Suicidality and perimenopause

[Eagle Ray]

Has anyone else experienced severe suicidality in relation to perimenopause? Did anything particular help? There is apparently a strong association for some women.

 I had a major drop in oestrogen a year ago resulting in severe anxiety/depression/suicidal ideation then. It’s re-occurring now. I have complicating factors of c-ptsd and complicated grief. Saturday was the anniversary of my mother’s sudden and distressing death. I was extremely bad on Friday and early Saturday.

I’ve been calling helplines and had some practical help. It helps regulate me for a few hours then I start to disintegrate again. It’s a feeling of totally failing apart. I do have a psych appointment on Thursday and I’ve booked a counselling appointment with the Australian menopause society as well.

HRT may help but I have to look at how it will interact with my liver disease which can be a complicating factor. It’s a rare disease and not well understood or even known about by most medical practitioners. I just feel totally overwhelmed.

[Eagle Ray]

Dear Indigo,

The book by Sandra Ingerman sounds very interesting. I am definitely interested in that kind of thing. I feel like I was doing healing at this level earlier this year, but it seems to have gone out the window at the moment. So finding a way to reconnect with that could be a good thing. I feel like I almost didn’t fully arrive at birth with my birth being traumatic and my mum not bonding with me. She wanted to but just couldn’t. I’ve felt outside the human world my whole life and still feel half where I came from at the time of birth, if that makes any sense? That probably sounds a bit crazy to some people, but I’ve had so many spiritual experiences and often feel more connected at that level than to the world I was born into. After a profound healing I did in March where I actually went through my mother’s death with her in the way I had wanted to be with her at her actual death, I had another healing experience several days later. Upon waking up I felt like all this healing energy was happening in my brain and I actually had visions of what seemed to be in the hospital room during my own birth. It was like I was floating outside my own body next to my mother who was struggling. I suspect I did dissociate and leave my body at birth because of the trauma. I actually saw medical instruments in this vision on a table next to the bed. The room was a kind of muted shade of pale blue. I felt deep healing at a crown chakra level with this vision. Technically newborn babies can’t see well but that’s what the vision was like, muted, obscure and the sense of a person struggling in a bed which my baby consciousness could not process or comprehend. It was only my adult self now that could try and interpret it.

 I feel I can tell you that stuff which others might think is crazy, but that vision and the earlier healing I had were profoundly healing. I find while working on the mind and body helps, that spiritual component is necessary for me to heal fully. It’s where actual transformation seems to take place and then the mind and body naturally heal as the spirit heals. All I know is that is what feels real and what experientially works for me.

It sounds like you are waking up exhausted. Are there dreams you can remember preceding that as well? Not that you have to share them here unless you want to. But just wondering if there are any clues about what is happening, maybe something you are currently processing? I’ve had things just spontaneously emerge, like my mind/body/spirit saying this is what you are ready to process now. Often that’s turned out to be what I work on next with my psychologist.

 I hope it eases soon and you can get restful sleep. Sending you lots of nurturing and peaceful energy. Take care and thank you for being such a kind person. You are helping many people here 💕😊

[Eagle Ray]

Hi again indigo,

I replied to you earlier but it hasn't appeared. I was saying how the Sandra Ingerman book sounds really interesting to me and then described some of my own spiritual experiences, which I'm wondering if the moderators thought were a bit too out there. So it might not ever appear.

But I have looked at the book and I think I will either download via the Kindle app to my phone or get it on interlibrary loan, probably the former so I'll get it sooner. I find those kind of approaches very helpful.

I hope the waking up feeling like that eases for you soon. Sometimes I find something like that happens when my unconscious is getting ready to process something. It may or may not be that for you. Sending you healing and peaceful energy.

Thank you for your kind support and the kindness you give to others too on this forum 🙏😊

[indigo22]

Hi ER,

I have asked the moderators to have a look for your post. I look forward to reading about your experiences if they are able to find it.

I am only quarter way through the book but I can tell it will likely resonate with you. I decided to look into it because of the feeling of being "fragmented" which we talked about in my post. The descriptions of soul fragmentation in the book do resonate and if I find the book helpful, there is an audiobook with mediations for soul retrieval by the same author.

Feeling a little better today, so hopefully the boxing rounds during the night have come to an end. I think I have been trying to process something that happened recently that sent me into a bit of a tail spin. I feel like I have been stuck in relationship 'groundhog day' all my life. It's always extremes, either I like someone and would like to get to know them better but they are not interested even in friendship, or someone I have known for a while becomes obsessive. I never seem to have anything in the middle where things just go along smoothly. I guess that's why I have chosen to be alone for the last 20 odd years.

Hope you enjoy the book and would love to hear your thoughts when you have read it.

I hope today is a good day for you,

indigo

[indigo22]

Your post is up ER, and I can understand what you mean about having one foot here and one foot there. I really do think that you will get something out of reading the book. I also think that because you have been through trauma from day one, you may not be fully in the body which may require work on your lower chakras. I think the same goes for me as I have no feeling of belonging here. Your higher chakras seem to be more active, if they are not all open and in balance, thing just go haywire. I guess we both have some work to do in that department. And yes, you can always talk to me about your esoteric experiences as I find them really interesting. I read a lot about NDEs and past lives and find it all fascinating. I mentioned to you in my thread that I am an indigo scout, I totally resonated with the book by Dolores Cannon called The Three Waves of Volunteers, and I just know, intuitively, that I am from the first wave. I found an article a few days ago written by another first wave soul who describes the experience as if she is talking about my life. Turns out I am not just imagining it (which I never really thought I was), but it is a shared experience. The hippy peace and love era was the first wave (I am still a hippy and have worn tie dye all my life), which was to make enough change to the vibration on the planet to allow the next wave of more connected indigos to arrive. With each generation being able to come into a higher vibration and bringing their unique gifts into our turbulent world, they are gradually changing the frequency. This is why the planet is in such turmoil, the frequency is rising which is making the darker energy more visible to everyone, hence the leaders who don't want anything to change for purely selfish reasons, are trying to stop the change from taking place by creating chaos to keep the frequency from rising any higher. I hope that makes sense, and no I'm not crazy either, he he 😉 (although some might ponder on that).

Talk again soon,

indigo

[Eagle Ray]

Dear indigo,

Thanks for asking about my post. It was a technical glitch and yes it appeared now.

Yes, working on those lower chakras may be helpful. The more spiritual healing work I’ve done the more I’ve powerfully felt things through the chakras. Following the above healing experiences I mentioned, I had a day where when lying down I could really feel the in-between chakras being active and actually rotating - throat, heart, solar plexus. I knew it was transformative healing. Once you physiologically start to feel these things you know it’s all connected - mind-body-spirit. Grounding in the lower chakras makes sense for me. I do go into nature a lot to essentially ground myself, so maybe that’s in part what I’m trying to do. I actually co-regulate with nature more than with the human world as nature feels much safer to me. As I go into nature, especially somewhere remote, I become increasingly calm and grounded. In recent months I drove to some quite arid and remote places where there were these rocky outcrops off the main tourist trails. It’s like the deeper I go into remoteness the better I feel.

I’ve read quite a bit about NDEs etc too. I’ve had a lot of spiritual experiences now and I see everything as connected. It’s interesting to hear about your journey and I remember you previously mentioning about being an indigo scout. I’ve only known a little about that but I think frequency/vibrational energy has a lot of power. I think some of us are born more sensitive to it than others. It’s another realm of existence that’s always there but much of the world these days continues as if that dimension isn’t there. But indigenous cultures are still grounded in it and we all have ancestry that comes from that deeper knowing. So much I could say on this topic but challenging to put it all in a post. Everything I’m learning though shows spirituality and science are not mutually opposed but entirely commensurate with one another, and a lot of researchers are finding this now including neurobiological studies of shamanism. So much opens up in terms of possibilities when you can see how everything is connected.

The relationship groundhog day sounds a bit familiar to me. In my case I will tend to end up running away from the person I’m interested in, while someone else I’m not only not interested in but feel uncomfortable with is interested in me. I know this has so much to do with energetic patterns learned from childhood where it was very difficult to assess who are safe people and who are not, and no doubt the confusing messages I give out because of this confusion, fear patterns etc. Right now I’m reclusive and it feels necessary as I try to recuperate and heal from several very difficult years. I hope you can find some balance and things start to pan out in a way that you can make the connections you hope for. It seems a lifelong journey sometimes doesn’t it!

Yes, I think I will find the book interesting and happy to share my thoughts after reading it. I’ve been reflecting on how disconnected our society has become from natural, organic processes like perimenopause and menopause. In many indigenous cultures these events are valued and celebrated as a transition between life stages. Menopause is like the moving into deeper life wisdom, and women who are able to successfully cross into that are the ones who grow into old ladies with a twinkle in their eye and peace in their hearts. But in our society it’s like a medical illness that’s swept under the carpet and not spoken about. It’s weirdly totally submerged most of the time. I feel like many who struggle with it may have unresolved trauma but we have no traditions, rituals etc for managing that like other cultures have. We are, as your other post was talking about, fragmented. Yet that fragmentation goes unacknowledged most of the time.

Anyway, thank you for your kind words and support. I hope you get some restful and peaceful nights soon. Take care,

ER

[indigo22]

Hi ER,

Thank you for the back up with the member with Fibromyalgia, I think she will be able to see some possibilities now, it's so hard doing everything alone as we both know.

I agree with so much of what you have talked about, there are still too many taboo subjects that are just a natural part of life. Half the worlds population has to go through menopause at some point in life, so why would we not talk about it openly. Also, the biggest mistake science ever made was the thinking that science and spirituality are and should be two separate things. If they had not made that mistake, I believe we would be far further along in our journey of enlightenment in areas such as medicine, interconnectedness, resources, etc. It was arrogant to think that thousands of years of wisdom and indigenous knowledge was just old fashioned thinking.

As far as grounding in the lower chakras, I agree that when you are in nature you are doing exactly that, but when you are not in nature, you need to do something else to help with that. I would be happy to give you some tips on this if you are open to it.

I suspect you may also be an indigo, however your trauma has hidden this from you. It was the article on indigos that mentioned Fibromyalgia. If you would like to read it, I can't put a link in but I can give you the info on where to find it.

I hope you are feeling a little better each day,

indigo

[Eagle Ray]

Hi indigo,

Yes, I have tried asking a couple of women I know who are older than me about going through the menopausal stage and got the most uncomfortable reactions, like it is something you should never talk about. I could see it was a really stigmatised, unspeakable thing for them, when it is a biological process that all of half of humanity go through!

I have started reading Sarah Ingerman's Soul Retrieval book, just the forward and intro so far. She writes so clearly and I think I'm going to really enjoy it and get a lot out of it. I was interested to read the forward by Michael Harner who was her teacher. I studied anthropology and have looked at the work of a number of anthropologists including Michael Harner, Barbara Tedlock, Michael Winkelman, Jeremy Narby and Alberto Villoldo. All of them went in as Western trained anthropologists to learn about shamanism and then ended up going deep into the experiences themselves and learning from the inside out, several of them above actually becoming practitioners/healers themselves as a result. Narby was essentially describing how the shamans effect the process of epigenetic alterations back in 1998 with his book the Cosmic Serpent, long before epigenetics was a thing much spoken about or accepted in science. Barbara Tedlock has a book called The Woman in the Shaman's Body that looks at the traditional practice of shamanism by and for women that largely got overlooked in the scholarly literature on shamanism. Winkelman goes deeply into the neurobiology of shamanism. Alberto Villoldo was originally a psychologist and medical anthropologist and has now been practising as a shaman for decades. Thinking about these people I was inspired this morning to watch a podcast interview with Villoldo available on YouTube. It's called the Root Cause of Disease & How to Start Healing The Body and Mind/Alberto Villoldo and is an interview conducted by a doctor Michael Nyman. It covers the kind of ground that is very connected to the things you have spoken about, so I just thought I'd mention it in case it is of interest. He covers so many aspects of mind-body-spirit in this interview, even how humans are one of only three species that experience menopause (humans, orcas, dolphins) and the gut nutrients that help to deal with the senescent cells, transforming them from death cells into life cells that can shift the biological programming that occurs to humans in middle age. He is looking at the whole thing from this highly integrated perspective of mind-body-spirit and draws on the deep wisdom of the shamanic traditions he has learned from. He is such as wise soul who sees all the interconnections.

If you have tips about grounding the lower chakras I am happy to hear them. I'm still getting acute attacks of extreme distress. A couple of nights ago I was really bad again. It led me to cancel focussing on my DSP application for now because I can't deal with that in my current state. When I get intense ideation again I think I need to focus primarily on how I preserve my life. The mental states are involuntary and it is almost like being in a psychosis where I enter a realm of chaos where I can't even recognise myself. From what I've read some women do experience this in perimenopause and they did actually go into psychosis and it was hormone therapy that brought them back, so this is something happening at that hormonal level. I am trying to learn as much as I can about oestrogen and progesterone in the brain, how their decline affects serotonin, melatonin etc. A major drop in both serotonin and melatonin would have a lot do with feeling extreme emotional distress and much difficulty sleeping. I'm getting rolling flashbacks of experiencing multiple past traumas at once with no filter. When I watch things like the interview with Alberto Villoldo that I just saw it helps me balance somewhat as everything he says makes so much sense about the interconnections of our biological system and emotional and spiritual health. I start to feel grounded again.

I'm happy to read the article on indigos and fibromyalgia too if you want to send the info. The Villoldo interview above touches on something similar to what you describe about stages in human evolution and change, vibrational energy, Newtonian physics vs quantum physics etc and the current era we are in with both certain forms of awakening occurring combined with a lot of dark stuff happening on the planet.

Anyway, thank you for keeping in touch, ER

[Eagle Ray]

Thank you indigo. I did reply to you earlier today but it never appeared, but will see if it shows up sometime soon. Thank you again for keeping in touch 🙏

[indigo22]

Hi ER,

Thank you for the info on Alberto, I will have a look for that when I get a chance.

It's interesting the connecting thread between your anthropology background and the book we are reading, I love those kinds of synchronicities.

I am sorry you are going through those flashbacks, I imagine they would be very difficult and re-traumatising for you. I really hope you don't have to deal with them too often.

For the article, google 'Are you a first wave blue ray indigo?', it should come up as the first option on a site called 'Shamballa New Earth'. I think you may be one of the second wave indigos because of your strong connection to nature and spirit, but you are on the borderline time wise so could be first or second wave. Will be interested to know if any of it resonates.

With your grounding, I have looked at a number of crystals that I know will be of service to you. The following ones should be easy to find and not too expensive. You can choose to use them in a body layout, which I will explain if you choose that option, or you could look for them in bead bracelet form or point pendant form for wearing. These are all very grounding:

Smoky Quartz

Tiger Iron (combination of Hematite, Red Jasper and Tiger Eye)

Rainbow Hematite (may be harder to find - search for rainbow hematite rough - should say combination of hematite and goethite - there are a lot of false advertisers who are selling treated stones as rainbow hematite)

The next ones will be more expensive and not as easy to find but would be helpful with your hormonal fluctuations and autoimmune issues.

Lepidocrocite (also for soul retrieval)

Holy Blue Agate

Let me know if you have any questions, hope this information helps.

Talk again soon,

indigo

[Eagle Ray]

Thank you kindly indigo 🙏

There is a gift shop about a 10 minute drive from here that I remember has crystal necklaces, pendants and bracelets and I'm pretty sure I've seen that smoky quartz is one of the ones they have. I will have a look there in the next couple of days. While I'm not someone who has felt the strong affinity I know some people feel with crystals, I'm open to trying things.

I'm often drawn to wild places where there are rock formations and I seem to get my energy healing there. On recent road trips I did I went to multiple rocky outcrops. I was just really instinctively drawn there and on the first trip I was following an indigenous songline that runs up from a river where I live to inland arid regions. The outcrops I went to are granite and all have quartz in them. One in particular had super rich quartz deposits that were really beautiful to look at. I really truly feel deep energy in these places. I'm respectful of them too and mindful to greet and acknowledge the ancestor spirits. When I was at my worst a bit over a week ago and was actually trying to locate a hospital to admit myself to because I was that bad, I ended up deciding the safest place for me was my favourite rocky hill by the ocean which always helps me. There is a specific area around it featuring other rock formations and a rock pool, all which have this powerful energy to me. As soon as I walk out of that zone, even though the landscape is similar, it feels different, like the energy drops away. I've always had these really strong connections with natural environments. I also found deep healing in an ironstone range I visited 2 years ago. I really want to go back there. I found a huge mallee fowl next and met some really cool reptiles. I get so much healing just from the other species I meet. I also grew up near coastal limestone bays, so I love the limestone too and definitely used those locations as healing places when I was growing up.

I read the article 'Are you s first wave blue ray indigo?' There is quite a bit I can relate to, such as being highly empathic and being very sensitive to the cruel things that happen in the world. I have certainly also been one who feels responsible for healing others and having trouble saying no, but I am starting to shift now in these areas. Whether I am part of a movement as such I don't know. But I certainly feel a sense of kinship with people who are of a similar nature, who are idealistic and want to make the world a better place. I feel I am just still learning and growing and will see what forms and makes sense for me as I go along.

I have felt some improvement today. I woke with the same intense, sickening distress I have been for many weeks now, and have had tears come up many times today, but in the last couple of hours I do feel somewhat better. This morning I found clinical research trials into links between perimenopause and psychosis. There is definitely something going on for some women that is really extreme. I've found an online support community and I've been talking to other women whose experience has been identical to mine - mental health just suddenly collapsing and being completely overcome by relentless extremely dark thoughts. Women who have never had anxiety and depression before have been experiencing that, so there is something in the dropping out of oestrogen and other hormonal impacts that triggers these responses for some people. It does help me researching it because I can start to make sense of it, but the existing research on it is very much in its infancy.

I hope you've had a good day and thank you kindly again for thinking of me and being supportive 😊