The Nervous System, Hormones & Trauma with Paula Rastrick (Episode 221)

Hit Play Not Pause

Health & Fitness, Education, Self-improvement, Mental Health

4.9 • 696 Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2025

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you’ve ever felt like your mood has a mind of its own during PMS, pregnancy, or perimenopause, you already know that hormones like estrogen and progesterone don’t just affect your body — they shape your entire sense of well-being. And if you’ve lived with trauma or neurodivergence, like ADHD, you also know how reactive the nervous system can be. What happens when all of that collides during midlife and menopause…and hormone therapy gets added to the mix? For some women, the results are anything but balanced. This week’s guest, trauma therapist Paula Rastrick, knows that firsthand. She opens up about her harrowing experience with high-dose hormone therapy — an intervention that nearly unraveled her — and shares what she’s uncovered about the deep, complex relationship between hormones, nervous system sensitivity, trauma, and stress.

Paula Rastrick is a trauma therapist, author and creator of The Brain-Body Method, an integrated trauma-informed and neurodiverse approach to hormonal sensitivity. She is a BSc (Hons) in Sport & Exercise Psychology; has postgraduate certification in Psychological Trauma, Eye Movement Desensitisation & Reprocessing (EDMR) Trauma Therapy, is a Safe and Sound Protocol Practitioner and has training in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), pain science, and integrated kinetic neurology. She’s also done trauma-informed continuing professional development work in yoga therapy, applied polyvagal theory in yoga, vagus nerve integration, HRV training, performance psychology, and somatic psychology. You can learn more about her work at www.thebrainbodymethod.com and check out her e-book at

https://subscribepage.io/hormonal-sensitivity-els-trauma-pdf

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to Hit Play, Not Pause, a feisty menopause podcast for active performance-minded women.
0:14.6	I am your host, Celine Yeager. Each week, I bring you advice from athletes, scientists, researchers, and other experts to help you feel and perform you best no matter what your hormones are doing.
0:25.0	This show is a production of Live Feisty Media.
0:30.8	Hello, Strong Feisty Women.
0:33.2	I hope you all are well.
0:35.5	So, do I have a thought-provoking show for you today?
0:40.1	And I want to say very, very, very clearly up top here,
0:45.8	that this is not an anti-hormone therapy episode.
0:49.4	Because whenever I do a show that isn't completely positive about hormone therapy 100%,
0:56.0	I almost inevitably hear from someone who is concerned that I'm dissuading women in some way
1:00.6	from getting the help they need.
1:02.7	And that is antithetical to what this show is all about.
1:06.0	I very much want women to help the help they need. And often, sure, that means hormone therapy.
1:12.3	But now that we are in this period of time, when you have huge celebrities like Oprah,
1:18.0	hosting menopause specials in prime time, and the general conversation about hormone therapy
1:23.6	right now is presenting it as a revolution in women's lives, which 100% can be true.
1:30.7	I'm not saying otherwise. I think it is absolutely imperative that we also bring some nuance into
1:36.8	the conversation and talk about potential pitfalls of hormone therapy. And one that I don't think
1:43.3	gets enough airtime is mood issues. In our community
1:47.5	over the years, we have had incidences where women have posted in our group about needing
1:53.4	their spouses to lock up the guns because they were worried about self-harm. And I've had on guests
1:58.8	who ended up with suicidal ideation while on hormone therapy.
	...

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