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Using Your Period To Improve Your Life
160 Plays1 year ago
In this episode I'm speaking with Menstrual Coach and owner of My Club Red, Elizabeth Tidwell. We'll talk about how we can use our monthly cycles as a tool to improve our lives. When we can embrace the messages that our bodies tell us, we can improve our health and quality of life. She’ll tell us her story of overcoming intense pain and symptoms, going off birth control, and how we can actually enjoy "that time of the month."
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Transcript
Introduction & Elizabeth's Journey
00:00:05
Speaker
That time of the month. When it's bad, it can stop life in its tracks. Today, I'm speaking with Elizabeth Tidwell, who's a menstrual coach, reiki master, and owner of My Club Red, a subscription service that provides us with beautiful tools for self-care during menstruation.
00:00:23
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She'll tell us her story of overcoming intense pain and symptoms, and how we can use our periods as an important tool to improve our lives. I'm Stephanie Greenwood, and this is The Life Detox.
Challenges with Periods & Medical Advice
00:00:49
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Elizabeth got into the field after her own experiences with problem periods and birth control.
00:00:55
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I personally had pretty painful periods, especially when I was in grad school. I went on birth control because that was the solution to like laying on my floor for two days of my period, not able to go to classes, not able to do anything, not able to keep food down. Like I was in like blinding pain. Her doctor told her that she didn't really need to have a period. So through birth control, she could opt out. And so that was my doctor's advice was, okay, start the birth control pill and you can just stop.
00:01:25
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And I guess my periods got better, but the pill came with lots of other problems. And ultimately, I didn't stay on it very long because it had a big impact on my mental health. I didn't really feel like myself. So then this was like 10, 12 years ago. And then after I had a baby about four years ago, after I had my baby at my six week appointment, my doctor kind of nonchalantly asked me if I wanted an IUD. The way that they ask
00:01:52
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if I was gonna schedule to get my IUD in at six weeks postpartum. Made it seem like that's standard and everybody did it. My OB had known that I had had period pain before and he was like, oh yeah, you don't need a period. A lot of people like putting in an IUD because it doesn't come with some of the mental health issues that you had dealt with before. And so I was just like, okay. So I had an IUD for about three years. And because again, it was just like, you just don't need one.
00:02:22
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And now knowing what I know, I'm like so shaken that doctors tell this to people so frequently that we can just totally opt out. And I actually opted back in because I was like, wait a second, my body's supposed to be doing this right now. And I didn't even really know all the like physical benefits of ovulation and all of that. And, but just something was,
00:02:49
Speaker
i was just realizing i'm like i just don't feel like i'm living life the way that my body is meant to be living it right now like i would look out at like my my trees outside my window and constantly like going through their own cycles and i just kind of felt like my body was too
00:03:06
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quiet. It just wasn't doing what it was supposed to
Body Communication & Cultural Disconnect
00:03:10
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do. And so that's when I kind of started on this cyclical living and then found out about menstrual cycle awareness and found out so much about how those initial inklings of, wait a second, why am I opting out of a fundamental feature of my body at this time in my life? You know, fast forward, I don't know, 20, 30 years, I won't have this anymore.
00:03:32
Speaker
Like myself, Elizabeth believes that the menstrual cycle can be like a fifth vital sign that shouldn't be ignored or suppressed. There's lots of ways to just stop having a period if they're inconvenient or painful or you just don't want one. Like period positivity wasn't a thing when I was like first getting my period. I don't think I heard any even neutral period talk. It was all just like, oh, I've got my period. Our bodies are constantly trying to communicate with us.
00:03:59
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in the language that bodies use, which is pain or problems, to say, hey, something's not working right, whether that's like emotional or mental stress. I was also in like a very wrong for me relationship at the time and I was like, it was a whole bunch of life where my body was like, listen, life isn't working right.
00:04:19
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the way that you want it to be right now. Culturally, we just always view the body as the problem if it's not doing exactly what we want or expect or are used to or care to experience. The body has its own language and the words that it speaks are things like pain and things like menstrual irregularities and other disruptions or like headaches because that's the language that our body has to communicate with us.
00:04:44
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We just don't know that language. There's a lot of disconnect between our culture and our body knowledge. In grad school, that was the most disconnected from being in my body because I was so focused on examining the world and engaging with the world through my head because I was in school. My body was like, no, listen, come back to taking care of your body. It needs it. It needs rest demonstration. It needs support. It needs to feel safe.
00:05:09
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and I didn't know the language at the time and that's why I was like susceptible to all these other messages telling me that my body was the problem not a whole bunch of other things that honestly were hard to fix in a lot of ways but in such a better result of actually tackling the real issues in my life like that really wrong relationship rather than just suppressing
00:05:34
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the messages and just like totally ignoring it, you know, not a lot of excellent things came from doing that. And then like all the birth control ramifications, it's like, no, the outcomes were so much better when I would just listen to my body and follow my body's cues rather than ignore it and shut it down.
Menstrual Awareness & Founding of My Club Red
00:05:55
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Elizabeth had a transformative experience attending Red School's Menstruality Leadership Program and Lisa de Jong's menstrual cycle coaching and facilitation professional training. So I first did Red School's program, which is more based on experiencing it for yourself.
00:06:12
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Deepening your relationship with your menstrual cycle, really exploring much more deeply and more personally in this small group, international women and menstruators all over the world. A lot of deep self-study into how different aspects of your menstrual cycle have been
00:06:27
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impacting your life and your outlook and just like your relationship with yourself. That was super transformational for me and then I did want to actually bring this to other people so that's why I also did the actual coaching certification. Then I took all that self-study and then did Lisa de Jong's course which then helps me facilitate that with other people as well.
00:06:49
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After discovering menstrual cycle awareness, she was inspired to start her company, My Club Red, that sends curated period care boxes as a monthly subscription. Discovered menstrual cycle awareness and it was changing my life.
00:07:04
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At the same time, I had already been really interested in things like low waste and earth friendly things, but kind of at the same time that I was starting my menstrual cycle awareness journey and looking into becoming a coach and that kind of thing. As I did a whole bunch of
00:07:20
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research in menstrual cycle awareness I found that so many of the products that we use are actually contributing to making our period and PMS symptoms worse because they have hormone disruptors in them just like all over the products that we use all the time so I was like
00:07:38
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why don't I pair these two things together because I wanted to help raise awareness about endocrine disruptors. I had not heard that before but I had no idea how much that it could actually be showing up in our menstrual cycles and so I was kind of tackling two things at once. I really wanted to focus on making our relationships with our periods better through this box and what better way to do that than show everybody that if we can make our products better our hormones can be supported rather than working against
00:08:08
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this whole time so that overall your body is supported as well as like your overall period experience every month. There are a lot of products that say natural, even hormone friendly. I sometimes see that and I'm like, I go and I check every single ingredient. There's a lot that don't make the cut.
00:08:26
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I asked Elizabeth her tips for practicing self-care. Listening to my body in general is huge because I use that to like guide. My biggest self-care practice that I very much value and guard and protect and make sure I get is resting administration. That's the natural rest phase of your full cycle. So I found for sure for me personally.
00:08:51
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I know that if I don't take advantage of my menstruation and rest as much as I possibly can, that takes prep and work beforehand. But if I can get a good rest at menstruation, so multiple days, and then do lots of self-care during those menstrual rests, the whole rest of my month goes so much better.
00:09:10
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I really love the word nurture instead of just self-care. I feel like self-care, we're a little bit like losing the meaning of it because we hear it all the time, but like self-nurture, like I love that. If we bring that to ourselves every month or a little bit every day, it makes a huge difference. Instead of like powering through or ignoring it or popping pills, like if I just listen to my body and then it's awesome because I have a whole bunch of
00:09:35
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my club-red self-period self-care items to use while I'm doing that.
Healing Trauma & Self-Care Strategies
00:09:39
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And then I make time and space in my life to be able to settle into actually enjoying all the supports that I have. After the break, Elizabeth will tell us how we can get through being stuck healing certain areas of trauma. And the one simple tip for breaking self-sabotage and reaching our goals that can also alleviate cramps. Stay tuned.
00:10:08
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If you're enjoying this podcast, please consider checking out bubbleandb.com. We have more than 150 different products to choose from like soaps, insect repellent, facial care, and the world's largest selection of USDA certified organic deodorants. These are all products I've formulated myself to avoid xenoestrogens and not interfere with our hormone health. And we make everything in our own facility so we know exactly what's going in our products.
00:10:33
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So if you'd like to support this podcast, visit bubbleandb.com. That's bubbleandb.com. I feel like sometimes we can intellectualize our trauma and know all about it, yet it's still there. It's not healed and it's stuck in our bodies.
00:10:59
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I am like going through this myself right now. I have definitely intellectually engaged with my own trauma, always knowing I had trauma stored in my hips, like always knowing that it was in my body and I knew specifically where. I tried going to multiple therapists and just like tried lots of talk therapy. I've done a lot of like mental work on it. I can talk to you all
00:11:23
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day about it but it's still in my body. I do Reiki on myself and that helps and visualizations and that kind of thing. Also doing other types of like embodied practices. I don't have to engage with it intellectually now for it to release and that is like the missing piece that I feel like
00:11:38
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So many of us are finally coming into awareness that it's like, oh my gosh, I don't even have to know what to like do or think about my body. If I can tap into how it needs to release it, it's like this wonderful healing cycle of then like your whole physical and mental experience is lightened by being able to release some of these things physically. A lot of us walk around with trauma, whether it's like capital T trauma or lowercase T trauma, or just like,
00:12:07
Speaker
stored in a body that we've intellectually engaged with already but it's like we just have traumas we encounter traumas all the time and so being able to get that out of our systems and find nervous system safety as the foundation to then communicate to your body it is safe to heal it is safe to let go of some of these problematic patterns disruptions that have like either been easier or have been the only way forward for this body for this time like
00:12:35
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It's communicating to your body first that it's safe to then tackle some of the harder, bigger problems. How important is nervous system regulation when it comes to hormone balance?
00:12:47
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If you ask me, I think nervous system regulation is at the root of literally everything. Stress is cortisol. You know what I mean? Like they're hormones. They're stress hormones. So if you've constantly got excess stress hormone going into all the orchestration of all the hormones in your body, which is very complex, that's going to throw some things off.
00:13:08
Speaker
So if you can come into a place of nervous system safety and regulate that nervous system and understand the tools to come back to it when you get dysregulated, because that happens to us all the time every day, that can for sure set this foundation of finding safety in the body to then help repair, reframe for your own body how to orchestrate this really important hormonal symphony. I think it's like
00:13:33
Speaker
foundational to find that ability to find safety in the body first and to communicate to your body that it is safe to heal. I have such a hurdle with that personally. I find that I'm learning all about how trauma affects our body and messes up our hormones and I know that I still have a whole bunch of unhealed trauma in my body and yet I still have a hard time like making a phone call to get into therapy again or to start healing modality and I'll
00:14:03
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buy something, I'll be like, okay, I'm going to buy this program and I'm going to do this healing program and then I buy it and then that's it. I don't actually do the program. What do you think is going on with me? This is so funny because I literally just did this a few days ago. I just bought a hip releasing, trauma releasing from your hips program. I haven't started it yet.
00:14:26
Speaker
I like had every intention to start right that day. So yes, very common, very, very common. I think what's happening for us on some level, we just need to take a little bit more time or need to find that safety first. I've been kind of like doing a little bit of thought work on this. I've noticed that you are really excited when you bought this course, but it's been days now and you haven't made the time to do it. So like bringing curiosity is huge instead of
00:14:52
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judgment, first of all, because if you bring any judgment in your thoughts, your body's already gonna tense shut down. Instead, start just like gently having this conversation with yourself. Like, okay, I'm curious what's going on here. And for me, I'm like, okay, I think probably there's still a little bit of resistance because for me, like the trauma that I'm trying to release now has been in my body since I was a child. So I'm 35 now. It's been there for decades.
00:15:19
Speaker
it doesn't know how to function otherwise like if i release all the way that my hips have been working for decades that's like stepping out into the unknown my body will like be and feel different and every change regardless of if it's something we want regardless of if it's positive regardless of how much we want it
00:15:42
Speaker
registers in the body as at least a little bit of threat. Hey, this could very well be a big change. This could very well mean I'm operating in a way that I've never been able to experience before. I mean, it's something that I want and I feel ready for it. But if I need to go a little slower, I'm not going to beat myself up about it. If I don't feel like I actually am ready to start the course until next week or next month, that's fine. But I also don't want it to get too far that I'm letting myself
00:16:11
Speaker
off the hook, reassuring myself first intellectually that it's okay to take my time and also be like, thankfully I have some nervous system regulation, physical tools. My plan now is to do some nervous system regulation, like as far as like physically first before even trying to open up the course and then start from a place of physical nervous system safety and then see if it feels more like I'm open to it.
Inner Child Healing & Podcast Summary
00:16:39
Speaker
In Susan Anderson's book, Taming Your Outer Child, she poses the theory that we have an inner child that holds onto pain and trauma and feelings, and we have an outer child that acts out, that self-sabotages and abandons in an attempt to cope with the pain that the inner child is feeling. She says that to heal,
00:17:02
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Our higher adult self can make and keep small promises to the inner child, making the inner child feel safe and taken care of. By doing this, we can release pain, break bad patterns of behavior, and accomplish our goals. This is an excerpt from her book. The idea is to choose an action that will bring little you into the moment with you while beholding your goal in your mind's eye.
00:17:32
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Big U, your adult self, promises to take this action and then carries it out during that very same day within 24 hours. Again, the chosen action can be a brief, easy activity that lasts only five minutes. The key is the conscious intention with which you choose it and then carry it out. For instance, if your goal is to lose weight, your first action might be to leaf through some of your favorite photographs.
00:18:01
Speaker
Though seemingly not related to weight loss, your conscious intention is to perform an act that nurtures your inner child in a healthy way. You're holding the image of yourself losing weight in your mind all the while. Or if your goal is to feel more secure with your new girlfriend, your action step might be to take a solo drive to your favorite park. The bottom line is that you're doing something to nurture your emotionally reliant self.
00:18:30
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The actions work cumulatively to strengthen your ability to cope with current stressors and acquire new learned behaviors. Don't let the modest scope of these action steps fool you. They represent powerful devices that give you forward motion. Eventually, they fall into step with your goals and help you take consciously chosen strides toward achieving them.
00:18:55
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While you are carrying out this deed, hold both your future vision and little you in mind. You must make the mental connection by energetic use of your imagination between your intended goals, your inner child's needs, and the action step you are taking.
00:19:13
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Hold this mental link in your mind's eye at least for a few seconds while you are making the promise and again while you are carrying out the action step. This mental link strengthens your intention which in turn creates change. When you carry out the action, however small and irrelevant it may seem to your goal, do it with the conscious intention of helping little feel secure in your care.
00:19:38
Speaker
This brings you into the moment and stimulates your cerebral energy to gain enough strength to ultimately overcome your repetition compulsions. Why such small actions? Because big steps are daunting. If you choose too big an action like start my diet today, outer child might try to avoid doing it.
00:20:02
Speaker
Big steps can seem like work, more punishment than reward. With action steps, you choose steps small enough to make them feel effortless, even pleasurable to carry out because they're things you're doing to nurture little you, and reward the outer child for being cooperative for a change. End of excerpt
00:20:22
Speaker
I've found that making and keeping these small promises to myself can be a way to alleviate pain and even menstrual cramps. When I'm experiencing cramps, I will take some time to sit with the pain and ask it what it's telling me. Do I need to do better with my diet? Am I taking on too much? How can I best support my body?
00:20:44
Speaker
Sometimes I'll get an answer and if I figure out a small action step I can take and make that promise to my inner child, my cramps will subside. But it's all about making sure that your inner child trusts you so the promise has to be easy and you always have to keep that promise to yourself. I brought up this concept to Elizabeth.
00:21:08
Speaker
I love what you said about doing one, like making one promise to yourself. That is so lovely. And I like that it's like one small thing every day. I didn't really feel like I had extremely negative self talk, but now I feel the difference when I have very nurturing self talk that it makes such a difference in how I feel about myself.
00:21:30
Speaker
Part of that is, yeah, this making these promises to yourself like, yeah, I'm going to follow through on taking care of myself because I know that my body and myself, I know that I deserve it and I know that I should be nurtured and I know that I should be taken care of and I know that I can do that for myself.
00:21:47
Speaker
I'm a busy mom. It's not like I have, you know, hours every day to do these really great, deep, nurturing rituals like I would love. That'd be incredible, right? But I do have something I can do every day and I do have a set aside time every month where it's like, I know that even if my day to day gets really hectic, I know that if I really, really
00:22:10
Speaker
prioritize rest at menstruation. Turning my period into a mini retreat for myself within myself, it helps me cultivate more self-nurturing the rest of the month. I really love the idea of helping so many other women and menstruators experience that because I didn't even realize how much that was lacking before in my life and let alone how much of a difference that would make to like really, really prioritize self-nurture.
00:22:38
Speaker
You can find Elizabeth's company My Club Red at myclubred.com. I've also linked to her Instagram in the show notes.
00:22:47
Speaker
Nurturing our inner child, listening to our bodies and prioritizing self-care helps regulate our nervous system, which then helps regulate our hormones. This means better periods with less pain. When we can look at our periods as a beautiful opportunity for self-nurture, we can improve our lives and empower ourselves in big ways.
00:23:12
Speaker
As a bonus episode, I've created a 10-minute meditation that you can use when you're experiencing menstrual cramps. I've found that leaning into the pain, asking what it's about, and then making a small promise to myself many times will alleviate pain. I've been able to use this method to avoid pain pills at times. I wanted to share it with you, so you'll see it as the next episode here in the podcast.
00:23:39
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Feel free to use it whenever you need to. Listening to our pain and our bodies may give us an overwhelming message that we need to make big changes in our lives. Taking things step by step makes these changes a lot less overwhelming, even when you might need a life detox.
00:24:06
Speaker
The Life Detox is produced by me, Stephanie Greenwood, and brought to you by Bubble and Be Organic. The views and opinions expressed are the speakers' own and do not necessarily represent those of myself or my company. Material and information presented here is for general information purposes only and is not medical advice. Being a guest on this show does not imply endorsement of Greenplay LLC or any of its projects. Stay well, friends.
00:24:39
Speaker
Next time on The Life Detox, when periods become deadly, dealing with premenstrual dysphoric disorder. We'll talk with Jess Fleming, who will tell us how to cope with and improve this life-threatening condition. I hope you'll join us.