Paula Rastrick is a British psychotherapist who was prescribed too-high levels of hormone therapy at a private clinic in the UK, which ended up causing more physical and emotional problems than she originally sought treatment for. 

She is also complex trauma survivor and classed as a Highly Sensitive Person and her mission is to raise awareness of both and how they impact menopause transition.

Her episode runs in the same week that the British Menopause Society released a warning about reports of high doses of menopause hormone therapy being given in the UK, and the syndrome known as tachyphlaxis. This is what happens when people taking drugs find the drugs to be less effective over time, and in the case of hormone therapy, can mean women with high estradiol levels may believe they need more estrogen, and also that women with higher levels of estrogen can experience adverse mood-related symptoms. 

Paula has create the brain body method of working with women on post-traumatic growth, resilience and healing.. She works with clients one-on-one and has just begun offering affordable monthly workshops that educate women about their body’s stress and trauma responses and gives them tools to handle and process it which you can access through her website.

Highlights of our conversation: 

• Her story of being overprescribed HRT

• The vastly understood role of childhood trauma and highly sensitive people in perimenopause 

• Why all mood issues are not simply another perimenopause  “symptom” 

• What happens when too much estrogen hits a highly sensitive brain

• Remembering HRT is a pharmaceutical drug, not our body’s actual hormones 

• Low and slow as a guiding principle 

• ADHD, neurodiversity and more

• Why menopause needs to connect the dots with other research

• Why menopause is a bio-psycho-social transitio

• Differential diagnosis and the danger of counting everything as a perimenopause symptom

• Is there such a thing as menopause mood disorder? 

• Narrowing the conversation is not helping women

• Why trauma isn’t about the event - it’s about how you process the event 

• Libido loss – and the pain and stress of knowing that our relationships need work – in perimenopause 

• HRT as a baseline to tackle everything else rather than a magic pill 

• What do you do when you listen and think ‘this sounds like me’

• The book she recommends you start with if you think this might be you

Where to find Paula:

IG+TikTok: @mrspaularastrick

Web:Thebrainbodymethod.com