I really didn’t expect to find anything and could hardly believe all the websites that came up—websites where other women were writing about their experiences with middle- of- the- night panic, their trips to the emergency room, and the various medications they needed to get through the night.  Since I’d been able to manage my rather intense struggles with PMS in my younger years, I figured I’d be able to manage my perimenopausal symptoms just as well.  Everything would be just fine, wouldn’t it?  

Over the next few days, the shaking not only continued but worsened, leaving me trembling 24 hours a day.  Soon, a whole host of other symptoms began to appear—unmanageable anxiety, little to no sleep, panic attacks, hot flashes, cold flashes, a racing pulse, skyrocketing blood pressure.  Needless to say, I was terrified.  Not knowing what was causing all these symptoms, I began running from doctor to doctor, from ER to ER, desperate to find someone who could help me.  Knowing I wasn’t thinking clearly, I did ask a few of these doctors to admit me to a psychiatric facility, but each time I asked, the doctors refused. 

Still thinking my symptoms might be related to perimenopause, I also tried pleading my case for bio-identical hormones, but these requests were also denied.  With no diagnosis and no help in sight, I decided to go back online and start searching for my own answers.  Through my frantic research and worsening emotional state, I concluded that I had contracted some dreadful disease and that I was dying. I told my sons I was dying.  I told my husband I was dying.  I told some of the teachers at my sons’ school that I was dying.  I even wrote my obituary and an epitaph for when the time came. 

Growing more and more frantic each day, about three months into this crisis I made an appointment with a neurologist to see if there was anything he could do to help me.  As soon as I finished telling him about my symptoms, the first thing he asked me was, “Were you ever molested?”  I was stunned.  How could he possibly know?  The neurologist went on to explain that he has a lot of women coming into his office “like this” (with symptoms like mine) who were molested.  

The neurologist then said he’d run an EEG, just to show me that my brain was perfectly normal.  Turns out that I had slowing brain waves—wave after wave of severe slowing.  Even the neurologist was shocked by what he saw.  Although he wasn’t able to offer a diagnosis, he did prescribe a certain medication, but I refused to take it since one of the side effects was thoughts of suicide and, well, at that point, I was already having more than enough of those. 

A week later, still battling thoughts of suicide, I was finally admitted to a psychiatric hospital.  Not even 24 hours into my stay I learned that I wasn’t the only woman on my ward who had experienced childhood trauma and neither was I the only woman there struggling with issues related to perimenopause.   After speaking with some of these other women, I began to wonder if maybe my symptoms weren’t due to any sort of fatal disease but were in some way related to my history of abuse and to the hormonal changes of perimenopause.  One of the nurses on my ward did mention a relative who’d experienced a menopausal psychosis.  I thought maybe that was what I was experiencing as well. 

One of the symptoms that made me believe I had some sort of psychosis was that I wasn’t able to cry. 

Ever since the beginning of my crisis, it seemed that the only emotion I could access was fear.  Then, one morning, while reading something from my journal to my hospital therapist, it finally happened.  The tears began to fall!  Although I was still shaking and could still barely think straight, somehow, in that moment I felt a sliver of hope. 

Armed with this bit of hope, as soon as I was released from the hospital, I started immersing myself in every mind/ body healing practice I could fit into my budget and schedule.  I already had a daily yoga and journaling practice, so I started going to talk therapy and group therapy, massage therapy, hypnotherapy, movement therapy—all with the hope of accessing and releasing more of the emotions that were driving my symptoms. 

Although it took some time and a whole lot of tears, much to my surprise and relief, little by little it worked!  With each emotion I released and with each episode of trauma I remembered, I began to feel more grounded and more like myself.  Soon, I was able to go off all four of the psychotropic medications I’d been prescribed while in the hospital as well as the bio-identical hormones I’d finally started taking.  

Inspired by the positive effect mind/body practices were having on my healing, I decided to become certified in hypnotherapy.  After I told the hypnosis instructor about my psychosis—about the shaking, the sleeplessness, and the psychiatric hospital—without any hesitation he said, “That sounds like a Spiritual Emergency!”  Having no idea what a Spiritual Emergency was, as soon as I got home, I bought a few books and started to do some research. 

I quickly learned that a Spiritual Emergency is a crisis of personal growth and transformation—a sort of healing crisis— and that there are many different types of spiritual emergencies.  Based on what I read, it seemed that the type of Spiritual Emergency I experienced was something known in ancient Indian Philosophy as a Kundalini Crisis. 

A Kundalini Crisis is an energy- based mind/body healing crisis that can be triggered by many life events, including the hormonal fluctuations of perimenopause.  Some of the symptoms of this type of Spiritual Emergency include intense shaking, feelings of heat and cold, electric vibrations, and insomnia. 

I was so in awe of everything that happened to me and how I was able to heal that I went on to earn an MA degree in Transpersonal Psychology with a focus on Spiritual Mentoring and Feminine Spirituality.  My first course in this program was Spiritual Crisis and my last course was writing a memoir about my experience as my Culminating Project. 

Today, there are many books and online articles that describe how a history of childhood trauma can make menopausal symptoms much more intense and frightening.  Many women’s health experts believe this is due to the emotions and energies of past traumas that need to be acknowledged, processed, and released.  One book that I found to be especially helpful in presenting the healing aspects of perimenopause is The Wisdom of Menopause by Dr. Christiane Northrup.  In her book, Dr. Northrup discusses how the fluctuating hormones of menopause work to set the stage for this time of profound healing.  

There really are no words that can express how terrifying this type of perimenopausal crisis can be, especially for women like me who are used to having everything under control.  I had carried my trauma so well for so many decades.  I earned college degrees and held full time jobs.  I got married and had children.  But when perimenopause came, I simply could not carry the trauma any longer.  My mind, body, and spirit would not allow it.  So, in a way, I really was dying.  The old me was dying to make room for the new me—the older, wiser me who would finally have the courage to speak about my abuse, to let go of the pain I was carrying, and heal.    

It’s important to keep in mind that what happened to me is not the experience of all midlife women—only 15- 20%.  But with more than two million women entering perimenopause each year that means 300,000 to 400,000 each year are likely to experience symptoms so severe that they can’t help but fear that they’re either dying or losing their minds.  Hopefully, with information about Spiritual Crisis making its way into various psychiatric manuals such as the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), we will begin to see some changes in how menopause and trauma-related crises are treated within the medical and psychiatric communities.  My hope in writing and speaking about my experience with perimenopause and trauma is to offer insights, support, and hope to women who are experiencing what may appear to be a “menopausal psychosis” but is actually a very challenging and yet liberating and empowering call to healing. 

Wishing all of us much hope and wholeness on our healing journeys.

Many blessings,

Lynda Wisdo, MA, CYT

Grof, Christina and Stanislav Grof, MD. Eds. Spiritual Emergency. New York: Penguin     

   Putnam. 1989. Print. 

Northrup, Christiane, MD. The Wisdom of Menopause, Creating Physical and Emotional 

   Health During the Change.  New York: Bantam Dell.  2001. Print.

Barbach, Lonnie, PhD. The Pause, Positive Approaches to Perimenopause and Menopause.    2^nd. New York: Penguin Putnam. 1993. Print.

“How Menopause, PTSD and Complex PTSD Interconnect.” https://www.cptsdrelief.co.uk/how-menopause-ptsd-complex-ptsd-interconnect/

October 17, 2024. Web. 23 May 2026.

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer

I can trace this belief all the way back to my childhood when I first began to believe that the rays pouring out from behind the clouds were the light of God (or Source or Universal Energy).  Must have been an idea I got from a painting or photograph.  Still, it’s an idea that has stuck in my mind for decades and stays with me even today as I watch the sunset outside my window and am, as always, filled with awe.

I can remember one day in particular from my childhood, a day when I was about six- years old, when my spirituality really began to take hold.  After escaping from some episode of domestic trauma that was going on inside my house, I ran outside into the front yard, looked up at the sky, and saw a jet way up at the top of all of that blue.  Instantly, I felt that if there could be something so incredible, something so very far away from me and all my family turmoil, I could hold on to that faraway place and keep a part of my soul safe there (early threads of dissociation, I suppose).  Ever since that day, I’ve felt that if I could just see a piece of the sky or the summit of some mountain off in the distance, or even a turkey vulture in flight, I could make it…that I could somehow be okay. 

Twenty-one years ago, however, right smack in the middle of an intense “psycho-spiritual crisis,” I was about as far from okay as I could possibly be.

It was during the summer of 2005 at the beginning of perimenopause (the eight or so years before the menstrual cycles cease) that, all of a sudden, all of my coping mechanisms began to collapse, both around me and within me.  As my mind and my body suddenly began releasing much of the terror, grief, and shame I’d been holding onto related to my abuse, I found myself plummeting into the most terrifying and yet liberating experience of my life—an experience I never could have survived without my spirituality.

All day and all night my hands and my body shook.  My pulse, usually around 65 beats per minute, began racing somewhere around 100, and my blood pressure, normally around 110/65, had begun churning out readings as high as 178/100.  I couldn’t eat.  I couldn’t sleep.  It took all the concentration I could muster to perform even the simplest of tasks, things like making my sons’ lunch and doing the laundry.  I was afraid to take a shower, afraid to be alone, and terrified that I would take my own life. 

Even with all of this chaos and fear swirling around inside me, I held fast to my spirituality and continued to pray—to God, yes, but also to the inner and outer healing guides (angels, if you will), who I could sense were trying to help me, adding a special prayer for the life I so feared I was losing.

It took some time and a brief stay in an acute care psychiatric hospital for me to come to accept the fact that I was not suffering from any sort fatal brain disease but that it was the aftereffects of my long repressed childhood abuse that was causing all of my midlife physical and emotional upheaval—abuse that I was only just beginning to remember.  And so, desperate to heal my mind and body, once I left the hospital, with the help of talk and hypnotherapy, massage, movement and group therapy, I began my long-awaited journey toward integration, healing, and wholeness.

As many of you who are healing from similar abuse-related traumas know, this journey has not been an easy one.  There are many moments, so many moments when returning memories and long hidden feelings of grief, shame, and fear still threaten to steal away my newly found feelings of safety and sanity. 

While I have many tools to help me through these moments now, I remain amazed by how often simply being able to admit to myself  and to my inner and outer healing guides that I am afraid has brought me comfort, reassurance, and the blessed ability to move forward with my day.  Growing up in an abusive family, I was not allowed to give voice to feelings of shame, grief, or fear and so I internalized these emotions, turning them over the years into episodes of anorexia, bulimia, self-inflicted violence, anxiety, panic, and tendencies toward dissociation. 

Today I can see that it is only by embracing and ultimately releasing these long-repressed emotions and energies that I have been able to heal my mind, body, and spirit, one memory at a time, one tear at a time.

I think many of our difficulties with spirituality arise from our long-held belief that it is something that exists outside of ourselves, something unreachable and angry that we need to fear, much like the perpetrators who wounded us as children.  Through my studies of hypnosis, dream work, and the subconscious mind, however, I have come to believe that our spirituality or “higher power” is something that exists deep within each one of us and that it exists simply as the abundance of memory, wisdom, and faith that each of us needs to reclaim our lives and heal.  It is there whether we are able to believe in it or not, and it is there whether we feel we are able to access its power or not.

So, if you’re feeling so inclined, why not take a moment or two to access this inner spiritual power.  Close your eyes or, if you prefer, just lower your gaze toward the floor.  Take a deep breath and turn your attention inward.  Notice what you’re feeling.  No need to judge or try to change these feelings, just notice them.  Take another deep breath and then say these words whether you believe them or not…even if, or rather especially if it makes you cry—

• “I am taking back my power!”
• Say it again.  Louder.
• “I am taking back my power!”
• Say it again, even louder.
• “I am taking back my power!”

Say these words again, and again.  Say them every day if you need to and every night.  Say them until you truly believe with all your heart and soul that you really do have the right and the ability to reclaim the power that was stolen from you—to reclaim your life—and heal.

Wishing all of us much hope and wholeness on our healing journeys.

Many blessings,

Lynda Wisdo, MA, CYT

Another version of this post was first published in Many Voices Press Newsletter; October 2008 edition

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer