43: You Don't Have a Hormone Problem. You Have an Alignment Problem.

You Don't Have a Hormone Problem.  You Have an Alignment Problem.

What happens to your body when you stay in a misaligned life?
Most women in perimenopause assume their symptoms - exhaustion, brain fog, sleepless nights, gut issues, anxiety - are purely hormonal. But there's a layer most doctors don't address: chronic misalignment, and the stress response it creates in your body.

In this episode, we break down exactly what staying in a life that doesn't feel right is costing you — physically, emotionally, and spiritually — and what to actually do about it.

Why misalignment makes perimenopause symptoms worse

In your 20s and 30s, estrogen helped buffer your stress response. In perimenopause, that buffer is gone. The same level of pressure, resistance, or misalignment that felt manageable at 35 now hits your nervous system completely differently.

When you're doing something that doesn't feel aligned, whether it's a job, a relationship, even a life that feels like someone else's, your nervous system registers it as a threat. It moves into fight-flight-freeze. And your nervous system governs your hormones. That means:

• Cortisol rises, often at the wrong times of day
• Sleep becomes harder and more disrupted
• Hot flashes, mood swings, and gut issues intensify
• Anxiety or low-grade depression surfaces — often without a clear cause

The key insight from this episode: It's not just your hormones fluctuating. It's your nervous system — dysregulated by a life that doesn't feel true to you — making everything worse.

What does "feeling misaligned" actually feel like?

You might not use the word misaligned. It might sound more like:

• "I feel like I'm on Groundhog Day"
• "I should be grateful, so why don't I feel it?"
• "I don't know what I actually want anymore"
• "I can't keep going like this, but I don't know what to change"

Jen shares honestly in this episode that even knowing what she knows, she's currently living this - working a side hustle that doesn't feel aligned, feeling the physical and emotional cost of it in real time. That's not a failure. That's what this transition period actually looks like, and it's more common than most women admit.

The emotional costs women don't talk about

Living out of alignment doesn't just affect your body. Over time it costs you:

• Your relationships: you give your best hours to things that drain you, and the people and things you love get what's left
• Your sense of self: the longer you wear a "work mask," the harder it becomes to remember which version of you is real
• Your intuition: every time you override your gut, you lose a little more trust in it
• Your full emotional range: when you suppress desire because you "should be grateful," you end up flattening your entire emotional experience

We make an important distinction here: gratitude and desire are not opposites. You can be genuinely grateful for your life and still want something more. Suppressing that desire doesn't make you more grateful, it just makes you less alive.

Why women in perimenopause suffer in silence at work

One of the most important conversations in this episode: the silent spiral many women in their 40s and 50s experience professionally.

Brain fog makes us forget things in meetings. Exhaustion makes us slower. We work harder and longer to compensate, which raises cortisol further. We don't tell anyone at work because we're afraid it will affect our career trajectory. So we hold it in, push through, go home, work more, sleep badly, and start the whole cycle again.

The spiral grows until something breaks — and for some women, that something is their health.

Can misalignment cause physical pain?

Sheri shares a personal story in this episode about debilitating hip pain that appeared — not once but twice — when she was most out of alignment. Through a ThetaHealing session with Jen, they traced the pain back to the emotional and energetic cost of moving in a direction her soul wasn't ready for.

The hips and knees are associated with movement, security, and moving forward. When you're being pushed forward in a direction that doesn't feel right, the body sometimes responds.

This isn't mystical — it's the body-mind connection that research increasingly supports.

What actually helps

The answer isn't a complete overhaul of your life overnight. It's:

1. Recognizing the cost — which is what this episode is designed to help you do
2. Getting back in touch with your intuition — not overriding it with "I should be grateful"
3. Taking micro steps — one aligned choice at a time, not a full life demolition
4. Stepping outside your environment — because you cannot get perspective on a picture you're still standing inside

About the Peru retreat

Everything we discuss in this episode is what our November retreat in the Sacred Valley, Peru is designed to address but at a depth that daily life doesn't allow. Check out From Autopilot to Soul-Aligned here.

Nine days. Ten women. A deliberately designed container to let your body regulate, release what you've been carrying, get clear on what you actually want, and come home ready to live differently - not just rested.

This is not a vacation. It's the opposite of a vacation.

Join us in Costa Rica, October 2026 for our Retreat: Soul-Aligned - Design Your Extraordinary Next Chapter! Click here for details.

Find us on instagram:

 @midlifewomenrising

@jenreimercoaching

Transcript

Midlife Rising — Episode 43

HOSTS: Sheri & Jen

SHERI (pre-intro)

Welcome. This is the Midlife Rising podcast. You're a woman over 45, and you're feeling like every week is kind of like you're living for the weekend, or you're living for the next vacation. We talked about this last week — about how the needing of the vacation is actually a symptom of something much deeper, and a vacation actually isn't the solution. This week, we want to talk about the concept of settling, and what that actually costs you in terms of your body, your mind, your spirit, your relationships. We want to talk about what this is costing you, and what to do about it. So stay tuned. We're going to get into this in a few minutes.

[Intro music]

You're a woman over 40 who spent your life being the one who holds it all together. But now your body's changing and your soul is done pretending everything is fine. Welcome to Midlife Rising. We're your hosts, Sheri and Jen, twin sisters and modern medicine women, here to help you rewire your stress response, balance your hormones, and reclaim your feminine power. Every episode is a rebellion against the rules you never agreed to, and a return to yourself. Join us — where midlife isn't a crisis, it's a catalyst.

SHERI (1:20)

This is actually part two of a two-part series. So if you haven't listened to episode 42, you might want to go back and listen to that first — but you don't have to. This will still make sense even if you haven't.

So here we're going to do something a little bit different to start. What I invite you to do — our listeners, and Jen, you can also try this as well.

JEN (1:51)

Okay.

SHERI (1:52)

Just take a breath. And maybe don't do this if you're driving, because I'm going to ask you to close your eyes. So if you're in a place where you can't close your eyes, then don't do this — but maybe just keep your eyes open and imagine this.

Imagine it's May or the beginning of June 2027. A year from now. Nothing has changed. You're in the same job, or running the same business. That same Sunday night feeling — "oh, I wish it was still the weekend." Feeling that same kind of autopilot, knowing the days are going to be pretty much what you expect them to be.

How does that land?

JEN (2:47)

Oh my goodness. So, as you know, I'm working on a side hustle right now, just to get myself back on my feet after my separation and all of that. And if I was still working this almost full-time job and coming home and working on our business at night — I'm, to be honest, getting a little burnt out right now. So if I was still in this spot next year... that is not a good outlook for me.

SHERI (3:10)

So talk a little more about that. What are you feeling when you imagine that? What are you feeling now that you don't want to feel?

JEN (3:18)

Right now it's a feeling of... Groundhog Day. Like I'm going to work every day, coming home, and then working on our business. And I love working on our business — that's when I feel fulfilled and excited. But today, all I wanted to do, the weather's getting nice, all I wanted to do was just chill. And I knew I had stuff to do for our business and I just felt like, I can't do this anymore. I can't do this every day — work all day and then come home and work more, or do the second shift when I've got my daughter with me.

So it doesn't feel like autopilot — that's not quite the right word, though it's sometimes the word we hear our clients use. And it's not dread. I don't dislike my side hustle. It just feels like Groundhog Day. The same thing happening over and over again. And right now I am living for my weekends, even though I'm working on our business on the weekends — I like that better. And I just can't wait for my vacation, which is coming in three weeks. So I do feel right now like the vacation is the solution to this feeling. And I know — we know — that it is not.

SHERI (4:35)

No. It's really about creating a life you don't need to escape from. And I actually don't feel that way — because I feel so fulfilled by my work. I love what I do. I don't mind that we're doing this at seven o'clock at night because I like it. And I get to do it with you, and that's good too. It doesn't burn me out. I feel fulfilled, I feel like I have a purpose, and it feels aligned. So I don't feel like I'm waiting for the next vacation, or even waiting for Friday. I enjoy my weekends, but I also sometimes work on the weekends by choice — because it feels relaxing sometimes. Sometimes I feel inspired.

JEN (5:20)

Yeah, like on Sunday I worked four hours because I just had this idea and I wanted to get it out.

SHERI (5:26)

What we're talking about here is that feeling of misalignment. Your side hustle you took as a temporary thing — everybody at work knows that — but it doesn't feel aligned. And that's why it's burning you out. You're constantly going to something that isn't aligned with where you want to go. And that's the biggest reason we burn out. We burn out because of all the busyness, yes, but misalignment — that resistance — sits in your stomach. You feel it.

JEN (5:55)

It does.

SHERI (5:57)

And that is actually getting to the first thing it's costing you: your body. Your health. Because that resistance is stress. That is cortisol coming into your body.

JEN (6:07)

I wanted to say one more thing before we go into what it's actually costing us — and this is about what it feels like. Because the other thing I'm feeling, and I know a lot of women feel this too, is that I feel like I should be grateful. This side hustle fell into my lap right at the perfect time when we were going through a bit of a financial free fall. And I feel like I should be grateful. I feel really guilty for feeling like I don't want to go to work every day. I love the people at work, I love my boss, and I would hate for her to think I don't want to come in. So I also feel all this guilt. It feels a bit selfish — like I should be thankful that I have this.

SHERI (6:55)

Guilt for actually wanting more. I felt that too, a lot, when I was in my corporate job. I had some great jobs that paid well. I always enjoyed who I worked with. I enjoyed my clients, for the most part. But there was always something in the back of my mind going: there's something different out there for me. This isn't it. This doesn't make me feel purposeful or fulfilled.

JEN (7:22)

Feeling like this constantly costs a lot.

SHERI (7:25)

It does. And I'm feeling it in my body right now. So — the first big cost is your health. I'm thinking about the cortisol that comes with that resistance, that knowing you're not doing the thing you were meant to be doing — or at least something that feels more fulfilling or aligned. I felt that way since my 20s. But by the time I hit my 40s and was still feeling that way, that's when cortisol hits differently. When your estrogen declines, you lose that buffer. I could handle it in my 20s and 30s. But when I hit my 40s? My body does not feel good.

JEN (8:10)

That's exactly it. The gut issues show up more... harshly. The sleepless nights have come back. I'm having to take supplements again to sleep through the night. All the menopause symptoms are going to crop up in your 40s and 50s. Gut issues, by the way — I don't know that people always know that. If you start having gut issues in your 40s and 50s, that has to do with perimenopause.

SHERI (8:40)

And the other thing — and I didn't say this yet — is that I'm feeling a bit down. Like there's maybe some low-grade depression. And it's not dread, exactly — I've had that dread feeling before. It's more like: is this all there is? But there is that feeling of, "I can't keep going like this. This has to stop. I need to move on."

JEN (9:05)

And to go on a little bit of a tangent — that feeling of either anxiety or dread... for me it felt like dread, but I think it was actually anxiety. I couldn't quite put my finger on it. And it could also feel like depression. That's fluctuation in your hormones — your progesterone, which is one of the things that keeps you feeling calm. That starts to fluctuate in your 40s and 50s. So there can be a very physiological reason for that. But cortisol is also going to impact it.

And if you're in this constant feeling of misalignment — and maybe you don't call it that, maybe it's just that niggling feeling that there's something different out there for you — and maybe you're now thinking, "I'm too old to go back and start over, or switch careers, or try something different..." That continuous feeling is going to cause your hormones to fluctuate. More anxiety, more depression, or that feeling you can't quite put your finger on.

SHERI (10:05)

The feeling of misalignment causes your nervous system to be in a reactive state. It's activated. When you're not acting according to your intuition, your gut — when something's telling you this is off, this isn't meant to be this way — your nervous system is in a fight-flight-freeze state.

JEN (10:22)

It's dysregulated.

SHERI (10:24)

It's dysregulated. And that's going to cause fluctuations in your hormones, including cortisol — which is a hormone. Your nervous system governs your hormones. Your nervous system governs everything. And we don't see it that way. We think, "My hormones are just fluctuating because I'm hitting perimenopause." But the fluctuations can be even bigger because of your nervous system situation.

JEN (10:50)

Exactly.

SHERI (10:52)

So to sum that up — there is a cost to your body. Your nervous system is reacting, which causes your hormones to fluctuate, cortisol to rise at the wrong times of day, and subsequently causes other perimenopausal and menopausal symptoms. There's a physical reaction in your body. It's costing you your health.

And then — maybe let's talk about the next one, and some of the emotional and spiritual stuff will come out through that.

JEN (11:18)

Oh — you mean my situation over the weekend?

SHERI (11:22)

Yes. Should we talk about that now? Because two episodes ago I did a solo episode all about hip pain. And the day that I recorded that episode, I started to feel hip pain for the first time since 2021 — when I was kind of in the throes of perimenopause. And then a week later, when we published it, I woke up that morning with excruciating pain. Couldn't move. Got up to head to the washroom and nearly threw up, that's how bad the pain was.

What we determined later is that there's obviously something physically going on in my body — but there are also emotions linked to it, as well as a spiritual connection with the sacral chakra. The hips, and the knees — because this was hitting my knees too — are about moving forward. About security. About maybe not wanting to move forward.

Remind me, Jen — what did we get to the bottom of? I've forgotten.

JEN (12:20)

Well, it was so much. And I'm not sure I'm totally ready to share all of it — but it started with your side hustle, because you also have that and you know it's not what you're meant to be doing. And there are financial fears that are coming up — fears that are causing you to want to do this side hustle because it's easy money.

SHERI (12:45)

And maybe I should do that — make some easy money to relieve the financial pressure. But it's not actually what I want to do.

JEN (12:53)

And that was sitting in your hips. When you start to not want to move forward — your hips, your legs, your knees, those are what propel you forward, literally. So when you have pain or blockages in those areas, it may have something to do with your soul telling you: this direction isn't right. Deep inside, you don't actually want to move forward with this.

And just for our listeners — what we did to uncover all of that was a ThetaHealing session. It's like hypnosis, but feels more meditative, more of a conversation. And Sheri and I did a session together to help resolve what was going on with her hips. And then she felt so much better the next day.

SHERI (13:40)

Oh my gosh. I actually couldn't believe how much better it felt.

JEN (13:44)

I just love hearing that. That's what keeps us doing this — not even the money. It's the excitement of seeing results.

SHERI (13:55)

So — the emotional cost of living this way, in a way that feels misaligned, like autopilot, like you're living for the weekend. Some of the emotional costs — which are linked to the physical costs — include not coping as well with little things. You end up snapping at people. Your relationships start to suffer. And it's that feeling of rage that many women talk about in perimenopause — that rage comes up when you are not aligned in your life.

JEN (14:25)

It can also cause grief — because you look back on your life and wish you'd done things differently. Regrets.

SHERI (14:33)

Oh yes. Grieving the things you wish you had done. Regretting things you hadn't done. Guilt — like you said earlier — guilt for wanting more, guilt for wanting something different. That feeling of: I should be grateful for this life. And yet you don't feel grateful, because there's something else you desire.

And — I just have to say this — you can have gratitude and desire for something else at the same time. That is okay. It's okay to be grateful for what you have and to also want something different or something more.

JEN (15:10)

That actually does need to be said, especially for anyone in the manifesting world. Because so many people who teach manifestation say you have to stay in this positive vibe, stay grateful. And sometimes you're just not ready to be grateful for something that's happened in your life. Gratitude can be a cover sometimes. You can't just fake it till you make it. Sometimes you just have to allow yourself to say: this sucks.

SHERI (15:35)

And we are human. We're meant to experience all the emotions — the full spectrum. They all have value and they all have a purpose.

JEN (15:45)

Sheri, that is such a big emotional cost — that we are put on this planet to feel the full spectrum of emotions. And if you are pushing down your emotions because you feel guilty, or you feel you should be grateful, and you're not going after what you desire... you are not allowing yourself to feel that full spectrum. You are depriving yourself of the experience of life. Because experiencing life is not just having an extremely joyful life. Actually experiencing life is feeling all of it.

SHERI (16:18)

Exactly.

JEN (16:20)

And you know what that brings to mind? I've been thinking a lot about religion — Christianity in particular, because that's the one we grew up with. Having grown up in a very religious family, you sort of think of Jesus as this never-attainable being. He's portrayed as so divine, so unattainable. And yet there are moments in the Bible where he displays anger or sadness. But what really blew my mind was that book — The Book of Longing by Sumon Kid. She humanized Jesus. He was a human. He was here because it was intended that he be in a human body — and so he was intended to feel all of the human emotions. Including — we're not even going to go there — but pleasure, and sexuality, and all of those parts. Did he really come here and not be expected to experience his humanity?

SHERI (17:15)

Well, anyone who's Catholic would probably say yes. But...

JEN (17:19)

I know, it's a very new concept. That kind of blew my mind. He was sent here to be human. So of course he's supposed to experience humanity.

Anyway — tangent. All that to say: we're meant to experience all the emotions.

SHERI (17:35)

Yes. So that's the second big area of cost — all of these emotional costs, if you're in this state.

And just related to that — it can also cost you your relationships. Your relationship with a partner, a business partner, your colleagues. Snapping at your children.

JEN (17:55)

We're dealing with this actually with one of my side hustle clients right now who I know is in menopause. She is snapping at us all the time, and I think it is going to cost us our professional relationship. So that's another piece of it — what does all of this cost your relationships?

SHERI (18:15)

Then there's your sense of self. You talked in the last episode, Jen, about the vacation version of you versus the work version of you. At work, you were wearing a mask. And when you do that for so many years — which I did too — you start to lose that sense of who you are. Which is the real version of you? And when do you get to show that?

If you're only pulling out your true self on vacation, that must feel like such a huge release. But what does it feel like to bottle that up continuously during all the other times?

JEN (18:55)

And one of the ways this comes out — and research shows this, in the business world and in many occupations — is that when women are going through perimenopause, especially if they're misaligned, they get caught in this operating system: go to work, get caught up in email, push through. You're exhausted because you haven't slept well. Your brain's feeling a bit foggy, so you don't remember everything — you're forgetting things in the middle of meetings, losing your train of thought, having to read things over and over before they sink in.

All of that causes many women in their 40s and 50s to work harder and longer — which causes cortisol to rise higher. And they don't want to tell anybody about it, because they don't want it to affect their career path. So they hold it all in, they suffer in silence, they're exhausted. Then they go home, work after dinner, cortisol spikes in the night because they're so stressed, they lie awake for two hours, they wake up exhausted — and it all starts over again.

SHERI (19:55)

And feeling misaligned at work, wearing a mask at work, not telling anybody, bottling up all of your feelings — all of that fuels the spiral. The spiral gets bigger and bigger until eventually it blows up. Some women quit their jobs, retire early...

I met somebody last week — a client at one of my in-person retreats — who ended up in the hospital because she was burnt out.

JEN (20:20)

I'm pretty sure there's research that shows that when you are doing something that feels aligned, you don't burn out. It's when you're doing something that doesn't feel aligned that you get burnt out.

SHERI (20:30)

There is research that backs that up. I've come across it in my academic studies.

So the costs are huge. And coming back to sense of self — what many women tell me when they're going through that spiral at work is that they just want to go back to being their old self. They want to reclaim their identity: I used to be strong and capable, a high performer. I want that back. I want my cognitive edge back, my sharpness.

JEN (21:00)

And that is an identity issue — or rather, an identity shift that needs to happen. Because when you are tethering your worth to an identity like that — chasing it because it makes you feel valuable — that is an issue. It will become one.

If you have an identity and you're not assigning your worth to it, that's healthy. But when you're chasing an identity because you think it brings you something, makes you more worthy — that becomes a problem.

SHERI (21:35)

And if you feel like losing that identity is a decline — like this is now just a big slide into aging and death...

JEN (21:43)

That's when you feel invisible. Not good enough. That is the downward spiral of unworthiness.

SHERI (21:50)

And you can see how all these things are so interconnected. It's actually hard to list the costs separately — because they're so intertwined. Which is why we take a mind-body-spirit approach. You can't tackle any one of these things at a time.

JEN (22:05)

Exactly. And when we say "spiritual" — your sense of self is a spiritual thing. Your sense of worth, your sense of self-worth — that is a spiritual concept.

SHERI (22:18)

So — wrapping this up — there were a couple more things I wanted to bring up, because we wanted to offer our listeners something: what do we actually do about this?

What we've been talking about across all three of these areas — the cost really comes down to this: when you are not being authentically you. Whether that's because you're putting on a mask at work, or going to a career or business that doesn't feel aligned, or even a home or a relationship that doesn't feel right — when that doesn't feel right, there will be costs.

And really, when we say "aligned," it's about being your most authentic self. It's listening to your intuition.

JEN (22:58)

And that's actually another cost — you lose trust in your own intuition. You keep shoving it down, saying, "No, I've got to go to this job." You're not listening to your soul, your desires. You start to think they're not valid or worthy. And that becomes a cost in itself. You become out of touch with your intuition, out of touch with the desires of your soul.

How many of you listening right now don't even know what you want anymore?

SHERI (23:28)

So what do you do about it? It's about getting back in touch with your intuition and following it. Listening to it. And it's not necessarily overhauling your whole career, your marriage, your social circles all at once. It's taking one step every day. What feels aligned today?

One of my clients was trying to practice following her intuition, and she just walked into a coffee shop she'd never been in before. She ended up meeting somebody, had a great chat, and it turned into this whole beautiful thing. It was a micro moment — "I've never been in there. I think I'm going to get a coffee." Following her intuition.

JEN (24:10)

And Sheri, I want to acknowledge how hard it is to follow your intuition, especially when it feels like you might destroy what you've built. Leaving a career to go be a chef, or a photographer, or whatever it is — that can feel very scary.

SHERI (24:25)

Or leaving your marriage — whatever that might be.

JEN (24:28)

Which is one of the reasons you're talking about micro moments — tiny baby steps toward what you desire. And it's also the reason we have a retreat. To help you do this. To have the confidence, identify the fears, meet your fears — so that you are ready to stop living for your vacations and actually live every day with inspiration and motivation.

SHERI (24:55)

So we've spent this episode talking about how you don't need a vacation. And Peru — this is not a vacation. It is a retreat, specifically designed to help you take the steps of letting go of the things that aren't serving you — identities, emotions you've been bottling up. Identify what you truly want. And really step into the person you need to be in order to go after your next chapter with real confidence and power.

The magic that happens when women really go after what they want — it's amazing. It's beautiful. We've seen it happen to clients, and the unbelievable things they're able to achieve.

JEN (25:35)

So as we close this episode, we want to invite you to check out the details for our retreat in Peru. It's not happening till November, but tickets to Machu Picchu sell out in June. So as this episode is dropping, there's actually a bit of urgency — if you are even a little bit intrigued by the idea of coming on retreat with us, go check it out. The link is in the show notes. It's midlifewomenrising.com/peru. There are only 10 women we're taking — a small, intimate group. It's going to be incredible.

Anything else, Sheri, before we go?

SHERI (26:10)

No — other than thank you, listeners, for showing up, for staying till the end. If you found this valuable, please share it with a friend who's in midlife. And go follow, subscribe — do whatever works on the platform you're listening on. We'll see you next week for another episode.

Transcribed by Buzzsprout. Speaker labels assigned and transcript cleaned for readability by Claude.