Hey, Menopausal Lady-Friends if you’ve been flatlining lately over the things that used to make you dance! A walk on a windswept beach. Lunch with your girls. Fresh nails. Fresh kicks. Baking cakes. Arranging flowers. Online sale shopping …? You may be suffering from a little know syndrome called Anhedonia.
I’d never heard of it either until the other day, when I uplifted an Australian Women’s Weekly from Koru, as you do. Towards the back of the mag in the health section, under the sadly titled - Menopause “Feeling Flat? This Could Be Why” there it was - Anhedonia, derived from Greek meaning - without pleasure. It appears that along with the many delights attached to oestrogen levels dropping you may/can also say goodbye to happy levels of the feel-good chemicals dopamine and serotonin, and hello to Anhedonia.
I’ve certainly been flatlining since well before Covid raised its ugly head (and have been wondering why?) What could be the cause of this loss of enjoyment, and feeling generally numb? I’ve been on HRT for three years, a daily dose of synthetic oestrogen but still oestrogen. It certainly fixes a lot of menopausal things but the more I think about it - not my happy metre. Is it general mid-life boredom? Adult children leaving the nest? Failed children’s author syndrome (my last book came out in 2017.) Maybe I’m just a sad person. Naw. I certainly dance and sing when nobody’s watching. But I’d love to mine me some enthusiasm.
‘Sufferers report not being able to feel much of anything.’ Jeepers stir my arsenic tea. Cures include: Plan something fun! (Go to a theme park!) Share your feelings (I don’t have a life coach, who would listen!) Rediscover touch – walk on the lawn barefoot (it’s winter.) Give yourself a 15-minute facial massage every morning to boost oxytocin levels (personally I’d prefer to spend fifteen minutes doing something else personal.) Try HRT or eat phytoestrogens – nuts, seeds, soya products. I do.*
It’s not really ‘an inability to experience pleasure’ I have it’s just that like - hearts on an IG post – the joy is short-lived. I can certainly smell the frangipanis and I’ve been experiencing new things - Ayurvedic massage for one. And old things – riding a motorized two-wheeled vehicle (thankfully my trusty Lombok scooter was automatic, I have accomplished a wheel stand on a farm bike in first gear, aged 15.)
However, this flatness did lead me book in to Leah the crystal healer, for a second time. I’m new to self-help. I’ve never sought therapy, although I probably should have after my brother died and during bouts of post-natal depression. I’ve always hung on to the notion that – with time, it will pass. Now I’ve given in to the fact that people want to help, and similar to seeking acupuncture when you’re so racked with morning sickness you can barely stand – it’s a kind person you give money to who’s trained to listen. And help. (Plus I'm writing magic realism atm.)
As expected, while I told my writer friends I was going to my crystal healer on the Monday, after the kid lit conference, their eyes glazed over and such was/is the membrane thinness of my fear of failure soul, I was suddenly filled with doubt.
So when Leah brushed me off with an email on Monday morning saying she’d forgotten she was taking her son to the orthodontist and could I do Tuesday?
I thought beggar my chakras – it’s a sign.
There had been a lot of signs over the weekend, at the hui.
Whale sightings.
Spring rain in the park.
Evening light over one tree hill.
Early morning coppers knocking on the front and back doors.
Taxiing to the viaduct to find the restaurant was a kilometre away on Fort Street. I needed to get my steps up.
I’m going home this afternoon, I cried.
Leah embraced me in a soft hug and started wafting my energy fields towards her with open palms, as I relaxed into her soft sofa.
I don’t know what my gift is, she said, but I see things
I unloaded. I’m not blocked. It’s not writer’s block it’s just …
Fear, she said
My pupils dilated.
I’m feeling your luck change late August, early September but it’s going to be different, not your normal publisher
A movie deal, I blurted out (in utter jest FYI) Disney Hyperion. I have two MG novels on submission. I’ve had 4 rejections.
I’m seeing number 9
I have a lucky number. It’s never been 9.
Her hands, warm on my temples. How can someone have such warm hands?
I’m on my back under the blankie, two heavy crystals in my hands, one on my heart chakra and a lighter crystal on my third-eye-chakra (forehead.) I’m breathing into my belly and breathing out into my root chakra, rooting myself into the earth of possibilities.
Every solid tree needs good rootage.
Now I’m above my head, my crown chakra, I’m trying with all my might to channel my guides.
Leah is calling all the unblocking guides she knows. Jesus and Mary are mentioned. We’ve never discussed religion.
I see Tapu my paternal grandfather. He’s always my first guide to appear. It’s a photo of him smiling, wearing his dog collar. He was a vicar. The Archdeacon of Hawke’s Bay, in fact.
I call my ancestors to guide me forward out of my funk, as per Leah’s instructions.
I’m in a church, stepping up and out through the arched stain glass window of saints above the altar. I float up through the sky, it’s dark now, an empty galaxy peppered with stars.
Where is Jane-Star? I ask. I am universe!
(I always thought this was the title of Vasanti’s book.)
I see Josephine, my paternal great grandmother. She’s dressed in Victorian high-necked black taffeta, standing outside her ivy encased house in England. She’s holding a smiling, black dog.
I see Robert, my dead brother. Always fleetingly.
My hand reaches out to them.
Leah moves to my feet, her hot hands are magical. I shift my meditation to the earth and plant my toes in peaty, damp soil.
I’d been in conversation over the weekend about the strange metaphor of humans as trees. Rooted in one place. Suddenly I’m not a tree I’m a thickening vine, an ivy. A strong trunk twists and pushes my body up towards the cosmos.
A strange unexpected shift follows:
I am now sitting on a wooden throne, my vine my pedestal.
Josephine hands me the little black dog, I hold her on my lap.
Tapu places the ecclesiastical seal into the palm of my hand, then he removes his purple stole and drapes it around my neck. My neck!
Holy crap! People are looking up to me and giving me rich gifts like some phat maharajah-ess.
I am holy. I am cool. I am not pond carp.
I think of the matau my friend Michael gave me for my 40th birthday. Only wise old sages can wear them. It’s carved by a HB carver my home town (one of many) I feel too unworthy to wear it. Most of the time.
I’m encouraged to ask for more female guides. Curiously, I see my dead great aunt, a ringleted child in a white pinafore. Betty died tragically, aged 10. I’ve since discovered things about Betty I did not know via Papers Past – an utter Pandora’s box if you know where to look.
---
Leah promised she would re-energize me! I saw myself on a pogo stick pogoing up Queen street. I handed over my hundy and skipped out. The Auckland day was grey but backlit with hope. It was not raining. I sat on a bench by the ferry terminal overlooking the harbour and the tall cityscape beyond. Red-eyed seagulls squawked. Strangers talked.
An old dude with orange dyed white hair hanging under his ears stops beside me as I tap these fragments of memory into my laptop.
'Want a chat?’
‘No!’ I replied promptly (you really own yourself after a sesh with Leah.) ‘Try the next bench, I’m writing down my thoughts.’
‘Good luck with that!’ he grumbled. His plimsolls were a thin pale blue.
There was a log floating towards the driftwood hewn beach by the terminal. A mum wouldn’t let her two boys take their shoes off. They stomped away, complaining of her killjoy, keep clean attitude.
She shouted after them, I saw a dinosaur.
I saw a crocodile.
A grey haired woman in Lululemon walked past, and commented. ‘Good plan.’
I’m not sure who she was talking to but I replied. ‘It’s going well.’
Leah said, be open. The more open you are the more you will receive.
Believe me, I’m open for anything. Anhedonia be gone.
*The AWW article, by Brit journalist Tanith Carey was first pubbed by the Daily Mail online, Sept 21. It’s led to her penning a self-help book titled, “Feeling ‘Blah’?” out April 23, with the helpful by-line “Why Anhedonia Has Left You Joyless and How to Recapture Life’s High". I won’t be buying the book but I have some plans lined up to save me from flatlining until I meet my pine box.
No comments:
Post a Comment