Perimenopause is a transitional phase before menopause when hormones fluctuate, and these shifts can influence mood, stress tolerance, and emotional balance. Everyday situations may start to feel overwhelming, sleep may be disrupted, and emotional sensitivity can feel heightened. This article explores why perimenopause affects anxiety and emotional well-being, helping you understand what’s happening in your body and how to approach this season with compassion and insight.
You are not alone in this experience. Many women notice these changes and wonder if something is “wrong” with them, but these feelings are a normal part of the body’s transition. Understanding the connection between hormones, the nervous system, and emotional responses can help you navigate perimenopause with greater awareness and self-compassion.
After trauma, resilience is not about forcing strength or moving on quickly. It is about gently learning to feel safe again in your body, your emotions, and your relationships. Many women carry the impact of trauma quietly, experiencing disconnection, hypervigilance, or emotional numbness without realizing these are natural survival responses.
This compassionate guide explores how healing unfolds through safety, self-trust, and supportive connection. It offers practical ways to regulate your nervous system, reconnect with your body, and redefine strength as self-respect rather than endurance. With patience and care, resilience becomes something you build slowly, through moments of safety, understanding, and kindness toward yourself.
Rebuilding a healthy relationship with food is not about fixing yourself or getting it “right.” It is about slowly unlearning patterns that once helped you cope and replacing them with care, trust, and self-respect. For many women, food has become emotionally charged after years of pressure, rules, and mixed messages. If eating feels harder than it should, you are not alone.
A healthy relationship with food is rooted in flexibility rather than control. It allows room for nourishment and pleasure, guidance from internal cues instead of rigid rules, and choices made from care rather than guilt. This relationship develops over time, through patience and compassion, not perfection.
Disordered eating is more common than many women realize, yet it often goes unrecognized or minimized. Many quietly struggle, believing their behaviors are normal or something they should control on their own. If any of this resonates, know this: you are not broken, weak, or failing. Disordered eating is not a personal flaw; it is a coping strategy that developed for a reason.
This article offers understanding, not labels. Whether your relationship with food feels mildly strained or deeply distressing, you deserve care, clarity, and support. Disordered eating is about more than food. It reflects emotional needs, coping mechanisms, and survival strategies. Healing begins not by forcing change, but by understanding your patterns, restoring trust with yourself, and receiving compassionate support along the way.
Psychotherapy offers a compassionate and effective approach for women struggling with disordered eating. Through personalized therapy, women can explore the underlying emotional and psychological factors contributing to their challenges. This healing process helps build self-awareness, foster self-compassion, and develop healthier relationships with food and body image. By addressing these issues at their core, psychotherapy paves the way for lasting recovery and a more peaceful, balanced life.
If you've ever felt frustration or shame while looking in the mirror, you're not alone. Many women struggle with body image issues that lead to cycles of self-doubt and emotional pain. Psychotherapy offers a compassionate space to explore and heal these wounds. Through therapy, you can uncover the roots of your body image concerns, challenge negative thought patterns, and foster self-compassion. It’s a journey towards embracing yourself fully and finding peace within. Imagine living a life where your worth isn’t defined by appearance but by the beautiful person you are inside. Therapy can help you achieve this freedom and inner peace.
Navigating life as a woman in Los Angeles, like everywhere, can sometimes feel like an uphill battle. The pressures of work, relationships, and societal expectations can weigh heavily on your shoulders. But I want you to know that support is available to help you through these challenges. Let's talk about how psychotherapists in Los Angeles can be a guiding light in your journey toward wellness and fulfillment.
Tracking in psychological terms involves more than monitoring progress, emotions, triggers, and beliefs. It includes observing how emotions manifest physically in your body. In trauma-informed psychotherapy, creating awareness around body sensations and embodied experiences is essential. This practice fosters a sense of presence, power, and connection, enhancing security and well-being within ourselves.
Balancing your career with everything else life throws your way isn't easy, and it's okay to seek a little extra support. To help you begin your journey in finding the right support, I’ve written down four effective therapeutic tools for professional women. These are some of the best tools recommended by professionals for women’s health, and I hope you can use them to become the career woman that you want to be and reach your goals.
Life can be like a tug-of-war sometimes, pulling us in different directions and chipping away at our inner strength. But what if I told you there's a way to reclaim that strength, to untangle the knots that hold us back and step into our power with confidence and grace? That's where EMDR therapy comes in.
Recognizing the societal pressures and internal struggles, we explore the importance of inner healing as a foundation for external changes. Through gentle practices of self-compassion, challenging negative thoughts, and fostering gratitude, we pave the way towards a more positive body image.
Additionally, we uncover the transformative power of therapeutic support, providing a safe space to unravel deeply ingrained beliefs, confront root causes, and cultivate self-compassion.
Ultimately, we celebrate the unique journey of each individual, embracing every victory and honoring the beauty that resides within.
In the hustle and bustle of life, we often forget the one person who deserves our love and care the most—ourselves. Join me, Ilona Varo, a licensed marriage and family therapist and mastery method coach, as I guide you on a journey to explore the profound importance of nurturing a healthy relationship with the person in the mirror.
You deserve to experience the power of a healthy self-relationship and it deserves your time and energy just as a loved one would.
First, let’s look at all the ways in which we damage our self relationship.
We can damage our relationship with ourselves in various ways, often unintentionally. Here are some common behaviors and actions that can harm this vital connection:
As a woman, and working mostly with female clientele, I find it important to talk about femininity, having a healthy connection to our bodies, and feeling confident/safe in our womanhood.
Connection to our bodies and embracing femininity is somewhat taboo still.
We are not taught to have a strong sense of self, or celebration of our curves. We are not usually encouraged to feel connected and empowered in our bodies.
As we enter the “I Miss You” season of 2019, I want to address the importance of self-compassion.
Yes, I know this is a RADICAL idea to some. So radical that you might stop reading right here, but bear with me for a second.
We all want an external solution to our loneliness, our sadness, and our mental health challenges. We think that when we have our plus one, our king or queen, our partner for life; that we can lean into that person and not have the self-work be so hard.
While external support is necessary and helpful for guidance, WE are the ones that have to do this work for ourselves.
WE have to become more resilient at tending to our emotions, caring for our souls, guiding our mental triggers, and being kinder to ourselves.
There has been a lot of uproar lately about the new Weight Watchers — Kurbo app, designed for children and adolescents 8-17 to promote weight-loss, calorie counting (via the “points system”) and a “healthier lifestyle.”
I absolutely want us to educate, inspire, and support children from a young age to live their healthiest lives. However, being a chubby child who dieted all my childhood and young adult life, and now being an eating disorder professional (psychotherapist), I think it’s important to do some education on the damage of this philosophy behind “weight-loss.” I’ve seen it first hand, and it’s been proven again and again, that childhood weight-loss efforts can lead to or often worsen disordered eating and body image issues!
Doing the work isn't always fun. Yet it is necessary! Don't let "not feeling like it" derail you or get too loud in your head. There are a ton of things that I don't feel like doing, yet, I love results, so I do them anyways. Some tips to help you take action and do the things you don't really want to do!
Fear at best is an emotion that is trying to keep us safe, however, more often than not, fear is a perception problem keeping us stuck. This is why some people say that FEAR is an acronym that stands for “False Evidence Appearing Real.” I have a revised and helpful version of an acronym below that will help you deconstruct and stand up to your fears!
