With all the health challenges, changes and responsibilities that come with midlife healthcare, for ourselves, our families and our aging parents, do women need one more person to manage as we ourselves transition to menopause? Whether we do or don’t, it apparently doesn’t matter. Take out your notebook and add “the resurfacing of childhood traumas” to the perimenopause trail mix.
Before I go into the science and analysis of why and how hormones and trauma are linked, I just want to say, this has been happening to me with increasing frequency. So many old wounds are not only coming back to me, but really moving to the forefront of my memories. And I find that it takes very little to trigger the details that almost always lead back to me remembering more information about terrible events from my past.
For example, the other day I was unloading the dishwasher and I took out this deep Indigo Blue bowl I’ve had for ages. But for the first time, looking at the color took me straight back to this bathroom we had in my childhood home in Dhanmondi in Bangladesh in the 1980s.
The bathroom was in the corner of the grand ground floor of the house, adjacent to the formal living room my parents reserved for only the most important state and diplomatic guests. It had a deep Indigo Blue toilet but the sink was small and white. The main characteristic of this bathroom were these handmade tiles with matching blue paisleys. As a child, they looked like curled up snakes to me.
This bathroom was only used when we had parties and had this pungent, damp smell that my parent’s staff would cover up by strategically placing small, floating candles around the room. The bathroom didn’t really work well and always had some issue that needed to be fixed. The beautiful, special, one of a kind bathroom was dysfunctional and mostly ornamental. That day, just looking at the color of the bowl brought the damp smell of that old bathroom into the present, and took me right back to being a scared girl in my family home, fearfully pondering which version of which parent I would get that day.
Apparently, this is not random and I’m not the only (perimenopausal) woman dealing with past traumas in the present. Researchers long found that women exposed to childhood abuse and neglect “have an increased likelihood of reporting hot flashes and night sweats during the menopausal transition.” In short, childhood abuse is associated with increased vasomotor symptoms among midlife women.
But now there’s more information and proof of a connection. A study published in 2023 in the journal Menopause, and reported in Oprah magazine, found that the relationship seems to go both ways: perimenopause may bring a worsening or resurgence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, such as flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, negative mood changes, and hyperarousal.
“We think that these are bidirectional relationships: If you’ve been through trauma, you may have worse menopause symptoms, and when women who’ve experienced trauma enter into perimenopause, that can exacerbate the symptoms of PTSD and depression,” Jennifer Stevens, PhD, an associate professor at Emory University School of Medicine and a coauthor of the 2023 study, tells Oprah. “We think the hormonal changes that happen in perimenopause may alter brain function in ways that can promote PTSD-like symptoms, too.”
As with so much (too much?) in women’s health, research is scarce and still in early stages, but experts believe that fluctuating estrogen levels are likely involved, since the hormone helps regulate and calm the brain’s threat-detection circuitry. Traumatic memories often resurface during perimenopause because fluctuating hormones and dropping estrogen compromise the brain's emotional regulation.
What the heck? The things we thought we survived and pushed past can bite us in the back during perimenopause? This isn’t the only trauma-related women’s health link that has come to my attention lately.
Now, experts are saying that endometriosis, PCOS (now PMOS), and menstrual mood disorders, like PMDD, all have trauma-related roots. And let’s not forget that 80% of people with autoimmune disorders are women.
The things we thought we got over, apparently live deep inside of us. And have serious implications for our health.
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