Sleepless in Berkeley
Question:
If you’re wondering about that weird stuff on the top of my last post to this thread – I forgot to delete the heading on the Deja News message. I’ve been using Deja News for this group because I find that posts get there more quickly – sometimes the difference is *days*. Also I’m convinced I’m seeing posts that never made it to my server at all. Could be wrong but.. That’s http://www.dejanews.com/ dn – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -Della Noche <dno…@mail.wco.com> wrote: >> [Four11 - The Internet White Pages][Visit our Sponsor] >> ——————————————————————– >> [Previous] [Next] [Hitlist] [Get Thread] [Author Profile] >> [Post] [Reply] >:
Response:
> [Four11 - The Internet White Pages][Visit our Sponsor] > ——————————————————————– > [Previous] [Next] [Hitlist] [Get Thread] [Author Profile] > [Post] [Reply] : > From fake_addr…@montana.com (Catherine Browman): > I am perfectly capable of, and have, looked > at my inner self without this bodily unpleasantness. > Cathe (Browman)
Yup! Wow – is this true for me! I was much more introspective and yes, kids, psychic before being overwhelmed with roller coaster rides and having to work three times as hard to get half as much done! I find dealing with these symptoms takes up a lot of time that I used to put into poetry, dance, music and general psychic (self and others) explorations. Oh, well! Someday! dn 10+ years but who’s counting? *I* am, dagnabit!
Response:
Joan Livingston wrote: > Menopause is a self-limiting passage. I would have hated to miss > out on the -value- (not enjoyment!), I have been finding in it all. It is > definitely an out-of-body, inner-body, out-of-mind- into-mind time. The > initially alarming "symptoms" come against our will, yet eventually we > make peace with them. Just like we did with our periods. > — > Joan
Joan, Are you implying that those of us who have always had difficult periods, (for me, since day one, when I was 12 years old), and who have had such severe discomforts throughout our entire reproductive lives, should have just taken it "straight"? I mean, I never have taken my monthly misery "personally" (as in "Why me God???") BUT, I do not feel that allowing "Nature to take her course" and suffering through my cycles without drugs, herbs and various other aids, would have been a positive addition to my life.As for "making peace" with my period, the best I can describe what I have had is an "uneasy truce" I understand if you are implying that human tendancy is to want it easy and to try to sneak by unpleasantness if possible. But I do not think that relief from bodily processes that are not of one’s volition can be put in the same category. I am all for doing my "inner work" and being a responsible world citizen, but I will never allow myself to be made wrong for my health, because I have be very vigilent about it my whole life: eat right, exercise, laugh, and cry regularly etc. I do my "remedies" in order to be able to get through what would otherwise be at least two maybe three days of being bed-ridden due to cramps and heavy bleeding, which have always been hell for me. I have no doubt that my life would have been so much richer for those approximately 1000 accumulated days through the past 30 years I was not "embracing my body’s true way of being-ness".That I was supplanting such a real and deeply resonating, soul-satisfying experience with something so banal and trifling over all these years, such as going to school, getting work, paying bills, and doing all that piffling stuff that misguided women like me think we need to do in order to be independant in this society. What a crying shame for me and all my equally deluded sisters who have lived as I have! Perhaps in my next life I will be blessed with a hereditary fortune, so that I can live a "truer" life, in touch with every process of my body without being interupted by what most of us here in America today call "real" life! I realize that there are many different forms of reality, depending on who, and where one is, but it seems for you and those like me,"never the ‘twain shall meet." I am pleased for you that you have the time and wherewithal to "be one" with your processes. Perhaps if you have a moment, you can ask the Goddess to make this so for anyone else who cares to join in. In the meantime, I will go pop 4 Advils, and lie down with my heating pad so that I can function enough to make dinner! Yours, in the "Process," Valerie
Response:
Hello everyone, I am new to the group, I have been reading this NG for about 2 weeks now. I am 37 and have been in menopause for 3 years now and it has not been easy. I am curious, I have not read that anyone is using patches or tried a new method of progesterone treatment. My menopause occurred naturally and I have been using Menorest patches for the last 6 months, after trying so many different pills. I use Duphaston progesterone every 3 months for 12 days. I am uncomfortable for about 2 weeks, then it is over. Has anyone ever tried this method of treatment? Curious in Holland CFN-D:) deb…@aol.com
Response:
- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -In article <4uli7d$…@news.rain.org>, joan…@rain.org (Joan Livingston) wrote: >…. > ——————————Jean Shinoda Bolen "Crossing to Avalon" > I wonder if "insomnia" is our bodies way of making us face that > inner time alone with ourselves, if we fail to honor that time during our > waking hours. Maybe sleep deprivation is a way to percipitate a crisis > that allows permission to go on to things that are more authentic for > ourselves. (This is how I as a mind/body person would think about all > this. Other people just take pills and be done with it. 
> Menopause is a self-limiting passage. I would have hated to miss > out on the -value- (not enjoyment!), I have been finding in it all. It is > definitely an out-of-body, inner-body, out-of-mind- into-mind time. The > initially alarming "symptoms" come against our will, yet eventually we > make peace with them. Just like we did with our periods. > ….
I too like Jean Shinoda Bolen, and am a "mind/body person". However, I don’t think getting, oh, a few hours of sleep a night is an attempt on my body’s part to make me face more inner time alone with myself. I think it is lack of hormones, probably estrogen, and I, living now, in 1996, want that symptom (and other things) to *stop*. I hope this is self-limiting. In the meantime, I don’t want to have to deal with this unpleasantness. I am perfectly capable of, and have, looked at my inner self without this bodily unpleasantness. I think your motives are very good. But what you are saying–put up with it–is what the medical establishment often says to women going through menopause. And I say to you too "no thanks. I want relief". Cathe (Browman)
Response:
Jo (J…@wtp.net) wrote:
Subject: Re: Sleepless in Berkeley Newsgroups: alt.support.menopause References: <01bb8607$892336a0$e2a4a2cc@ldisston> <4ufrg5$bri@samba.rahul.net> <4ugv02$627@news.rain.org> <320D74CE.6EB3@wtp.net> Distribution: : : Joan, I’m really curious to know why you think the symptoms of menopause : are something to enjoy. Have you been thru these changes yet? Are you : Jo Jo, I have been well into it with all the same symptoms you describe for about 6 years, with increasing intensity esp. after cessation of periods 6 months ago and now a gradual diminishing of the condition. No, I have found very little of it "enjoyable", but I have embraced the challenge of it all. I was just darn curious about it all. I am a mind/body, Jungian thinker and believe the body is wise. And I don’t think I, as a 1996 woman, have enough answers to "turn off" an ancient human process. I have also been in the health care field for 30 years and have a healthy degree of cynicism about it, fads and "cures" and fix-it, even if it ain’t broke thinking. Let me quote for Jean Shinoda Bolen in her book "Crossing to Avalon" to best describe my own thinking during this time: ————– Midlife Crisis. Midlife is a time and state of the psyche. Each of us arrives here sometime during the middle years of adulthood and stays for an indeterminate period of time, as if at a crossroads, before we can go on. It is s a time when we passively or actively, consciously or unconsciously, stay on or stray off the course we earlier embarked upon. What was required of us to get this far, how authentic do we feel, where are we headed? At midlife, we sense that time is passing; we know that it is around the halfway mark and that the rest of time will go by quickly now. We are confronted with the fact that we are aging; we do not have the same body we once had, and much else about us has also changed. A discrepancy may exist between what we have and what we wanted or expected of life, ourselves or others. Midlife doldrums, rigid attitudes, addictions, depressions will overtake us if we do not tap into deeper wellsprings in the psyche from which creativity and generativity and meaning can come. The soul requires that we turn inward to individuate. We must go into an inner process, muse, introspect, mull over, hold the dilemmas in consciousness, find our own clarity, tap into what can sustain us spiritually, and act resolutely if it is called for. Whether we repress what is true and suffer the consequences, or act on what we know is true and discover the price of it, or unconsciously set events in motion that precipitate a crisis, life calls upon us to do inner work. This is a time of adjustment, transition, or crisis that requires us to face and make choices. The very word crisis is derived from the Greek word, meaning "decision". In Chinese, the pictograph for "crisis" is made up of two characters" danger and opportunity. ——————————Jean Shinoda Bolen "Crossing to Avalon" I wonder if "insomnia" is our bodies way of making us face that inner time alone with ourselves, if we fail to honor that time during our waking hours. Maybe sleep deprivation is a way to percipitate a crisis that allows permission to go on to things that are more authentic for ourselves. (This is how I as a mind/body person would think about all this. Other people just take pills and be done with it. Menopause is a self-limiting passage. I would have hated to miss out on the -value- (not enjoyment!), I have been finding in it all. It is definitely an out-of-body, inner-body, out-of-mind- into-mind time. The initially alarming "symptoms" come against our will, yet eventually we make peace with them. Just like we did with our periods. — Joan
Response:
Joan Livingston (joan…@rain.org) wrote:
: : Leeds (ldiss…@slip.net) wrote: : : : I am trying to wean myself from HRT and am experiencing sleeplessness, hot : : : flashes and mildly irritating skin tingling sensations {something i never : These are normal conditions of menopause. Why do you want to : eliminate them? I don’t know about you, but I write for a living and I can’t *think* when I don’t get enough sleep. : Did you try to chemically alter the incovenient : conditions of menstruation? Yes. I find throwing up constantly for several days in a row debilitating. : Truly, I am curious. I wonder at the origins of our current : thinking on this subject. Your doctor? Your mother? The media? Friends? My body. — Karen ka…@wordwrite.com
Response:
ka…@wordwrite.com wrote: >Joan Livingston (joan…@rain.org) wrote: >: These are normal conditions of menopause. Why do you want to >: eliminate them? >I don’t know about you, but I write for a living and I can’t *think* >when I don’t get enough sleep.
Yup – renders me accident-prone, lowers immunities, and I end up doing really stupid things because I can’t think straight. Getting enough sleep is *wonderful*! >: Did you try to chemically alter the incovenient >: conditions of menstruation? >Yes. I find throwing up constantly for several days in a row debilitating.
I didn’t have any problems before peri – now the exhaustion of the first day is really debilitating. But for me there’s absolutely no comparison. In fact, yam cream restored my periods to what they were like in my 20’s – no problems, altho the exhaustion isn’t entirely relieved but lessened a *lot*! >: Truly, I am curious. I wonder at the origins of our current >: thinking on this subject. Your doctor? Your mother? The media? Friends? >My body.
RIGHT ON!! I came into this thing with no preconceptions whatsoever – in fact it took me four years, innumerable doctor visits, lab tests (including EEG’s, EKG’s, and CAT scans) to find out what the problem was. And my diagnosis came originally from a man who owned a coffee shop – the docs never figured it out till I came to them with the explanation!! Yup – my body was giving me problems that nobody in the medical field could figure out! (Turkeys – thank goodness things have changed to some extent but not enough from the posts I’m reading.) >– >Karen > ka…@wordwrite.com
dn
Response:
- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -Joan Livingston wrote: > Kka…@wordwrite.com wrote: > : Leeds (ldiss…@slip.net) wrote: > : : I am trying to wean myself from HRT and am experiencing sleeplessness, hot > : : flashes and mildly irritating skin tingling sensations {something i never > These are normal conditions of menopause. Why do you want to > eliminate them? Did you try to chemically alter the incovenient > conditions of menstruation? Why is menopause different? What made you > reach the decision that the normal menopause condition needed to be > altered? > Truly, I am curious. I wonder at the origins of our current > thinking on this subject. Your doctor? Your mother? The media? Friends? > Joan
Joan, I’m really curious to know why you think the symptoms of menopause are something to enjoy. Have you been thru these changes yet? Are you one of the lucky few who experience just the slightest little flush? I am truely amased at your responses to hot flashes, sleepless nights, and the mood swings. I for one would gladly give anything for some thing to make my "natural" experiences easier. And this was not put in my head by any one. I’m going thru the process now and can tell you that I am not enjoying it one bit. I don’t look upon sleepless nights as a thrill. Because I can’t get a decent nights sleep I’m always bone dead tired. You act like perimenopause and all it’s inconveneinces should be treated as a happy event in ones life. I for one will celebrate after my last period. Jo
Response:
Kka…@wordwrite.com wrote: : Leeds (ldiss…@slip.net) wrote:
: : I am trying to wean myself from HRT and am experiencing sleeplessness, hot : : flashes and mildly irritating skin tingling sensations {something i never These are normal conditions of menopause. Why do you want to eliminate them? Did you try to chemically alter the incovenient conditions of menstruation? Why is menopause different? What made you reach the decision that the normal menopause condition needed to be altered? Truly, I am curious. I wonder at the origins of our current thinking on this subject. Your doctor? Your mother? The media? Friends? Joan
Response:
I am trying to wean myself from HRT and am experiencing sleeplessness, hot flashes and mildly irritating skin tingling sensations {something i never read about or hear about} Progestin made me crazily depressed. I am looking for alternative help for these symptoms. Is anyone taking a product called Remifemin {Cimicfuga racemosa root}? Kate
Response:
In article <01bb8607$892336a0$e2a4a2cc@ldisston>, "Leeds" <ldiss…@slip.net> wrote: >I am trying to wean myself from HRT and am experiencing sleeplessness, hot >flashes and mildly irritating skin tingling sensations {something i never >read about or hear about} Progestin made me crazily depressed. I am >looking for alternative help for these symptoms. Is anyone taking a >product called Remifemin {Cimicfuga racemosa root}? >Kate
Kate: I decided to stop Premarin, and I did it abruptly. I have experienced *some* of the things you mention, but I’m replacing the estrogen with Natural Progesterone Cream applied transdermally. It works! No hot flashes, etc.! Nell
Response:
Leeds (ldiss…@slip.net) wrote:
: I am trying to wean myself from HRT and am experiencing sleeplessness, hot : flashes and mildly irritating skin tingling sensations {something i never : read about or hear about} Progestin made me crazily depressed. Did you talk to your doctor about this? There are alternatives. You might try an endocrinologist. You have all my sympathy–drug-induced depression is the pits. — Karen ka…@wordwrite.com
