Perimenopause, rheumatoid arthritis and learning to listen to the body I thought I’d lost
There is a lot of conversation around the nervous system at the moment. We talk about regulation, stress, rest, breathwork and creating moments of calm, and I think all of these things have their place. But my understanding of what it really means to look after your nervous system has changed dramatically over the last few years.
For me, it isn’t about being calm all the time, or living a perfectly balanced life. It’s about learning to listen to your body before it has to shout. And, perhaps more importantly, learning to trust what it is telling you.
When life is already asking a lot of you
When I look back, I can see just how much I was carrying. I was running a sales team of 25, teaching yoga, Reiki, trying to be there for my friends and family, keeping fit, trying to eat well and generally trying to keep everything moving. I was proud of being someone who could juggle a lot, and if I’m honest, I had become very good at pushing through.
At the same time, perimenopause was beginning to hit me hard. I’m still in perimenopause now, but this period of it was a huge change for me. My sleep changed, my emotions changed, my energy changed and I didn’t quite recognise myself anymore. I was trying to keep doing everything I had always done while my body was quietly asking for something different.
Then came the pain.
My joints became so painful that I couldn’t hold myself in a plank. I struggled to lift myself off the loo. Things I had done without thinking suddenly became incredibly difficult, and I remember wondering, what the hell is happening to my body?
Eventually, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. My consultant believes the hormonal changes I was experiencing through perimenopause may have been a trigger for the onset of my RA. We can’t say that hormones simply caused it, the body is far more complicated than that, but the timing felt significant to me.
The shame I wasn’t expecting
What I wasn’t prepared for was the shame.
I’m a wellbeing practitioner. I’m a yoga teacher. I’ve always been a bit of a fitness girl. My work is centred around helping people feel better in their bodies, and suddenly my own body wasn’t doing what I wanted it to do.
I couldn’t move like I used to. I couldn’t demonstrate everything I wanted to. I was in pain and exhausted, and underneath all of that was this uncomfortable little voice asking me, shouldn’t I know how to look after myself?
But illness doesn’t care what you do for a living. Being a yoga teacher doesn’t make you immune to life. It doesn’t mean your body won’t change, your hormones won’t wreak havoc, or that you won’t sometimes need help.
My diagnosis didn’t mean I had failed. It meant I was human.
On reflection, I think that has been one of the biggest lessons for me. We can know all the tools. We can teach breathwork, yoga, Reiki and wellbeing. We can understand the importance of rest and self-care. But none of that means we will never struggle. We are still human beings living human lives, with bodies that change and seasons that we don’t always get to choose.
When pushing through stops working
The medication journey was another difficult chapter. Some of the early treatment was hard, and one of the medications I was prescribed is also used as a chemotherapy drug, albeit in very different circumstances and doses. I lost around a third of my hair, and emotionally, I found the whole experience incredibly difficult.
I started to have panic attacks, followed by what I can only describe as a little breakdown. I had reached my limit.
It took time, a brilliant consultant who listened, and finding the treatment that was right for me. Eventually, I was put forward for biological treatment, and slowly things began to change. Today, I’m in remission, and I am deeply grateful for that.
But the experience made me look very differently at the way I had been living.
I had become incredibly good at pushing through. Tired? Keep going. Stressed? Keep going. Emotional? Keep going. Body hurting? Take a breath and get on with it. There was always another class to teach, another responsibility to pick up, another person to be there for.
I don’t think I’m alone in this. So many of us have learnt to override the signals our bodies are constantly giving us. We call it strength. We call it resilience. We call it getting on with life.
But there is a difference between resilience and being disconnected from yourself.
The body communicates long before it screams. The tight shoulders, the shallow breath, the restless sleep, the exhaustion that doesn’t seem to lift, the feeling that you have nothing left in the tank. Sometimes there is a very quiet voice inside saying, I need you to stop.
I don’t want to wait for my body to scream anymore. I want to learn to hear the whisper.
What protecting the nervous system means to me now
This is where my understanding of nervous-system care has really changed.
I don’t believe it means we should always practise gentle yoga, avoid challenge or wrap ourselves in cotton wool. There are times when my body needs softness, restorative yoga, breathwork, Reiki, sound, stillness, and simply lying down and allowing myself to be held by the earth.
But there are also times when my body needs movement. Strength. A beautiful, strong vinyasa yoga class that makes me sweat, breathe deeply and feel completely alive in my body again.
I think the real work is learning to recognise what we need in that particular moment.
Can I challenge myself without abandoning myself?
That question has become really important to me. There is a difference between challenging your body from a place of connection and pushing it because you’ve learnt to ignore its signals. One can feel empowering. The other can leave you depleted.
For me, wellbeing now feels much less about getting everything right and much more about being in relationship with myself.
Listening. Responding. Adjusting.
Sometimes the most loving thing I can do is rest. Sometimes the most loving thing I can do is get on my mat and move.
Coming home to myself
I’m still learning. I’m still in perimenopause, and I still have days when my hormones throw me a complete curveball. There are days when I feel strong and energised, and days when my body asks me to slow down.
I’m learning not to judge either.
Perhaps coming home to ourselves isn’t about becoming the person we were before. Maybe it’s about meeting the person we are becoming, with a little more compassion, a little more trust and a lot less pressure to have everything figured out.
My body has carried me through some incredibly difficult things. These days, I’m learning to return the favour by listening to it, caring for it, challenging it when it feels right, and resting when it asks me to.
And when I step onto my mat now and find myself moving through a strong vinyasa practice, breathing, sweating and feeling completely present in my body, I don’t take that for granted.
I feel grateful.
I feel alive.
And I feel very, very lucky to be back in my body.
Maybe protecting our nervous system isn’t about becoming someone who never feels stressed.
Maybe it’s simply about becoming someone who notices.
Someone who pauses.
Someone who listens when the body whispers, before it has to scream.