"I am growing through this" This can regulate your nervous system

How your choices reshape your biology

The physical and pshychological 'recalibration" you are experiencing is a scientifically documented process where your brain and nervous system are actively reorganising in response to hormonal shifts.

While the decline estrogen can indeed leave the automonomic nervous system more vulerable to "fight or flight" stress response, the sources confrim that you have significant agency to influence this transition through the principles of neuroplasticity and behavioural design.

The Science of your agency

Neuroplasticity is the brain's remarkable ability to restructure itself by establishing new neural connections throughout your life.

During menopause, this is especially relevant because your brain is undergoing a "massive software upgrade".

By choosing deliberate behaviours and attitudes, you are not just "coping"; you are providing the inputs that determine how your nervouse system rewires itself.

The sources highlight several specific ways your deliberate choices feed back into your physiology:

• Language as a biological instruction: The words you use - internally and externally - are not descriptive: they are INSTRUCTIVE TO YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM.

  
  

  • Constantly telling yourself "I'm falling apart" signals a threat to the brain, which raises cortisol levels and intensifies the stress response.

  • Conversely , reframing the experience e.g., " I am growing through this" can regulate the nervous system.

    
    

• Activitating the "Rest and Digest" state:

Conscious choices like self-compassion and humour serve as biological antidotes to stress.

Humour specifically activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the " calm side" that encounters the fight-or-flight response.

• Rewiring through repetition:

  When you practice a new behaviour consistenly, you strengthen the neural pathwys associated with the action through a process called synaptic plasticity.

Over time , these behaviours become automatic habits that require less willpower to maintain.