The menopause transition is a long arc — from the late reproductive years through perimenopause and into postmenopause — and a critical window for women's mental health. Yet for many women, what surfaces during this transition is not entirely new. It is a history that has stayed hidden, misunderstood or unrecognized. As changing neurobiology alters stress regulation, cognition, sleep and emotional resilience, menopause can reveal vulnerabilities that have been present across the lifespan.   

This intermediate workshop introduces a lifespan framework for understanding menopause as a neuroendocrine transition that intersects with mental health. Participants first ground in the reproductive aging continuum and the hormonal brain — how the decline of estrogen and progesterone as neuroactive agents reshapes the nervous system, mood, cognition and stress response.      

From there, the workshop examines three presentations that frequently emerge or intensify during the transition. The first is trauma, where reduced hormonal buffering can amplify nervous-system reactivity and reactivate unresolved experiences. The second is medical menopause — surgical menopause, bilateral oophorectomy, hysterectomy with loss of ovarian function and cancer treatment — where abrupt hormonal change intersects with grief, identity and medical trauma. The third is late-diagnosed neurodivergence, where lifelong strategies for masking ADHD or autism become unsustainable as hormonal support falls away. 

Grounded in current research and a somatic, trauma-informed perspective, the workshop moves from framework to practice. Participants leave with assessment strategies and treatment considerations that integrate across orientations — brief in-session nervous-system regulation (micro practices) and longer-term capacity-building approaches (macro practices) — drawing on somatic and narrative methods, with EMDR named as one option clinicians may bring in. It closes on a developmental rather than a deficit frame: postmenopause understood not as decline but as a threshold that, for many women, brings greater clarity, authenticity and psychological freedom — without minimizing the real disruption of the transition.