When Life Knocks You Down

There comes a moment in life, especially for the menopausal women …where everything you thought was stable… isn’t. Your relationship with yourself shifts as your body changes. Your biological evolution doesn’t pause there…your identity, you’ve invested a lifetime building, no longer fits.

Suddenly… you’re not just navigating life — you’re surviving it. The ebb and flow of declining oestrogen often feels brutal during the initial phases.

So what do you do when life (aka hormonal fluctuation) knocks you down?

Resilience isn’t about bouncing back quickly and continuing the race on the mouse wheel. It’s about staying present long enough to rebuild who you are becoming intentionally.

And here’s what most women don’t realise —honey, your ability to cope is not just emotional… it’s physiological.

Especially for queenagers — women moving through perimenopause and menopause — declining oestrogen directly impacts a queen’s:

• Mood stability — been feeling fiery lately, or snapping at those you love?
• Stress tolerance – has your patience has taken a vacation to Fiji?
• Sleep quality — poor or interrupted sleep, especially with hot sweats or racing heart?
• Nervous system regulation — feeling tired but wired?

So if you’ve been feeling less resilient than you used to… it’s not just in your head. It’s in your biology.

Resilience gets talked about a lot, but psychology and spirituality are actually pointing to two different — yet complementary — ways of understanding it.

In the field of Psychology, resilience is typically defined as: “The capacity to adapt successfully to adversity, stress, or trauma.”

It’s not just “bouncing back.” Modern research (especially within Positive Psychology) recognises that having resilience as a dynamic process that you create over time. Resilience is not a fixed trait, and it’s not something you are born with. This means that your resilience:

• Can change over time
• Is influenced by biology, environment, and behaviour (both environmental and inherited)
• Involves both recovery and growth

Let’s dig a little deeper …

Before I throw you strategies to boost your resilience, let’s identify the key psychological components that are impacted when your resilience shifts. Oestrogen plays a massive role physically, mentally and emotionally.

As your oestrogen levels begin to decline the following are affected:

• Emotional Regulation — Your ability to experience stress without becoming overwhelmed.
• Cognitive Flexibility — remain mentally clear to reframing challenges rather than deep diving into them and getting stuck
• Social Connection — being able to emotionally build or maintain support systems to significantly buffer stress
• Biological Capacity — maintaining a regulated nervous system, getting quality sleep, and balancing hormones all play a role.

So from a psychological lens, when your biology shifts and down-regulates estrogen, your baseline resilience capacity will temporarily shift too. Until there those neuro-biological programs have been rewritten, you’re in a liminal space. The change isn’t permanent, but it does mean your resilience will require more intentional support.

Here Are Five Strategies To Rebuild Resilience After Tough Times

1. Allow Yourself To Feel, Don’t Suppress

Hey Queen, when was the last time you gifted yourself permission to simply feel what you’re feeling, and then let it go? When you hang onto emotional baggage, your body has to store it. The reality is if you can process your emotions, you can then release them.

2. Regulate Before You Reflect

Before you rush to analyse the tough moment in time, be sure to regulate your nervous sytem firt. When we are stressed, our ability to neurologically ‘see’ our reality is limited. This is because your brain is rapidly in search of the sabre tooth tiger, the threat.

When you return to a parasympathetic state of rest and digest, you will naturally have more clarity and use different parts of your brain to process how the world is functioning.

3. Simplify Your Life

It sounds obvious doesn’t it? But your mirror neurons will mimick the energy of the space around you. Your resilience will grow in clean space that is not clogged or chaotic.

4. Rebuild Self-Trust

So often I work with clients and remind them of the importance of self care. Do yourself a little favour, and make a daily commitment to yourself. Keep those small promises to yourself daily. Make it super simple like pausing when you feel the tough times hit you and just take a slow deep breath.

5. Support Your Biology

You can’t underestimate the power of a good night’s sleep. Lubricate all your neural pathways with good hydration. Nourish your energy levels with a varied, nutritious diet. Utilise somatic breathwork to shake your sillies out — I’m talking about garbage thoughts. Your body will express gratitude for not having to hold big feelings.

Nourishment of your gut and your nervous system should be non-negotiable.

Conclusion

Queen, you are not broken. Your perimenopause / menopause phase is that time of your life when you know that you are being rebuilt. You are clearing out your response to the tough times you’ve encountered in your life.

So please remember this, that sometimes what feels like a breakdown is actually your becoming.