How to Deal with Difficult People in Midlife

Are you dealing with a difficult person in your life? It may be a co-worker who is always getting in your face, a mother-in-law who loves to give you her advice, a rude neighbour, an unreasonable boss, or even a grumpy or defiant child or teenager. Midlife often brings greater self-awareness, but this time of transition can also bring more challenging relationships through things like changing family structures, marital separation, children becoming adults, and hormonal shifts reducing tolerance levels. Dealing with difficult people in midlife can lead to feelings of anxiety, stress, anger, frustration and of being trapped in a situation you do not want to be in. It can also be a big drain on your energy. Learning how to deal with difficult people isn't about changing their behaviour; it's about strengthening your own emotional resilience, setting healthy boundaries, and responding with confidence instead of reacting from stress or frustration. In this guide, you'll discover five practical strategies to help you manage difficult people in midlife, protect your energy, communicate more effectively, and create healthier, more peaceful relationships while continuing your own journey of personal growth.

(if your would prefer to listen to the podcast version of this article you can listen on YouTube here)

Two Mindset Shifts Before You Deal with Difficult People

Before we get into talking about specific strategies, there are two key underlying principles to any successful interpersonal interactions:

1. Focus on What You Can Control: You can only control your own thoughts, feelings and behaviour, and you are responsible for your own thoughts, feelings and behaviour.

2. Remember That Everyone Can Be Difficult Sometimes (yes, even “really nice” people)

Why You Can't Change Other People's Behaviour

As soon as you start trying to control other people’s behaviour, then you are in trouble. It can be done through manipulation or force, but that is not really ethical, usually not overly effective, and it takes a lot of energy on your part to maintain the control. Most people don’t like being controlled or told what to do and will rebel against it in some way, or only do what they are told when someone else is putting pressure on them. Even asking a question like “why are they doing this to me?” is putting your focus and energy on something you cannot answer or control.

“Control the knobs on your side of the wall.”

- Pastor Daniel Fusco

You may think that it is the other person who is the problem and it is them that needs to change, but you may be surprised at how much effect it can have when you focus on your own thoughts, feeling and behaviour - the things you can control.

Compassion Doesn't Mean Accepting Poor Behaviour

As we reflect on our own behaviour, we can also note that sometimes we can be difficult to deal with too, usually without meaning to be. Ask any happily married couple and they will be able to name at least one habit or personality trait of their beloved that annoys or frustrates them. Our difficult traits don’t necessarily make us difficult people. Often, the that triggers you about someone else is more to do with your likes, dislikes and wiring than it is about them. In the same way, someone exhibiting difficult behaviour may not be directing it personally at you - they could just be feeling stressed or frustrated about something else, or be tired, or feeling unwell. We all get grumpy and snap at people sometimes. Be open to trying to see why they may be behaving this way, and if they are being difficult because they are going through something demanding, then try and extend compassion to them while maintaining boundaries to protect yourself mentally, emotionally and physically. It is important to note that a person’s ‘why’ is a reason, not an excuse. You can understand why a person is doing something, but that does not mean that what they are doing is okay. The main purpose of being understanding is to help you to manage your response, rather than being drawn into an emotional reaction to someone else’s issues.

Look at the other person through a lens of compassion and approach the situation as a puzzle to be solved rather than a threat to defend yourself against. Remember that everyone is doing the best they can from where they are and that not everything is about you. What is this person really trying to gain? What are they trying to avoid? Chances are, if a person is acting unreasonably, they are likely feeling some sort of vulnerability or fear. Consider what may be going on for them, but remember that we don’t know what another person is really thinking and feeling unless they tell us. If you feel able to, then maybe you could ask them about what is going on for them, and what they are intending or wanting for themselves.

How Your Own Reactions Shape Difficult Relationships

Reflecting on our own behaviour also means being honest and fair about the role that we are playing in our interactions with people. Are you being difficult in some way? Are you asking more of them than they are capable of? Do you have expectations that you have not clearly stated to them? Are you tired or stressed? Are you responding in an abrupt or angry way and escalating things? Are you taking everything personally and beating yourself up for things that are not your responsibility? It can be uncomfortable to take responsibility for your own behaviour in this way, but it is necessary if you want to create meaningful and lasting change.

With this foundational understanding established, that you need to come from a place of focusing on the knobs on your side of the wall and extend curiosity and compassion to the other person, let me give you five specific strategies for dealing with difficult people in midlife.

5 Practical Strategies for Dealing with Difficult People in Midlife

Strategy 1: Identify Your Emotional Triggers

“The negative emotion you feel is not about what they’re doing,

it’s about your perspective of what they are doing.”

– Abraham Hicks

Why Certain People Trigger Strong Emotions

What we see or perceive in others is a projection of our own beliefs, judgements, values and experiences. In Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) this is referred to as “perception is projection”. If you find that someone else’s behaviour ‘pushes your buttons’ and stimulates a strong emotional response in you, then it is likely that their behavior is somehow a projection of attributes you possess which you wish you didn’t, or they represent something you fear, or they represent something you will not allow yourself to be or have.

This is not a judgment of you; it is a gift.

It is information that can help you become free.

When you are in a place of blame and seeing things outside of you as the source of your negative experience, then you are largely powerless because it is very difficult to change other people and all the circumstances of our lives. When you accept that how you feel is the result of how you are thinking about a certain person or condition (your perspective), then you empower yourself, because you have full control over what you choose to think and the meaning you choose to give something.

Questions to Help You Understand Your Triggers

These reflection questions may help you to clarify any triggers that are operating subconsciously for you with regards to someone you find challenging:

What emotion is being triggered in me?

In what ways does this person represent something I am afraid of?

In what ways does this person represent something I want?

What does my response to this person show me about parts of myself that are asking to be accepted and loved by me?

Ask these questions with an attitude of curiosity and pondering and let go of any judgement towards yourself. Also, ask them and allow space for the answers to come. It is not likely that insight will come straight away. Sometimes when I ask these types of enquiry questions in a state of meditation, I do receive a direct intuitive response. More often however, the answer will come later in a more indirect way. Someone may say something to me that clicks as the answer, or I may be drawn to a particular article, video or book that gives me information that helps me. At times I will have an experience that enables me to understand something more clearly.

Strategy 2: Look for the Positive Instead of the Problem

Why Your Focus Changes Your Experience

This strategy involves actively looking for positive aspects about the difficult person that you can begin to appreciate. I understand that it may seem very challenging to find positive things about a person who you find vexing and may strongly dislike. It may also sound a bit like a “just be nice” platitude, but it is not about avoiding the issues. This isn’t about pretending everything is okay. It’s about reclaiming your focus. This strategy taps into your power to change your world by shifting your focus. Whatever you choose to focus on is what will become dominant in your mind and what the reticular activating system (your incoming information filter) in your brain will give you more evidence of. If you continue to turn your focus to what you do like, then that will begin to grow. As Tony Robbins says, “where focus goes, energy flows.” This will take time and practice, especially if you have been focusing in on what you don’t like for a while and that has a lot of momentum in terms of what you have been thinking and talking about. However, maybe you could recognize that there are qualities in the person that are worth knowing. Or, you could start to make a list of things you do like even just a little about them. As you focus on trying to find positive aspects about the other person, you will begin to notice them more readily.

The Science Behind Emotional Contagion

There is another thing that will likely start happening. Focusing on seeing the positive qualities of the other person, will draw out more of those aspects from the other person. This is similar to the parenting and teaching concept of praising positive behavior in children to encourage more of it. There is also an energy aspect to this. Your brain and even more so your heart emits an electromagnetic energy field that is largely determined by your thoughts and feelings. The tone of your energy field will activate similar energy tones in other people in the same way that a tuning fork can entrain the tone of other tuning forks. Tuning forks have set natural frequency and when you set it ringing, then sound waves from a struck fork transfer physical energy through the air, vibrating any nearby forks that have the same frequency and pitch. This is called sympathetic resonance and it works in humans as well.

For humans, sympathetic resonance is when is when one person unconsciously mirrors or internalises the emotions, behaviours or physiological rhythms of another person. This can happen through three pathways: mirror neurons, physiological entrainment and emotional contagion. Mirror neurons are specialised brain cells which provide the neural foundation for observational learning. When babies, children or adults watch someone perform a skill, the mirroring mechanism helps the brain map out how to copy the movement. When you observe emotions in someone else, mirror neurons activate the same brain regions in you that correspond to those emotions, and allow you to physically "feel" what someone else is experiencing. This mechanism helps us connect socially and understand non-verbal cues. It is the reason we tend to yawn when we see someone else yawn and smile when someone else smiles. Physiological Entrainment is the natural tendency for two or more rhythmic systems (such as heart rates, breathing patterns, or brainwaves) to synchronize when people are in close proximity. Emotional Contagion refers to the subconscious transfer of moods. For example, the sympathetic nervous system can activate in response to someone else’s stress, causing your own heart rate to subtly increase in sympathy.

The impact of this, is that while we can only directly control our own thoughts, feelings, behaviour and focus, in doing so we can intentionally set the tone which others around us may then mirror or become entrained to.

Strategy 3: Redirect Your Focus and Protect Your Energy

How to Stop Giving Difficult People Your Mental Energy

This is similar to the first strategy and again focuses on reclaiming your focus, but instead of looking for positives in the difficult person, which may feel too challenging, you just look for general positive things in your life, or create things to look forward to. For example, focus on what you are grateful for, do more of what you enjoy, spend time with people who uplift you, watch feel good movies, listen to comedy, or watch funny animal videos. As much as you can, take your focus off the person you are finding difficult and focus on anything else that feels like joy, fun, excitement, optimism, freedom, allowing, love, peace and appreciation. This is based on the same principle of “where focus goes, energy flows” and the aim is to diminish the amount of energy you are giving to the difficult person.

Strategy 4: Deflect Difficult Behaviour Without Absorbing It

Questions That Calm Conflict Instead of Escalating It

One of the most powerful things you can do in terms of building better relationships is learning to ask effective questions. In this case, asking questions that require the difficult person to think about what they are saying or doing can have two effects. It makes you less of a neutral, agreeable target, and it can prompt people to come up with their own solutions and solve their own problems without drawing you into their drama. Asking questions like the ones below with a curious enquiring tone gently challenges the other person while allowing you to remain neutral. Their response may be to leave you alone because you now require too much energy to engage with, or it may facilitate growth or a solution for them which decreases their difficult behaviour. Ask these questions in a “grey rock” manner that is strong and emotionally neutral. Difficult people often feed on your emotional responses. Having a list of questions like this to ask can help you feel more confident and engage in a calm way.

These questions are not an ordered list to work through. They are options - like a toolkit. Pick one or two to learn and have ready that will work well for the type of interactions that you are having with the challenging person. For example, if you have someone in your life that tends to be negative and complain a lot and you find that draining then you could use a question like, “What would a positive outcome look like to you?” to redirect their line of thought.

Please note, the way the questions are worded is purposeful and specific to direct someone’s thinking in a certain way. At first it may feel a quite scripted using these questions, but with practice it will start to feel more normal and comfortable.

10 Questions to Redirect Difficult Conversations

Who else could you ask for information about this?

What would a positive outcome look like to you?

What would be one thing you could do to improve this?

What’s important to you about this?

What other options have you explored?

What could be a good next step to solving this problem?

What could be a good thing about this?

This isn’t a problem for me, who is it a problem for?

Have you told told [the person they are complaining about or the person who can do something about the problem] how you feel/what you think? (good for stopping gossip)

I’m curious, what did you mean by that? (good response if someone has said something undermining or hurtful)

When you use questions like these it looks like you are engaging, but you are not actively taking on the energy of the problem, you are deflecting it back to the person who is carrying it. In this way you avoid making their problem, your problem.

You can also use the Mirror and Affirm process that I describe step by step in my short guide Stop Absorbing Other People’s Problems which you can get from my website. Mirroring using a lower and slower tone of voice can be a good way to de-escalate and calm someone who is yelling or overly agitated. I used it as a strategy for this with teenagers when I was working in student support at a local high school.

Strategy 5: Set Healthy Boundaries or Walk Away

How to Set Healthy Boundaries with Difficult People

You can remove yourself from a situation in two ways; by creating personal boundaries, or by physically removing yourself from a space. Creating a personal boundary is a way of protecting your energy within an environment. Keep the focus on your wellbeing rather than setting boundaries to punish another person. Ask yourself; what do I need to keep myself safe and functioning well within this situation? This may be taking control of the communication channel and organising for interactions to be by written email rather than face to face. It may be restructuring your schedule so that you are not having to operate in the same space as that person or at least reducing the amount of time you have to interact with them. Setting boundaries can also involve having the courage to be honest about what you really need from the other person, and things that you would like changed. Most interpersonal conflict is caused by poor communication - either things are not communicated at all, or there is misunderstanding in the communication. How to communicate to resolve conflict is a big topic that I will write about in more detail in future posts.

When It's Time to Walk Away

If you think that the person is really toxic, or you find that it’s too hard to start thinking nice thoughts about someone who’s right there being a catalyst for your discomfort, then you may need to remove yourself from the situation altogether. This is a valid option if the other strategies are not viable or not working for you. However, I would make it a final option unless there is a safety issue. The reason for that is that this option doesn’t offer you a chance to learn and grow and wherever you go, you will take yourself with you. Human interactions always have two sides and both sides are aways playing a role and bringing things to the interaction. If you continually avoid difficult people and situations, then you will keep encountering them in different forms because you will have patterns of thought, belief and behaviour that are triggered by similar things. Conflict is an opportunity to clear your triggers and develop more effective relationship skills which help you to create better life situations moving forward.

What If You Feel Trapped?

If you want to remove yourself from the situation, but think you can’t, and feel trapped and stuck as a result, then maybe you could soften how you are thinking about the situation. This may decrease your resistance, and create some space for change to occur. One mindset tool that you could use to soften how you are feeling about the situation is to use “what if” questions. These are simply questions that you pose and leave open rather than trying to answer them. The idea is to open your mind to other possibilities rather than a single solution. For example, you could ask:

What if I could leave?

What if I could leave sometime in the future?

What if this situation turned out to be temporary?

Final Thoughts: Becoming More Emotionally Resilient in Midlife

All of the five options listed above are valid ways of responding to a difficult person. Which ones you use depends on where you are at in yourself, how stressed you feel, how empowered you feel, and what you want to create in your life. However, be aware, that wherever you go, there you are. By this I mean that you may seek to move yourself away from a certain situation, but the energy of thoughts, beliefs and emotions going on inside you will go with you, and you will attract the same thing in a different form. This is why we have repeating patterns of experiences in our lives. The only way to effectively change this long-term is to transform your thoughts, beliefs and emotions through loving yourself more.

You can’t control other people’s personalities, choices or behaviour, but you can choose how you respond to them. That is where your greatest power lies. Midlife is an opportunity to stop giving away your energy trying to fix, change or please everyone else and instead focus on becoming more intentional in your own responses. You now have several decades of experience to draw on and can approach challenging relationships with greater wisdom, self-awareness, and emotional maturity. Instead of seeing every difficult interaction as something to endure, you can view it as an invitation to develop healthier boundaries, stronger communication skills, greater compassion, and deeper self-trust.

As you focus on what you can control which is your thoughts, your emotions, your boundaries and your actions, then you’ll likely find that difficult people have less power over your life. Some relationships may improve, some may naturally fall away, and others may simply become easier to navigate because you are no longer reacting in the same way. Personal growth in midlife isn’t about creating a life without difficult people. It’s about becoming the kind of person who can remain grounded, compassionate and confident, even when life brings challenging relationships. The more you strengthen your inner world, the more peace, freedom and fulfilment you’ll create in your outer one.

Just One Thing

My “Just One Thing” action point take-away this week is to pick one or two of the questions to redirect difficult conversations and write them as a reference note on your phone. Start with one or two that you think you could use and start practicing them by using them in day to day conversations that are not overly challenging or emotionally charged for you. Doing this will help you to remember them and feel familiar with them so that it is easier to use them in more difficult conversations when you need to.

There is a lot in this article so if you have any questions then feel free to ask in the comments or message me directly.

Aroha nui, much love

Janine

Frequently Asked Questions About Difficult People in Midlife

How do you deal with difficult people without arguing?

The most effective way to deal with difficult people without arguing is to focus on what you can control rather than trying to change them. Stay calm, avoid reacting emotionally, ask thoughtful questions instead of becoming defensive, and set clear boundaries when needed. Remember that you are responsible for your own thoughts, feelings and behaviour, while the other person is responsible for theirs.

Why do certain people trigger me so much?

People often trigger us because they reflect something within ourselves that is asking for attention. They may represent a fear, an unmet need, a value we hold strongly, or a part of ourselves that we have rejected. Instead of seeing emotional triggers as something to avoid, try viewing them as opportunities for greater self-awareness and personal growth. Understanding your triggers can help you respond more thoughtfully instead of reacting automatically.

How do I stop absorbing other people's emotions?

Begin by recognising that another person's emotions are theirs to manage, not yours. While empathy is a valuable quality, it doesn't require you to carry someone else's emotional burden. Keeping healthy boundaries, redirecting conversations towards solutions, limiting exposure to negativity where possible, and regularly reconnecting with activities that bring you peace and joy can all help protect your emotional wellbeing.

What are healthy boundaries with difficult people?

Healthy boundaries are the limits you set to protect your emotional, mental and physical wellbeing. They might include limiting the time you spend with someone, choosing how and when you communicate, saying no without guilt, or calmly expressing what behaviour you will and won't accept. Boundaries are not about controlling another person—they are about taking responsibility for your own wellbeing.

When should you walk away from a difficult relationship?

Walking away may be the healthiest option if a relationship is consistently abusive, manipulative, unsafe, or continues to damage your wellbeing despite your best efforts to communicate and establish boundaries. However, when safety isn't an issue, difficult relationships can also provide valuable opportunities to develop stronger communication skills, greater emotional resilience and deeper self-awareness before deciding whether the relationship still belongs in your life.

Can difficult people really change?

Yes—but only if they are willing to. Lasting change happens when someone takes responsibility for their own thoughts, emotions and behaviour. You cannot make another person change, no matter how much you care about them. What you can change is how you respond, the boundaries you set, and the amount of emotional energy you invest in the relationship. Ironically, when you change your own responses, the relationship dynamic often changes as well.

Is it normal for relationships to change in midlife?

Absolutely. Midlife is often a season of personal growth, changing priorities and greater self-awareness. As you become more intentional about how you spend your time and energy, some relationships naturally deepen while others become less aligned with the person you are becoming. This can feel uncomfortable at first, but it is often a healthy part of creating a more peaceful, authentic and fulfilling life.

Kia ora and hello valued reader

How are you?

Instead of skipping over that, let my question of "how are you" be an invitation to take a moment to notice what you are feeling in your mind, body, heart and gut at this time.

Doing this simple thing gives you permission to take up space and show yourself that you matter.

Today I want to talk about giving yourself time to slow down, and specifically slow down with something you do everyday, several times a day - eating.

Most health and wellbeing advice about eating focuses on what you eat rather than how you eat, but as I noted in this week's article and podcast, HOW you eat is also incredibly important and may be a missing link in understanding some of your health issues.

In this week's article and podcast I explore the seven ways that stress can impact your hormones in midlife. I also talk about how stress is not just mental and emotional. Your body is also managing many other forms of stress. The links to the full article and podcast are below if you want to know all the details.

What I want to give you in this newsletter is one simple thing that you can do to help reduce the stress load on your body - and this one can influence mental, emotional and physical stress.

It is vital to healthy digestion that when you eat you are in a relaxed state. Why? because when your are feeling rushed, upset or stressed your digestive system shuts down and does not work efficiently. Eating when your digestive system is shut down can lead to poor nutrient uptake, bloating and gas. Done repeatedly over long term it can also lead to blockages and malabsorption issues that damage your gut. As I talked about in this week's article, eating when you are stressed or anxious (feeling fear) simulates the production of cortisol and can decrease the production of estrogen and progesterone in women and testosterone in men.

Slow down and relax when you eat. It sounds simple right? Yet I know from my own experience that this simple thing can be very challenging.

I confess, even though this is a small shift I struggle with it. I set the intention to sit and relax when I eat and do it for a while, then life happens and I start rushing or multi-tasking again, and then I come back to being mindful when I am eating, and then I slide again and come back.

The thing to focus on is not the "back-sliding" and "failing", it is the constant coming back. The consistent return is the success, because life is not consistent - it throws us curveballs on a regular basis.

Adding to the stress we feel when eating can be subconscious fears that we have about eating. Many of us feel a lot of discomfort when we sit down and eat mindfully because we have attached a lot of fear beliefs to eating. These can come from long term dieting and weight loss issues. Many people are afraid to eat in case it leads to weight gain. For me, my fear and control issues around eating come from skin issues. I am fortunate to have an athletic body type and excess weight has never been an issue for me. My issue has always been acne. I have battled with having acne my whole life. My fear is that the food I eat will make me break-out. These fears can play into us wanting to rush eating or distract ourselves while we are eating to avoid feeling the worry and navigating the negative thoughts. I get it. I also understand that it is not healthy.

By midlife, many of us have so many negative beliefs attached to food and eating that mindful eating becomes not just a physical healing practice, but also an emotional and psychological one. Before you eat your next meal, sit down, take a full slow breath and notice what is active in your mind and body. Name whatever is coming up for you, and tell yourself that it is okay for you to feel that - you can feel or think that and love yourself anyway. Take another breath in and when you exhale imagine breathing out the energy of that fear or negative thought.

The other thing that I have started doing is acknowledging and appreciating my food before I eat it. This creates a moment of presence - of really seeing the food I am about to eat and feeling gratitude for it's beauty and how it will nourish me. Saying a grace prayer or karakia can have a similar effect when you feel into it rather than reciting it out of habit or obligation. Here is what I say to my food in my head before I eat:

I acknowledge and appreciate you

Thank you for transferring your energy to me

Thank you for nourishing me

I bless you with love and light.

Let's Connect

Your feedback helps me to serve you in ways that are valuable to you.

If you try the mindful eating practice I describe in this newsletter, then I would love to know what you experienced and whether it was helpful for you.

You can reply to this email or message me directly at support@janinelattimore.com

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A quote for the week...

“Life really does begin at forty, up until then you are just doing research”

— Carl Yung

Weekly Article: Stress and Hormones in Midlife: The Hidden Factor Nobody's Talking About

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Remember:

Simple can be effective.

You don't need to know everything. You just need to know and do the things that are important to you. One simple thing practiced daily is enough.

That's how effective change happens.

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Until next time...

Keep living midlife well

Aroha nui, much love
Janine

Janine Lattimore | Living Midlife Well | janinelattimore.com

When we start talking about hormones in midlife most people think of women experiencing issues, but men, stay with me, because you experience hormone issues in midlife too. Just like the teenage years, midlife is a time of significant reproductive hormone shift for both male and female bodies. As if dealing with this transition in your forties and fifties isn’t enough though, stress frequently plays a big role in driving even more hormone havoc. The result; fatigue that won’t lift, belly fat that won’t shift, brain fog, mood swings, and disturbed sleep that doesn’t restore you. These aren’t just signs of getting older. They’re signs of a hormone system under stress, and once you understand how those two things are connected, you can begin to do something about it.

Midlife Hormone Transitions for Men and Women: What’s Happening in Your Body

Hormonal Changes for Women in Their 40’s and 50’s: More Than Just Estrogen

In midlife, female bodies transition into perimenopause and then menopause. This transition can start as early as a person’s mid-thirties or as late as their mid-fifties, but the majority of women go through the transition from their late forties to early fifties. Essentially, it is the process of the female body ceasing to produce eggs for reproduction. It is commonly known that during this time, the female body begins to produce less estrogen and progesterone, the two key female hormones. What is less well known, is that as the ovaries gradually produce less estrogen and progesterone, the adrenal glands help compensate by producing precursor building blocks that the body then converts into a weaker form of estrogen. This is very important in the link between hormones and stress which I will get to later in this article.

Hormonal Changes for Men in Their 40’s and 50’s: The Testosterone Decline Nobody Talks About

The chief male hormone is testosterone. In a male body, testosterone is at its highest level during adolescence and early adulthood. It starts to decline from about age thirty. For some men, the decline is gradual and changes aren’t very noticeable. For others, the decline accelerates in their forties and fifties and the shift is more dramatic. Many of the symptoms of male midlife hormone shifts are similar to females such as:

• Fatigue and low energy

• Mood swings or depression: Low testosterone can lead to changes in mood, making you more irritable, anxious, or prone to depression and “irritable male syndrome”

• Brain fog, forgetfulness, struggling to focus: low levels of testosterone can affect the brain’s executive function and things like decision-making, focus, and memory

• Loss of muscle mass and strength: Lifting weights feels harder, and gains are harder to maintain.

• Weight gain, particularly around the midsection

• Low libido and sexual dysfunction

Many of these symptoms are chalked up to being just general aging, but are actually connected to hormonal shifts or imbalances. The issues involved in a “midlife crisis” are likely to be physiological as well as psychological. Experiencing these symptoms is not “just part of aging” and is not inevitable. People in traditional cultures do not experience these symptoms of hormone change at midlife to the degree that most people in industrial cities do, so what is the difference? There are three main ones: a whole food versus a processed food diet, active versus sedentary lifestyles and levels of stress. One of the key things that impacts our hormonal health is the level of stress we manage almost every moment of the day.

How Does Stress Impact Hormone Issues in Midlife?

Does stress affect hormones in midlife? Yes — more than most people realise, and more than most doctors discuss. During the hormonal transitions of your forties and fifties, chronic stress doesn't just pile on top of what you're already dealing with. It actively depletes the raw materials your body uses to make sex hormones, suppresses the signals that trigger their production, and makes your body far less able to regulate its own stress response. The result is a feedback loop where midlife hormone shifts make you more sensitive to stress, and stress makes your hormone symptoms worse. If you're navigating midlife and wondering why everything feels harder than it should, this is the conversation you need to have.

During midlife, there is a natural decline in estrogen and progesterone in female bodies and testosterone in male bodies which can cause a number of challenging physical symptoms. Stress lowers levels of these hormones even further and makes these symptoms worse. For women, the adrenal glands, which take over producing the building blocks for estrogen, are also responsible for producing cortisol, your primary stress hormone. If your body is dealing with chronic stress, the adrenals may prioritize making cortisol at the expense of sex hormone precursors, which can worsen perimenopausal and menopausal symptoms. Over and above this, stress has a more direct impact on one of the most common symptoms of menopause transition, hot flushes. Psychological stress causes the body to release norepinephrine, which narrows the thermoneutral zone (the body’s comfort temperature range). As a result of this narrowing, even minor increases in core body temperature cause the brain to trigger a hot flash.

For men, there are three issues. Firstly, both cortisol and testosterone require the same precursor (cholesterol) to be produced. During prolonged stress, your body prioritizes immediate survival and produces cortisol at the expense of testosterone. Secondly, elevated cortisol blocks testosterone from properly binding to target cells and tissue receptors, limiting its effect in the body. Thirdly, chronic stress and systemic inflammation can upregulate the enzyme aromatase, which accelerates the conversion of testosterone into estrogen and causes further hormone imbalance.

Seven Ways Chronic Stress Hijacks Your Hormones in Midlife

• Stress depletes your body’s resources to make sex hormones - Sustained stress keeps cortisol elevated, which redirects the raw material your body uses to make estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and thyroid hormones toward cortisol production

• Stress reduces your body’s signaling to produce sex hormones - Elevated cortisol suppresses gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH), which reduces signals for estrogen and progesterone production.

• Stress interferes with thyroid hormone production - Elevated cortisol interferes with the conversion of T4 (the inactive thyroid hormone) to T3 (the active form), and increases reverse T3 — which blocks T3 from doing its job. This is why people under chronic stress often develop symptoms that look like hypothyroidism, such as fatigue, cold hands and feet, hair loss, and weight gain, even when standard thyroid labs come back normal.

• Stress promotes food cravings and belly fat - Cortisol raises blood sugar, and chronic elevation can promote insulin resistance which is a precursor to diabetes and metabolic syndrome. Abdominal fat gain, changes in appetite hormones, and excessive blood sugar highs and lows are all exacerbated by chronic stress.

• Stress promotes mood swings and brain fog - Cortisol influences neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine, and GABA, which regulate mood and cognition.

• Stress increases loss in bone density - Estrogen plays a vital role in bone remodelling, and as estrogen levels drop, the breakdown and reabsorption of bone outpaces bone formation. Testosterone is also a critical hormone for bone health in both male and female bodies. It stimulates bone-building cells and maintains bone mineral density. In male bodies, a significant portion of testosterone converts into estrogen, which is essential for preserving bone structure. In both male and female bodies, sustained high cortisol inhibits the cells that create new bone, accelerates bone breakdown, and reduces calcium absorption.

• Stress makes you more sensitive to pain and muscle soreness - Chronically elevated cortisol sensitizes the nervous system. It lowers your pain threshold, prolongs physical recovery, and causes muscles to chronically tighten, increasing the risk of spasms and can be connected to restless leg syndrome.

Why Stress Hits Harder in Your 40s and 50s

Here is the real kicker. Not only does stress have a bigger impact on your reproductive hormones during midlife, but your body is also more sensitive to experiencing stress. During the menopausal transition, the progressive decline in circulating estrogen in female bodies compromises the regulatory mechanisms of the stress response system, leading to impaired feedback control and sustained elevation in cortisol secretion. In other words, low estrogen levels causes cortisol levels to rise. It also causes cortisol levels to be higher at night, which is the time when cortisol levels should be low. In male bodies, declining testosterone and years of accumulated lifestyle habits make their bodies react more intensely to stress and take longer to return to baseline. In addition to this, your body can get stuck in stress and hormone change loops. For example, hormone changes can disrupt sleep, poor sleep raises cortisol, higher cortisol worsens hormonal sleep issues and round and round you go.

Your Midlife Symptoms Are Not All in Your Head

Most medical doctors only assess symptoms in terms of a medical model rather than a lifestyle model. You may have had tests which came back clear because what is happening in your body is being stimulated by factors that the tests do not measure. Modern western medicine doesn’t usually look at health as a whole picture of mental, emotional, and lifestyle elements as well as physical. It also tends to look at symptoms and measures in isolation rather than in terms of body systems and systems interacting with each other. The result, if what you are experiencing doesn’t show up on a medical model, then what you are experiencing usually gets written off as “just aging” or you get dismissed as being over-sensitive.

When it comes to hormones in midlife, stress is the hidden factor that most health conversations miss entirely. Chronic stress doesn't just make you feel tense, it directly interferes with your body's ability to produce, regulate, and respond to the hormones driving your midlife symptoms. For both men and women in their forties and fifties, understanding the stress-hormone connection could be the missing piece that finally makes sense of everything you've been experiencing.

Why Healthy Habits Aren't Always Enough: The Stress Factor

Some of you reading this may be thinking, “I am living a healthy life and managing stress well, but I’m still experiencing issues so what is going on?” You may be exercising at the gym regularly, attending yin yoga twice a week, eating a low-fat diet and carrying your water bottle everywhere and still have belly fat you just can’t shift, struggle with fatigue and frequently forget why you walked into a room. I hear the frustration of that. Or, you may be on hormone replacement therapy and still feel terrible and be thinking it must not be working for you. Stress could be the missing factor for both of these experiences. We are largely taught that stress is a mental and emotional thing and most of the interventions to help reduce stress are focused on relaxing your nervous system through things like breathwork, meditation, yoga, tai chi and sound baths. These are all helpful and beneficial things, but they only address one type of stress.

What Counts as Stress? More Than You Think

Mental and emotional stress is a significant part of the stress we experience. However, there are many other ways that modern city life places stress on our bodies that most people are not aware of, but which our bodies are bombarded with and consistently trying to manage. Exposure to toxins and chemicals can put stress on your body, as can exposure to electromagnetic radiation from electricity, cell phones and wireless connections. Our bodies experience stress from being out of sync with the natural cycles of the sun and moon that it evolved in harmony with. We can also place stress on our bodies through poor or poorly timed dietary habits. Eating low fat cereal for breakfast is sold as being healthy, but in reality, does not give your body the right nutrients to build optimum and sustained energy throughout the day, and may interfere with your natural cortisol release cycle. Eating when you are rushed, upset or stressed puts additional stress on your body because your digestive system shuts down when you are in those states. Excessive exercise puts stress on the body, especially when you “go hard” without fueling your body well first. Whenever your body perceives that inadequate fuel is available, it triggers a survival response and raises cortisol. If you are exhausted, then your body will be experiencing stress. As if all of that isn’t enough, in addition to the present stress your body is experiencing, emotional and physical stress are also cumulative. This means that weighing into your stress load by the time you reach your forties, are the decades of oxidative stress, inflammation and metabolic chaos that have been occurring in your body over time. All this cumulative wear and tear on your body and brain caused by prolonged, repeated, or chronic stress is called your “allostatic load”.

While wellbeing practices such as meditation, yoga and breathwork are important and I am an active proponent of teaching them - if they are just an add on to a life that is full of other forms of stress, then the impact will be reduced. To effectively manage stress, you need to look at the way you are living your life as a whole.

Not All Stress Is Bad: Understanding Acute vs Chronic Stress

At this point I want to note that not all stress is harmful. Acute stress, which is short term bouts of stress, can help you to manage challenges. The human body is wonderfully designed and the stress response developed as helpful to our survival. Moderate and short-term physical stress, like going for a hike, can help regulate inflammation and is necessary to build muscle and bone mass. Stress hormones are designed to do a short-term job and then be flushed from our system and when that happens, they are beneficial. The problems and damage occur when they remain circulating and active in the body for extended periods of time, or when they are produced in higher levels than the body can effectively utilize.

Where to Start: Small Steps to Reduce Your Stress-Hormone Load

If reading all that caused you to feel stressed or overwhelmed and think “there is too much to fix, what’s the point”, then I understand. However, I am a great believer in being able to eat an elephant one bite at a time - metaphorically of course - the elephant is my new adopted spirit animal. A full life overhaul is a long-term project that we can journey on together over time. For now, start with one thing, a small thing, a micro commitment to yourself that you can maintain. In the game of wellbeing, slow and steady wins the race - maybe the tortoise could be my second spirit animal. For today, you can begin here with the following list of shifts. These are simple things that you can do straight away to support your adrenal glands and your body’s hormonal balance.

• Take Regular Wellbeing Pauses: these may not be everything, but they are still important and a good starting point because they build your capacity to make other changes. This includes things like slow deep breathing, gentle movement, looking up at the sky, yin yoga, tai chi and qigong. I have put together an Essential 5-Minute Stress Reset Toolkit with a number of quick and easy relaxation practices in it which you can get for free when you subscribe to my Weekly Wellbeing newsletter.

• Eat for Balance: Prioritize whole foods, lean proteins, healthy fats, and plenty of vegetables. Reduce processed foods, sugar, and alcohol, which can disrupt hormone balance.

• Prioritize Sleep: Establish consistent, relaxing bedtime routines. Try and keep your phone out of your bedroom and avoid looking at it after 9pm.

• Reduce Inflammation: Limit alcohol, caffeine, refined sugar and processed foods, which can tax adrenal function.

• Move Your Body: Be as active as you can through the day. Avoid sitting for longer than 45 minutes at a time without at least standing up. Engage in moderate resistance training and walk as often as you can as much as you can.  Walking is one of the best forms of movement for people in midlife.

As a personal case study note, I have been practicing all of the things on this list as part of my regular lifestyle for at least the last ten years and I have had very few issues with my menopause transition apart from erratic periods and ongoing bleeding as my menses stopped, and mild hot flushes.

While I cannot draw a direct scientific cause and effect connection that this works to minimise midlife hormonal issues, because genetic factors are also involved, my experience does provide some research evidence that this is very beneficial.

Just One thing

My “Just One Thing” action point for you this week is to do just one thing from the list of suggestions above.

If you want to take this a step further then write down what you are going to do in the comments. This helps to lock in your commitment to yourself, creates a level of accountability and may help inspire someone else.

I will start us off. My “just one thing” commitment is not from the list, but is connected to a cause of stress that I have mentioned. It is to take a break, sit down, relax and eat all my meals mindfully without actively multi-tasking or working while I eat. I frequently work on my laptop while I am eating which I know is not good for my digestive system and keeps me in an activated “must be productive” mild stress state.

I look forward to reading your comments and hearing what is important to you.

Aroha nui, much love

Janine

If you've ever wondered what the difference is between stress and anxiety — and why your body seems to overreact to things that aren't actually dangerous — here's the answer. Stress and anxiety are both signals from your body's built-in alarm system, designed to keep you safe, but sometimes that alarm gets it wrong. This article breaks down exactly what stress and anxiety are, how to tell healthy from unhealthy stress and anxiety, the warning signs to watch for, and why everyday spaces like crowded rooms or flickering lights can quietly overwhelm your nervous system.

What Are Stress and Anxiety — and How Do They Affect You in Midlife?

Stress and anxiety can affect people in midlife in different ways. Maybe you can relate to some of these:

What Is Stress? Understanding Your Body's Fight or Flight Response

Stress is a normal part of being human. It is your body's way of equipping you to deal with anything that it senses is a threat. That can be danger coming at you from the outside, like a bus about to hit you, or fearful thoughts coming up inside you, like worrying about a meeting with your boss at work.

When your body senses that something bad could happen to you, it releases stress hormones like adrenaline, cortisol and noradrenaline. These hormones send a chemical message to your body that it needs to get ready to fight or get away from the danger. This is called your fight or flight response.

Why Do I Feel So Emotional When I'm Stressed?

These reactions in your body can feel frightening, but they are normal and have a purpose. Your heart and lungs pump harder to get more energy to your muscles so that they are equipped to run or fight. Energy is diverted from body functions that are not needed for your immediate survival such as your digestive, immune and reproductive systems, and your brain switches to operating from your faster responding instinctive, emotional part (known as your limbic system).

When your body goes into a stress state, the logical, rational part of your brain goes offline and the instinctive and emotional parts take over. To deal with a physical threat, like an animal about to attack you, your body just needs you to act really fast to protect yourself from the danger and your logical brain (your pre-frontal cortex) works a little slow for that.

Most of the stress that we deal with now is mental and social problems rather than physical danger. For these issues we need to use our logical brain to think creatively, put together information or communicate intelligently with someone, but our instinctive and emotional brain still fires up first. Basically, your limbic system overrides your thinking brain, and takes over your body whenever it senses you are unsafe or threatened for whatever reason.

To effectively manage stress it is helpful to learn to ride out your emotional first response and calm your body so that you can access your logical brain as your second response.

Can Stress Ever Be Good for You? Healthy Stress Explained

Stress is one of your body's protective systems. It is healthy when it saves you from danger, or when it is connected to taking on new positive challenges that help you grow and become more skilled and more confident. Experiencing this kind of healthy stress builds your ability to manage life's ups and downs more effectively. This ability is called resilience.

To experience growth you need to go beyond your comfort zone. It is like building physical muscle. Building your physical muscles requires you to challenge them with more repetitions or more weight. In the same way, to build your resilience muscle you need to work through life experiences that are new and difficult — experiences that cause you to overcome fear, learn more and work harder than you have before.

When Does Stress Become Unhealthy? Understanding Chronic Stress

Stress becomes unhealthy when it is more than you can manage or benefit from, or when it interferes with your wellbeing. Different people can manage different levels of stress, and how much stress you are able to manage can also fluctuate from day to day depending on how resourced you are at the time.

Stress becomes unhealthy when you experience ongoing stress for long periods of time (called chronic stress) or when you experience an overwhelmingly stressful event. Both of these things can lead to trauma. Trauma is not about the event that happened, but about how something you experienced affected you mentally and emotionally. Trauma occurs when your emotional response to an event overwhelms your ability to cope, and causes a long-lasting negative effect on your wellbeing.

The goal is not to be completely stress-free — it's to find your sweet spot

The sweet spot is where you are experiencing enough challenge to make life interesting and to help you grow as a person, without being overwhelmed. A key part of being able to live in the sweet spot is having a well-equipped resource toolkit to support you. A large part of the work I do is providing you with information and ideas to build your resource toolkit.

What Is the Difference Between Stress and Anxiety?

Stress and anxiety have a lot in common, but they are not the same thing. They also often flow into each other as one experience, which can be confusing.

You can think of stress as the physical things that happen in your body when your survival-based inner alarm is triggered by pain or a threat.

You can think of anxiety as the emotional feeling of fear, worry, dread or panic.

Both stress and anxiety are triggered by your inner survival alarm system sensing that you are being threatened and need to protect yourself. The trigger may be something outside of you (external) or your own thoughts (internal). Like stress, anxiety is a natural part of how your body works and you can look at it as a warning sign that there is something that you need to check out.

Are Stress and Anxiety Always Telling You the Truth?

Your body is amazing and the number one job of your limbic system and nervous system is to protect you and keep you safe. However, it is a bit like a caveman trying to keep you safe. Your limbic and nervous systems get scared very easily and function from old, basic information. This means that quite often your inner alarm goes off when there isn't a real threat, or the threat is not very big. Sometimes it is a false alarm. Be aware of this.

Like stress, you can experience healthy anxiety and unhealthy anxiety.

What Is Healthy Anxiety?

Feeling emotions like worry and fear is uncomfortable, but it is not always a bad thing. Healthy anxiety is your body's way of keeping you safe. It may cause you to pause before doing or saying something that doesn't fit with your values and you might later regret. It can warn us that something about a person or situation isn't right even if we can't obviously see any danger. It can motivate us to do the right thing if we feel anxious that we might get into trouble for doing something dangerous or illegal.

Is Your Anxiety Keeping You Safe — or Keeping You Small?

When you feel anxious, you can pause and ask yourself: what is triggering my inner alarm, and is that warning helping me stay safe, or limiting me from doing something that is new and scary, but which would help me grow as a person? Is your fear or worry being a shield and protecting you, or is it acting like a box and keeping you small?

What Is Unhealthy Anxiety? Three Ways Your Alarm System Gets It Wrong

Anxiety becomes unhealthy when something goes wrong with your alarm system. This can happen in three main ways:

Chronic Anxiety
With chronic anxiety your inner alarm rings far too much of the time and your mind goes from one worry to the next constantly throughout the day.

Specific Fears and Phobias
Fears and phobias occur when your anxiety alarm sounds too loudly in response to specific threats, and your alarm is out of proportion to the perceived threat, or it prevents normal daily functioning. This includes things like separation anxiety disorder, claustrophobia, and phobias of particular creatures such as a fear of spiders or snakes.

Panic Attacks
Panic attacks are when your anxiety alarm rings like a blaring siren. This can happen in the midst of a stressful experience, or the reason for it may not be clear. It can feel like extreme terror, like you are losing your mind, like you are about to die or like something is horrifically wrong. Panic attacks come on and go away quickly, usually within twenty minutes. Often they only happen as a one-off thing, but sometimes people experience more than one over a period of time.

Big Roller Coaster Emotions
Sometimes, fear can feel completely overwhelming — like everything is too much, and like you are unable to cope. When this happens you may start to look for a way to escape the unbearable heaviness. To avoid these emotions some people turn to alcohol, drugs or sex to try and numb the pain or distract themselves from it. At times, people may begin to consider death as a way out.

If you start to have these thoughts or feelings then please find a trustworthy real person to talk to. Also know that during your forties and fifties, hormonal changes for both men and women can make everything seem bigger. You may feel emotions more intensely, and your body is in a state of stress from managing the physical changes that are happening to you.

Big change = big stress.
Big stress = big fears.

Anxiety can also be caused by feeling an uncomfortable emotion such as anger or hurt and then not wanting to feel that way, or not knowing how to process that feeling. You may think an uncomfortable emotion such as anger is not okay, or find it frightening. Learning to recognise, accept and honestly express uncomfortable emotions in healthy ways is one of the most helpful skills you can learn.

What Are the Signs of Stress and Anxiety in Midlife?

Stress and anxiety in midlife can show up in ways you might not immediately connect to your nervous system. Common signs include:

• craving sugary and high fat foods
• doom scrolling
• struggling with comparing yourself to others
• having trouble focusing
• not taking care of yourself
• procrastination
• burnout from overworking
• having a lot of negative thoughts about yourself
• eczema, pimple and acne breakouts
• excess weight around the abdomen
• avoiding spending time with friends and family
• doing things in a rush without thinking them through first
• trouble sleeping or sleeping too much
• anger, frustration, feeling easily irritated
• hormonal imbalance and lowered levels of estrogen and progestorone in women and testosterone in men

One of my tell-tale signs that my stress levels are getting high is that I start to swear more. There may be other reasons you could be experiencing these things, but they can be connected to stress. You can think of the behaviours in the list above as modern day ways of going into the stress state of fight, flight or freeze.

What Is Sensory Overload — and Is It a Sign of Stress and Anxiety?

Stress and anxiety are not just caused by obvious challenges and dangers. Your nervous system is constantly using your senses to scan the environment for threats. Sometimes a room, shop or area may feel unsettling to you, but you are not sure why. This is likely because something is triggering your senses, and your limbic system is interpreting it as a possible threat.

People experience different levels of sensory sensitivity. Some people are born highly sensitive, some people are more sensitive due to an experience of trauma, and everyone naturally becomes more sensitive when their stress levels are high.

Listed below are some things in your environment that may trigger your sensory stress response. They may cause you to feel a little unsettled or on edge, or they may overload you if you are already feeling stressed:

• Constant movement within a space causing unsettling sensory awareness of change
• Ceiling fans, busy patterns, or flickering screens can all disrupt your inner ear's balance system
• Being in a crowded, constantly shifting environment can lead to a feeling of being ungrounded or floating
• Spaces without visual "landing spots" — calm, neutral areas where your gaze can settle — keep your nervous system in scanning mode
• Spaces with multiple sources of noise or where you can hear short, sharp noises can lead to auditory overwhelm, or your nervous system being jarred into alarm
• Fluorescent and LED lights — conventional fluorescent and LED light bulbs fluctuate in brightness many times per second because the alternating current electricity is not constant. This results in a subtle flicker in the light which can be activating to your nervous system

Understanding Stress and Anxiety Is the First Step to Managing Them

Stress and anxiety aren't signs that something is wrong with you — they are your body's ancient alarm system trying to protect you, even when it gets the threat level wrong. Learning to recognise the difference between healthy stress and anxiety (which keeps you safe) and unhealthy stress and anxiety (chronic worry, phobias, panic attacks, or overwhelming emotions) gives you the power to respond rather than just react. Add sensory overload into the mix — busy patterns, harsh lighting, or unpredictable noise — and it's easy to see why your nervous system sometimes feels like it's working against you. The good news is that once you understand how your alarm system works, you can start learning to calm it down. If anxiety ever feels unbearable or you're having thoughts of escaping through harmful means, please reach out to a trustworthy person or professional. You deserve support, and you don't have to carry everything alone.

How to Start Managing Stress and Anxiety in Midlife

The best way to manage day-to-day stress and anxiety is to build a toolkit of things that help you calm your mind and body and shift into a relaxed (parasympathetic) nervous system state. It is also a good idea to practise these things before you really need them, so that they are familiar and easy to access. I have put together a starter toolkit for you — The Essential 5-Minute Stress Reset Toolkit — which you can get for free when you subscribe to my Weekly Wellbeing newsletter. The newsletter will give you one piece of practical information and another quick and simple tool that you can add to your resource toolkit.

Yes - I want to build my toolkit and feel calmer and more resourced

You Have Three Brains

Most people think we only have one brain - the one in our heads, but we actually have three: the head brain (cranial or cephalic) the heart brain (cardiac) and the gut brain (enteric). All three of these neural centres are semi-autonomous and capable of processing, remembering, and making decisions. These three intelligence networks communicate constantly via the vagus nerve and biochemical signals.

Western civilisation has developed to promote the cranial brain as the sovereign governor of human beings, but in actual fact, the heart generates the strongest rhythmic electromagnetic field in the body and sends more signals to the cranial brain than it receives from it. The electrical component of the heart’s signal is about 60 times greater than the brain's, and its magnetic field is up to 5,000 times stronger. The magnetic field of the heart extends several feet outside the physical body.

Your Heart Has a Powerful Influence on Your Brain

When you experience positive emotions like gratitude or love, the heart produces a smooth, harmonious rhythm. This physiological coherence allows the heart's electromagnetic field to synchronize the brain's rhythms, promoting better cognitive clarity, emotional regulation, and resilience. This is what is called heart-brain coherence.

How to Create Heart-Brain Coherence

Practicing heart-brain coherence is a simple way to reduce stress and improve mental clarity in just a few minutes. It is another practice that you can add to your 5-Minute Stress Reset Toolkit.

Place Your Focus on Your Heart

Place your hand or hands on your heart. Bring your attention to your heart, and the felt energy of your heart in the centre of your chest.

Breathe with a Steady, Slow Rhythm

Breathe slowly in a steady rhythm such as inhaling for the count of 5 and exhaling for the count of 5. Keep the pace steady, gentle, and unforced.

Imagine your breath flowing in and out through your heart area.

Generate Positive Emotions

As you maintain this breathing rhythm, recall a positive emotion. Think of something that stimulates a feeling of appreciation, gratitude, or care for someone or something in you. Sustain the feeling and open to fully experiencing the emotional warmth in your chest.

Benefits of this practice

Lowers cortisol: Decreases stress hormones quickly

Balances the nervous system: Shifts you out of “fight-or-flight” mode

Improves focus: Synchronizes brain waves for clearer thinking

​

Remember:

These practices may be new to you, or some may be reminders.

Reminders are helpful too.

They may seem too easy. We get programmed that things need to be

hard or complicated to be good.

Easy can be good too.

Let's Connect

Your feedback helps me to serve you in ways that are valuable to you. This week I would love to know if you have heard of heart-brain coherence before or if it is new to you, and what did you experience when you tried the heart-brain coherence practice above?

You can reply by email to support@janinlattimore.com

A quote for the week...

"The seat of knowledge is in the head, of wisdom, in the heart."

-- William Hazlitt

What's New?

I have added a couple of new perks to the Living Midlife Well Silver Membership on my website this week. I will now be adding my weekly podcast audios for members and I have set up chat via Discord.

Are you tired of the ads, spam, fake accounts, hacked accounts and trolls on social media and want to connect meaningfully and positively with people online?

Me too. So, as part of my member community I have set up our own online chat haven via Discord. If you haven't used Discord before, or thought it was just for gamers, then think again. It is a well laid out space to connect and has lots of fun and functional features. Join me to create a space where everyone’s posts get seen and the people you are connecting with are there with similar mindsets and interests to uplift each other.

Learn More About Becoming a Member

Weekly Article: Forty and Falling Apart: The Process of Midlife Unravelling and Reforming

In my blog article this week I share my story of falling apart in my forties and share three key things that can help you move from the mess of midlife unravelling to finding clarity and understanding.

Read the article

Listen to the Podcast Version

• ​Listen on Spotify​
• ​Listen on Apple Podcasts​
• ​Listen on YouTube​

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Aroha nui, much love
Janine

Janine Lattimore | Living Midlife Well | janinelattimore.com

At forty-three, I was penniless, alone, sick, and on a welfare benefit. My second marriage had just ended, my body was staging a full rebellion against me, and I was supposed to be a motivational teacher — someone who helped people build happy, meaningful lives. The irony wasn't lost on me. I was drowning in shame, held together by nothing much at all, wondering how on earth I had ended up here. If you're somewhere in your forties and life feels less like the plan you had and more like a pile of rubble you're standing in — I wrote this for you.

When Life Runs You Over and Spits You Out

In my early forties I felt trapped in my life. I had developed severe multiple chemical intolerance and was experiencing sometimes debilitating symptoms where my joints swelled painfully, my energy disappeared, my skin came out in burning, itching rashes and my brain would melt into fog or be hijacked by anxiety. I felt like I had very little time or energy to do the things I wanted to do, or even to have any space for myself. My second marriage was struggling under the weight of stress that we had been and were experiencing. It felt like life had run my husband and I over and spat us out on opposite sides of the road. I thought that I had got it right the second time round, but unexpectedly and painfully, marriage number two came to an end.

Here is what led up to that. I had my son when I was thirty-eight and he was born with digestive conditions that meant he wailed in pain every time I tried to breastfeed him, and he couldn’t sleep lying down. We eventually got him put on a special formula, but not before I looked like I was anorexic from being too scared to eat anything in case it was what was causing the problem. He still didn’t sleep for more than an hour or two at a time until he was about two. Then my father had a stroke and I had to help care for him because my only sibling lived overseas and my mother had died when I was thirty-two. I was also trying to help care for my god-daughter who had abuse issues in her home life, and then she started running away and I would spend days searching for her.

In the midst of all that I began to realise that I was carrying a truck load of fear and guilt, and at my core I hated myself. I also knew that my lack of self-love and acceptance had played a big part in my relationship issues. I felt stuck, exhausted, bound, depressed and like I had been waiting for someone to save me who never came.

The Shame Story We Tell Ourselves

By midlife some people have made it - achieved their goals of career, family and financial success. However, I think that more of us get to midlife and think, “this is not where I had imagined, expected or wanted to be at this point in my life.” For me, I had dreamed of being a happily married, successful motivational speaker, inspiring and helping thousands of people. The reality, at forty-three I had experienced two failed marriages, and I was penniless, alone, sick and on a welfare benefit. I felt broken. I felt fucked up. And I felt like an imposter every time I tried to write or speak about personal growth, health and happiness. It wasn’t just the challenge of the circumstances I was experiencing, it was the shame story I attached to them.

How Did I Get Here? Who’s Been Driving the Bus?

Looking back, I can see that this was a form of midlife crisis. The usual image of a midlife crisis is a man trying to recover his youth by buying a sports car or a motorbike and dating a woman in her twenties. I think it often looks different to this stereotype though. That is just one response to the build-up of stress and obligation we experience by midlife, and to the identity questioning that is a common part of realising that half your life is over and you don't want to keep living your life the same way. For a lot of us that involves ruminating on all the mistakes and bad patterns we have have lived so far, feeling like a failure and feeling broken or crushed by life.

There is Nothing Wrong with You

The end of my second marriage and equal shared custody provided me with both a stimulus and time opportunity to begin doing some deep personal growth work. The first affirmation, or rather healing statement that I made on my journey to loving myself was, “There is nothing wrong with me and I don’t need to be fixed.” I knew the soul truth of it, but it still felt hard to say, and especially to say it out loud to anyone else because I feared how they would judge me. It wasn’t until several years later that I realised I had been using what I perceived as my brokenness as evidence that I deserved to be loved. It was like I had been carrying around two suitcases my whole life. In one was all the painful things that had been done to me which I used as all the reasons I deserved to be loved. This was the one that I would open up and show to people to try and get them to love me. In the other suitcase, was all the things that I had done that I felt guilty or ashamed of. That one carried all the reasons I thought I didn’t deserve to be loved, and I kept it shut. The uncomfortable truth that came to me was that I didn’t feel my own worthiness so I played the small, nice, victim to try and get love. Only it wasn’t love. It was sympathy and attention. That first affirmation started an evolution in me, but it took many years of unravelling and learning for me to know in my whole being that I was not broken, and that I was worthy of love for all of who I am.

The Gold in the Cracks

As I was reflecting on my story in writing this post, I came to understood the Japanese art of Kintsugi in a new way. Kintsugi is an ancient Japanese practice of repairing broken pottery by mending cracks with lacquer mixed with gold, silver or platinum. This highlights the scars as the beauty of imperfection and makes the repaired piece even more unique and valuable. I have always thought it was a beautiful concept, but in writing this it resonated with me deeply and personally. We can feel like we are falling apart in our forties, and that we have been smashed by life, AND we can put the pieces back together with golden love to create something more honest: a self where the cracks and imperfections are visible, but accepted, and in that, somehow a self that is more whole.

For most people, your forties are a pivot point in life and an unravelling. Your forty and falling apart may look like being stuck on an exhausting daily grind treadmill, buried under the weight of the many different hats you wear and the invisible load you carry. It may look like a silent inner scream, or maybe a full physical melt-down of “what about me, it isn’t fair, I’ve had enough now I want my share.”* For all of us, within that unwinding is a cry of “I want to fully live, I want to be free, I want to be me, I want to matter, and I want to be happy. You are not broken, you are reforming. Let the masks you have worn for so long shatter, and from the pieces form your own gold threaded artwork.

Three Things That Helped Me Through

However, it can be very hard to see how you can put the pieces back together when you are in the midst of the breaking and the losing. Let me share three key things that helped me make it through all of my experience of falling apart. These all hinge on the understanding that unravelling can also mean deciphering or figuring out. They are different tools to help you gain information and clarity from your experience that you can then use to move forward in ways that are more authentic to who you really are and creating the life that you want to live.

1. Feel the Feels

Acknowledge your feelings and let them flow through you. Be completely honest with yourself and let it be okay to feel whatever you are feeling. Interact with your feelings as if you were the parent and they were your child. Blocking or suppressing your feelings is like self-abandoning a part of yourself. It also traps the emotional energy within your body which can lead to tension, stress and low energy levels.

2. Develop A Growth Mindset

I did a lot of experimenting and risk taking in my forties. A growth mindset approaches life like an experiment where you try different options and however something works out, it provides information. In this, there is no failure, only learning. From each experience I would ask: what can I learn from this and what is this showing me about what I do want? Then, I would focus on how I could create more of what I wanted.

3. Make Friends with Fear

“Fear is the mind-killer” - Dune.

Fear causes a stress response in your body and makes it difficult to creatively problem solve or to even think logically sometimes. I found it very helpful to understand that fear comes from my subconscious mind trying to keep me safe. Now I think of it like a very diligent, overly cautious security guard warning me when my body feels unsafe. I acknowledge the warning, and then decide how I will respond to it.

“Fearful and limiting thoughts and feelings are not truths, they are purely thoughts and feelings, and are usually based on things you have been taught or experienced in the past. They are connected to old subconscious programming. Celebrate when they come up because it means the unconscious has become conscious, and awareness of them gives you choice. They are not a sign that anything is going wrong. They are simply an element of being human.” - extract from my book The Great Life Planner

From Breaking Point to Turning Point

I won't pretend the falling apart was graceful, or quick, or that there was a single golden moment where everything clicked into place. It was messy and slow, and sometimes I had to find my footing in the dark. But here's what I know now, on the other side of it: the unravelling wasn't the end of my story — it was the beginning of the truest version of it. Your forties aren't asking you to hold it all together. They're asking you to finally put down what was never really yours to carry, and to discover who you are when you stop performing okayness for everyone around you. You are not broken, you are becoming, and that, even when it hurts, is something worth showing up for.

Just One Thing

My Just One Thing action point for you this week is a reflection practice. Give yourself some quiet space to consider this series of 5 questions. I recommend handwriting your responses on paper or in a journal or notebook. The process of handwriting enhances the way that you process this with your mind and your body. This practice is something you can repeat any time you are facing a challenge. Here are the 5 questions:

1. Where do I feel stuck, frustrated, or out of alignment in my current life experience?

2. What am I feeling in connection to that (Feel the Feels)

3. What do I need to feel safe and secure in relation to this? (Make Friends with Fear)

4. What information can I receive from this experience? (Growth Mindset)

5. What do I want moving forward?

(I have included an inforgraphic of this below that you can save to your phone or to Pinterest)

Let me know in the comments, what is/was your experience of your forties, and if you did the Just One Thing practice, how was it for you?

Aroha nui, much love

Janine

• Song lyrics from What About Me by Moving Pictures 1982 

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Do You Love Them or Hate Them?

This week we are giving some much needed attention to a part of the body that is often overlooked, and which most people either love or hate. Yet this part of your body supports you every day, and is directly connected to every other part of your body. It’s your feet. Some people have a foot fetish and love a foot massage, other people think they are ugly and stinky and freak out at the thought of having them touched. In this newsletter, I want to open you to a whole new perspective of the value of your feet.

Did You Know?

You may know that the nerves in your feet connect to the rest of your body, but did you know that your connective tissue, your fascia, does too. A simple way to understand your fascia is to think of it like a skin wetsuit. If you pull the wetsuit tight around your feet, then it will pull the rest of the suit tight and down. This tightness can limit ankle mobility, shift your centre of gravity, cause pain in the calves, knees, hips, and lower back and lead to restricted flow of blood and lymph. It can even draw down the skin on your face and contribute to the signs of aging.

Feet and Moving Forward on Your Life Path

Psychologically and spiritually your feet are symbolic of your ability to move forward and have direction in life. This links to the topic of my article and podcast for this week, which is how to find your true life purpose (see the links below to learn more). In Yogic traditions the feet represent security and being grounded.

When you experience pain or issues in your feet, it could be a sign to slow down and evaluate the life direction you are moving in. Good questions to reflect on are:

Do I feel safe?

Do I feel supported?

Am I ready to take this step in life?

Are Your Feet Red or White?

That might sound like a strange question, but the colour of your feet may indicate emotional issues that you are experiencing. Redness in the feet or toes can indicate pent-up frustration or anger or feeling curbed in life. Pale or white feet can indicate extreme fatigue or “giving up”. If your feet feel heavy, then it can indicate that your nervous system is overwhelmed and energy is pooling in your lower extremities to help the body ground itself. Stiffness, tension and pain in your feet can indicate a subconscious desire to flee something in life, or a reluctance to step forward in life.

This Week's Practices

Go Shoe Free Daily

An easy way to care for your feet is to walk barefoot (or in socks) for at least five minutes a day. This exercises your feet and helps to connect you with the earth and ground you. You can heighten the effect of this by walking barefoot on grass, sand or earth. This connects you directly with the energy of the earth which can restore the electrical balance in your body by allowing the body to absorb electrons from the earth. Grounding your feet in this way can help shift your nervous system into a resting state and may reduce inflammation and improve sleep.

5-Minute Stress Reset

When you are feeling stressed, anxious or overwhelmed, or are overthinking, try this. Place your feet flat on the floor and then let your awareness travel down your body to your feet and the connection of your feet to the earth. This brings your energy down from your head to your feet, and can help slow a swirling brain and give you a moment of presence. Doing this for a few minutes can be enough to create space for clarity in your thinking and reset your nervous system.

If you would like access to this week's twenty minute guided practice video on how to effectively release your feet and ground yourself, then you can join the Living Midlife Well membership community for only $7US per month. Click the link below to learn more

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Let's Connect

Your feedback helps me to serve you in ways that are valuable to you. This week I would love to know if you practice grounding and if so how you do that.

You can reply by email to support@janinlattimore.com

A quote for the week...

“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

Weekly Article: What Is My Life Purpose? A Midlife Guide to Living True to Yourself

Your passion is your purpose. To find yours, answer the $10 million question.

In this week's article and podcast I'm challenging the idea that purpose has to look like service or sacrifice, and making the case that following your bliss is not only good for you, it's the most powerful thing you can do for the people around you.

If you're in your 40s or 50s and that restless, reaching feeling has been showing up lately, this episode will give you a framework for understanding what it's telling you, and three practical questions to help you answer it.

Read the article

Listen to the Podcast Version​

• ​Listen on YouTube​
• ​Listen on Spotify​
• ​Listen on Apple Podcasts​

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Looking for a writing journal to reflect on how to find your life purpose and live your bliss? I just added this design to the Living Midlife Well shop

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Aroha nui, much love
Janine

Janine Lattimore | Living Midlife Well | janinelattimore.com