…and why has it gotten worse with menopause?
I’ve always had a bad memory (which is a self-fulfilling statement in itself!) and so I’ve been fascinated with what affects brain function and the ability to remember, especially in the context of telling a really good story.
Can you relate to any of these that I experienced?
- Struggling to find that word to finish my sentence and then being afraid to speak up because I might look like a dumb idiot
- Trying to remember something that happened in the last minute/hour/week and getting terribly embarrassed because I had to ask someone
- Worrying I might have early dementia
- Getting super frustrated with myself because of my irritating slow brain function
…and so on…
You get the picture!
What bothered me too was that it affected my confidence.
And then menopause hit and I found my brain function worsened!
I could forget what I’d said at the beginning of a sentence by the time I got to the end of the sentence!!!
What has my poor memory taught me?
With all this struggle there has to be a silver lining… right?
Yes, due to my struggles, I have informally researched memory now for over 20 years…
Here is a quick summary of what I have learned (and we’ll discuss it more in upcoming webinars and programs)
- We need to recognise underlying physical causes of poor brain function and memory eg:
- Brain fog
- Infections like candida
- Gut inflammation
- Nutritional deficiencies
- Poorly regulated blood sugars
- Poor thyroid function
- EMF “poisoning”
- Many others
- We need to recognise underlying emotional causes of poor brain function and memory:
- Stress
- Anxiety
- Grief
- Feeling unsafe, unimportant, invisible, unworthy
- Trauma
- We need to distinguish between “pathological” poor memory or “personality” poor memory. These are my definitions, not scientifically researched categories, but the way I understand it…
- Pathological means there is an underlying health condition that when treated, restores the memory back to normal
- Personality means the person:
- Has not been trained in any memory techniques
- Is in their head, strategising, planning or studying too much
- Is not present
- Is not connected with nature &/or the-God-of-their-choice
- Finally, we need to recognise the stage of life a person is in, particularly women ie:
- The brain “rewires” at puberty, pregnancy and peri-menopause
- Midlife “crisis” changes everything
- The brain’s energy source changes to ketones during midlife
- Different hormones give rise to different brain function at menopause
- And there’s a lot more of this stuff popping up in the literature!
- BTW, this is all normal!
What did I do to improve my memory then?
Firstly, approach it with love, patience and kindness. Curiosity is way better than judgement when it comes to finding your memory. This, I had to learn!
Next, over the years, I gradually got healthier, cut down the alcohol, sugar, caffeine and upped my micronutrients, fats and protein. Getting my diet right, really helped.
Finally, I discovered The Art of Feminine Presence techniques and this has made the biggest difference. It’s seems the root of my poor memory was in fact low self-esteem. I spent more time in my mind (future or past) than in my body (present) so I missed so many things.
I’m have rebuilt my self-worth and self-confidence and two things have happened – my memory is better and I can laugh at myself when it isn’t!
I also discovered I had a place in the world, a purpose to fulfil and that I was important.
What’s next?
My next adventure around memory is to do some Brain Gym and discipline myself to cultivate some memory techniques.
I really, really want to be able to tell a good story and apparently, it’s possible to have a genius memory if you just put in the practice.
Maybe writing these blog posts is helping with that!
