you guys because I had a really rough time when I moved here, finding somebody that was actually listening.

So if the first person that you ask dismisses you, that doesn't mean that you're wrong to ask. It just might mean that you need to find a different provider, do whatever you can. It's your body. It's not, it is their responsibility. But most importantly, it's your responsibility to advocate for yourself medically, uh, emotionally, all the things.

So if they don't give you the option to check your levels to do something about it, if you don't feel like you're being listened to, then a hundred percent go find somebody else. Finally, and this might be the most important part, is use this understanding to , I've already talked about this, to soften how you judge your reactions in the middle of alienation.

On the days where everything feels unbearable, instead of this is the truth about me and my life, because that's what will happen when we're low estrogen or our levels are fluctuating, is that, oh, this is the story. This is how it's gonna be for the rest of my life. This is, I see this all the time, but really, you know that it's not only fluctuating sex hormones, but it's also in combination with your fluctuating stress hormones.

Or maybe even just really high stress hormones right now. So it's really screwing with your whole, ability to feel even keeled. Think even keeled. You can just know that it might not come, on default right away. instead of just saying, this is the truth about me, this is forever gonna be my life, try saying to yourself, this might be a high stress.

Low hormone day or fluctuating hormone day. The facts of my care are the same, but my body's capacity just is lower today. So allow that space for you to have those days or those moments, it makes sense that you would, it doesn't mean that it needs to be an excuse for you. It could just be, uh, your own explanation for why things feel more intense or more, um, distant.

You know what I'm saying? More removed for you right now. It doesn't have to mean that it's gonna be like this forever because it doesn't have to be. That's for damn sure. That's another thing that really like makes me sad when I see parents going the defeat route and staying with that because they're believing what their brain and their systems are offering to them.

Maybe what other people are offering to them. Instead of allowing for making space for your executive functions to come back online by asking the best questions, the most thought provoking, questions you can ask. Actively loving yourself. I'm getting tired now. It's been, maybe it's a high progesterone day for me, actually.

I think, I think I accidentally took two progesterone pills last night. Oh, that's the other thing I was gonna say. , Just before I finish this last couple paragraphs here, is that I don't know if I've shared this with you before, but I am a big each their own, you know, you talk with your provider, but it, I am a big advocate for HRT, huge advocate for HRTI changed my life when I began hormone replacement therapy.

It literally turned my life around and gave my life back. So I just want to encourage you that. If you are of still of childbearing age, and you, and you also are noticing things, related to anything that I shared today, and you have not been to your doctor to talk about it because you're in your mind, you're thinking that you're too young or it's too much you know, like, oh, maybe I'm just being dramatic or whatever.

Please listen to you and to what I just have shared with you today and just go speak to your doctor about it. It doesn't mean, and I'm not trying to push anything on anybody, but why not check out? I mean, I think in any area you should always , be aware of all of the options that are available to you and check each one of those out to see if they fit for you.

But I will say that. That hormone replacement therapy at one point got a bad rap, especially for women because they were talking about how that it could create blood clots in breast cancer and what have you. And yes, it, well, it's kind of proved to not be true now, but I'm not gonna get into a whole discussion about that now.

You'll look it up, research all of this, but it's not that narrative is, is anymore. Make sure that the publications that you're reading up on the research that you do is very recent. Because hormone replacement therapy has proven to be much safer than what they originally or started to believe it was.

Okay, now I'm getting all wordy 'cause I'm tired. So just what I'm saying is, is just because you may not be at perimenopause age, which actually like I said, could start in your mid thirties. It could last for up to 10 years. it doesn't matter if you're noticing these symptoms, then go just talk with somebody about it because it can change your life.

And sometimes it's not that you're on all of the hormones, which I am, by the way. And it, it's been amazing, and has reduced my foggy brain and the exhaustion, except for when I take two progesterone pills like I did last night. But it really has changed the way that I function. I a hundred percent. And I didn't mention too that testosterone, well, maybe I did for women.

I'm on that too. And it, really did help along with some other therapies that I do, but really helped with my brain fogginess. So again, I'm not promoting, I'm not trying to push that on you, but I just will say that. There are solutions out there that really, truly work. And I know that when I was in the middle of it before, like in the depths of my depression, I really, it felt hopeless to me.

I felt like I was washed up, like my life was over and there was no nothing to look forward to. And a lot of that was due to what I'm talking about today. And so just know that that doesn't have to be so, and there's much more life to live. I don't care how old you are. And if I, the way I think about it is, you may as well do that feeling the best and creating the best experience for yourself while you are here on this earth, you know?

And so, um, yeah, I'll leave it at that. So,

everything I'm talking about this perspective that I'm offering to you guys, it's not gonna change the cohorts. It's not gonna change your ex or even your children's behavior. Right? Well, I mean, it could actually, um, help to shift your children's behavior. I will say that, and maybe your ex too. But in the big scheme of things, it's not gonna magically fix everything.

You're not waving a magic wand, but it changes how alone you feel inside your own skin. It changes how supported you feel. I should word that, that way. Okay. It gives you a way to say, nothing is wrong with me for feeling this way. Not only that, my body is telling the truth about how hard this has been.

And from that place, you can start to make small, kind choices resting when you can, asking for help, timing, hunger, hard conversations for more resource days. and slowly, , gently rebuilding trust with your own body, Advocating for yourself as far as either, looking into replacement therapy, if that's something that you're interested in.

Not everybody chooses that, and that is okay too. Um, but then also all of the other just holistic approach that so that you're utilizing all the tools that are made available to you that you choose. Okay? But at least make yourself aware of everything that you could be available to you, So as I always say, you are not weak, you're not crazy, you're not dramatic, you're not being dramatic.

You're not. Low energy forever. If you don't wanna be. You're a human whose stress system, your hormones and your heart have been living inside of a war. Of course you feel it.

Now the work is to honor that reality and to get the support that you need and that you deserve. And stop confusing your body's survival strategies with your worth as a parent or a person. Alright, you guys that, so that was an hour and a half long. I gotta go cut some stuff out.

So you guys have a lovely week, and like I said too, if you want to hear more about this, just comment either on Spotify or YouTube with, you know, more hormone information, please. Hormone and alienation information, please. Okay. All right. Love you all. I'll talk with you next week.