The Taboo Transition
Menopause and Its Impact
- Historical neglect of women’s health
- Basics of menopause
- Relationship between hormones and mental & physical health
- Top mental health concerns
- Hot flashes, joint pain, and more
- Potential body image issues
- Importance of a weight-inclusive approach
- What your client has probably heard from their doctor about treatment options
Assessment and Preparation for Therapy
Where and How to Focus
- Psychoeducation
- Top questions to find out if menopause is influencing symptoms
- Assess depression and anxiety in midlife
- Track body dissatisfaction
- Understand your clients’ use of exercise
- Screen for eating disorders
- Food recall to understand eating patterns
- Risks related to dieting and weight-cycling
- Questions for sleep disruption
Treatment Interventions
“Love Your Body” is No Longer Enough
- Normalize mental health challenges in midlife
- Thought records for anxiety & depression
- Behavior chain analysis for problematic patterns
- DBT distress tolerance techniques to soothe intense emotions
- Emotion mind, reasonable mind, and wise mind
- Identify and act in accordance with values
- Dispel clients’ fears about brain fog
- Constructive worry intervention for sleep
- Sleep hygiene tips at midlife
- CBT for hot flashes and night sweats
- Intuitive eating and gentle nutrition
- Cope Ahead technique to build self-trust with food
- Tap into reward circuitry with exercise
- Tools to combat unidimensional identity centered on body image
- Cognitive reframing to reshape unhelpful body image thoughts
- Personal photos exercise
- Micro goals to improve body image
- Grief work for body dissatisfaction
- Help clients cultivate friendship with food
- Relational concerns: intimacy, caretaking, bereavement
- Strategies to increase social support
Additional Clinical Considerations
Help Your Clients Navigate A New Chapter
- Collaborate with medical and other professionals
- Scope of practice issues
- When to refer to a menopause practitioner
- Special considerations for early and medically-induced menopause
- Affirming care for transgender clients
- Menopause symptoms in the workplace
- Research limitations and potential risks


