Body Wisdom #6: Hot flashes, shame and sugar

I've been having a hot-flashy bunch of mornings, waking up at 3 or 4 or 5 because I'm TOO HOT.

I'm discovering for myself an interesting correlation between the hormones that make me flushed and feelings of shame.

Shame is a hot emotion for me. It starts with a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach: an uncomfortable, unsettled, roiling feeling that spreads up my chest, arms and face in a blush of heat and colour. Shame-faced, as they say.

For me, hot flashes feel a lot like shame. The only difference is that hot flashes don't start with that feeling in the pit of my stomach.

What's particularly interesting to me is that days when I'm having a lot of hot flashes also seem to be days when I am more likely to do or say something that causes me to feel shame. I've been wondering about how the mechanics of that work. Do the hormones make me more likely to say or do things I could feel ashamed of, or do they make me more likely to feel shame about something that I have said or done?

After much consideration, I think that what's going on here is that my discomfort is acting as a catalyst for my behaviour and the ensuing shame. Hot flashes are uncomfortable. So are many other peri-menopausal symptoms, like depression, down-spiralling self-regard, lack of sleep/fatigue or feeling like you're about to burst into tears for no reason. I also believe that a heightened sense of "not belonging" might be a peri-menopausal symptom, in the same way that it is often an adolescent one.

I think it is a pretty basic instinct to discharge discomfort by pushing it away: sending a harsh email or flippant text, making a mean joke, gossiping – essentially making one's own discomfort be about someone else.

Last week, for instance, I told a joke that seemed funny in my head, but landed with a THUD. And then the other day, I found something slipping out of my mouth that – well, if someone had said something like that to me, I would have felt so angry and judgmental. I realize now that both instances were knee-jerk reactions to feeling like I didn't belong. Both times I felt very ashamed afterward – afraid that I had been insensitive or inappropriate and either hurt somebody's feelings or ticked them off or just simply acted like a real jerk – like someone I don't want to be.

Both times I went and ate a large amount of chocolate afterwards.

And then I felt better. Well, I felt less ashamed. I did feel physically queasy, so it's probably more accurate to say that I felt both better and worse at the same time.

Making the connection between sugar and shame felt enlightening. I suppose since shame is the fear of not belonging/being loved and eating sugar simulates feeling loved and comforted for me, it makes sense that eating sugar would soothe my feelings of shame.

Sugar is a bandaid.

Sometimes, bandaids come in handy. They are great at temporarily protecting an open wound. But what I've been thinking more and more is that the hope of healing those wounds lies in leaning in to my discomfort and doing a better job of owning it.

This is a rocky time for me, and also a beautiful time – a beautiful, rocky time. I feel lucky to be where I am, to have the option of a lot of solitude and quiet and space to be where I'm at. And when I'm in a situation where I feel uncomfortable or like I don't belong, I am encouraging myself to lean into my discomfort, to breathe and to own that I feel how I feel and that that is okay, that I am still safe. And when I don't feel up to doing that, I am giving myself permission to step away – or to burst into tears – or more likely, to step away and then burst into tears.

This is going to be a struggle for me. It will require me to be much more vulnerable that I'm comfortable being. I hope I can accept myself where I'm at and feel compassionate for myself moment to moment. In all of these beautiful, rocky moments.

Tendrils (A poem)

I.

I don’t want anyone
I’ve ever loved
to leave me now

This rigid clinging
feels necessary
feels vital
feels deadly

I don't know how
to move beyond it
and yet
I know that I must

I must go out for dinner
with a smile on my face
I must go to the grocery
store
and find there the
ingredients necessary
for life
for a future
for change

II.


A little shoot is poking
at the valves and
chambers
deep inside my heart

Mitral
Ventral
What the hell

All feel the disturbance of
something growing

It is something born of
endings
it is something terrified of
beginnings

It can't help itself

It is inexorable
relentless
defiant
tender
tiny

but growing

making an irritating
scritch
scritch
scritch
as it perforates the walls

When it is fully grown
its roots will fill my lungs
its stem will twine round
my esophagus
and burst out
from under my tongue

*****

I wrote this poem in the winter of 2014–2015. It began in one of Firefly Creative Writing's wonderful on-line classes. It was improved with feedback from my mom, poet Janet Barkhouse, whose poems have been published in many periodicals and whose blog can be found here.