119. Midlife Feels Off? It’s Not Your Hormones—It’s Something Deeper

Topics Covered: midlife identity crisis, menopause wellness, don’t feel like myself, hormone replacement, midlife coaching

✨ Show Notes:

You’ve cleaned up your eating, optimized your hormones, prioritized sleep, walked your miles, lifted heavy, and maybe even cut back on wine—and yet, you still don’t feel like yourself.

Sound familiar?

In this raw and revealing episode of The School of Midlife podcast, Laurie gets honest about the midlife disconnect no one is talking about—the one that shows up after you’ve dialed in your physical health but still feel out of sorts, misaligned, or just... flat.

If you’ve been doing everything “right” and still feel like a stranger in your own life, this episode is for you.

💡 What You’ll Learn:

• Why optimizing your body is not enough to feel like yourself again
• The hidden cost of chasing someone else’s definition of success
• How unaddressed identity shifts and inner misalignment show up in midlife
• Why more HRT, steps, or self-care isn’t the solution if the inside is off
• Three foundational questions that can reconnect you with who you really are now

🔁 Share This Episode:

If this spoke to you, please send it to a midlife woman in your life who’s also “done everything right” but still doesn’t feel right. Midlife doesn’t have to feel like a breakdown. It can be your biggest breakthrough—when you know where to look.

📌 Resources:

• DM HELP on Instagram to learn about midlife coaching or the Gap Year program
• Or send “HELP” in the subject line via email to Laurie to start the conversation
• Want to DIY it? Start with these 3 questions:
  1. What do you actually want?
  2. How do you define success now?
  3. What does your best life really look like?

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👉 CONNECT WITH LAURIE:
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Transcript

[00:00:00] In this week's episode at the School of Midlife podcast, we're talking about what do you do in midlife once you've addressed all of the physical changes that you're going through, so you are eating well, you've got your hormone styled in, you've, you're sleeping better, you're hydrating, you've cut back on the alcohol like you've done all of the physical things that you have been told you should do to feel better in midlife.

What do you do after you've got all the physical aspects dialed in and you still don't feel like yourself. What then? That's what we're talking about today. Let's get started.

Welcome to the School of Midlife podcast. I'm your host, Laurie Reynoldson.

This is the podcast for the midlife woman who starting to ask herself big life questions. Like, what do I want? Is it too late for me? And what's my legacy beyond my family and my work. Each week we're answering these questions and more. At the School of Midlife, we're learning all of the life lessons they [00:01:00] didn't teach us in school and we're figuring out finally what it is we want to be when we grow up. Let's make midlife your best life. 

Hey, friends. Welcome back to the School of Mildife podcast. I'm your host, Laurie Reynoldson, and today we're going in on something I keep hearing from clients, friends, women in my dms. Pretty much I'm hearing it everywhere. And maybe you're even thinking about this, but I'm hearing women say I'm doing everything right, but I still don't feel like myself.

For most of them. They've cleaned up their eating, they're sleeping, they're lifting weights. They're walking, they're on hormone replacement. They've scaled back the booze. They're doing all the things that they're supposed to do to feel better in midlife. And yet they still feel off. They [00:02:00] tell me that they feel like they're a stranger in their own life.

So that's what we're gonna talk about today because I'm here to tell you that you are, if you're feeling those things too, you are not crazy, but you are missing, in my opinion, a key component. It's something really big.

Let's start by giving credit where credit is due.

It's midlife. You've addressed your hormones. You are eating clean cleanish, we'll call it cleanish. You are lifting heavy weights. You're walking daily. Your prioritizing sleep. You're drinking water. Maybe you've cut back on the wine. You are following all the health tracking apps. You're, you're dialed in physically, you're doing everything right, and yet there's this weird sense of disconnection that just doesn't go away.

And you feel like you're crossing off all the [00:03:00] boxes. You are doing everything that you should be doing in midlife to feel better from a physical standpoint. And you're still wondering why? Why do you feel so flat? And I'm here to tell you that that's because you've taken care of your body, but you've ignored your identity.

And I totally get it. When you aren't feeling like yourself, of course the first thing that you're gonna start doing is addressing the physical pieces. If you feel flat or lethargic of, absolutely, you're gonna go to the doctor or your wellness provider and you're going to look for a solution to what you're feeling.

Um, may maybe even get a little gaslit, right When they say, oh, that's all in your head, or All women in midlife feel that way at your age. Um, I feel like as a whole, the medical, we're doing better. We, we still have a long way to go, um, for, for women and women's healthcare, [00:04:00] but hopefully when you go to the doctor with physical symptoms, you leave with the plan and probably a prescription for HRT.

I mean, we, we still have so far to go with women's healthcare, but hopefully you have found a provider that is taking you seriously. And if you haven't, well start there. Do that first. It's absolutely time to do that. But what happens when you do have a provider that's listening to you and you have taken care of the physical symptoms and you still don't feel like yourself?

What? What do you do then? Do you just resign yourself to feel like, you know what? I'm just gonna feel like a stranger in my life for the rest of my life. That's just my new normal. I'm just going to accept that I will never feel like myself again. Is that the answer? I don't think so. I personally don't think that's the answer.

And my guess is as a high achieving midlife woman, you don't either, like, you don't wanna settle for that. [00:05:00] There's got to be something more. And I will tell you here is the truth that most of the wellness providers and gurus and the people on social media that always are trying to sell you a solution, here's what they don't want you to hear.

You can optimize your body all day long, but if you don't deal with what's going on in your mind and in your life, you'll stay stuck. You'll never get to the feeling where you feel like yourself again. Even if physically everything is completely dialed in, you are sleeping well, the brain fog is gone, the hormones are balanced, everything feels good, but you'll never feel like yourself again until you start doing the inside work.

What I see over and over again with high achieving midlife women is that they [00:06:00] have spent decades of their life doing everything right. You know, they went to school, they got a job, they got married, they bought a house, they raised a family.

They've been promoted up through the ranks. They're at the top of their career for most of 'em. They have spent decades in this cycle of people pleasing and overachieving and hustling for gold stars and, and trying to look like they've got all taken care of. They have it all together that they are the pinnacle of success, and most of them are.

Absolutely. I'm not, I will never take that away from them. But here's the other thing. Most of them have been living into someone else's definition of success, which means, along with the hustle, there has also been this implied promise that if, if you just keep going, [00:07:00] if you just keep producing, if you just keep performing that happiness you're looking for,

that will come, you'll get to midlife and from midlife and beyond, you'll finally get to spend some time on things that light you up, that you're excited about. And now you find yourself in midlife and the fulfillment, it still hasn't shown up. So what gives, I mean, what do you get in return for a lifetime of overworking and caregiving and people pleasing?

Well, you get burnout. That's what you get. You get burnout and resentment and a vague sense that you're missing your own damn life. Because no matter how many protein shakes you drink or steps you track, you can't wellness your way out of a misaligned life.

To me it, [00:08:00] it feels a lot like squandering the gift of the global pandemic. And, and hey, I'm not saying that everything was great about the pandemic, COVID, that virus itself, that was not a gift. It was traumatic. It costs. A lot of lies. I mean, that is a huge understatement. It still is crazy to me that in the 21st century with all of the advances in medicine, like it never occurred to me that we would lose half a million people in the US alone, in, in just that, that beginning part of COVID in 2020. Hell, I mean, I thought we would go home,

we would work from home for a couple of weeks and then get right back into the swing of things. And I, I had no idea. None of us did. Right? I mean, this is, this was something that none of us had ever experienced before. I don't know that we'll experience something like this again in our lifetime, but it, it was [00:09:00] a lot.

I mean, so of course the loss of life, awful. Not to mention the pandemic exacerbated mental health struggles and isolation and feelings of grief because we were social distancing and we were staying home and there was no interaction. So there were many things about the pandemic that were not good, but with the pandemic, there was also this collective pause.

Which meant that if you chose to

pursue it, there was the, there was this little opening, almost like a crack in the grind. We all, we all got a taste of it. I mean, we were all doing things differently. We were working from home. Well, we were doing everything from home. Do, do you remember in the beginning when people would be like, Hey, it's Friday night.

Let's, let's have, um. [00:10:00] Happy hour over Zoom. Maybe we'll play Bingo. And it was so fun that you would get, you know, you could all have your cocktails or your glass of wine and hang out with your friends on, on a Friday night over Zoom. Well, that wore off really fast, right? Because we were doing everything virtually.

I mean, it got to the point where let's not meet over Zoom. Let's actually meet in person if we can. And, uh, obviously we couldn't do that in the beginning, but, uh, think about how we were learning to do things differently. , We were doing everything at home. We weren't commuting. Most of us were having family dinners every night, and most of us don't, haven't taken the time to have family dinners every night.

There was a lot of time to think, maybe too much if you're someone who likes the distraction and, and doesn't really love to be alone with your own thoughts. There was also a lot of time to breathe. Not everyone took advantage of that, but if you really think about [00:11:00] it, there was some time and space and this, this chance to take a breath, to take a beat, to slow down a little bit because it was forced on us.

I mean, none, none of us would do that at any other time. Right? We did it because we had to. And then think back to when the world reopened. I'm in Idaho, so our state never technically shut down. We were in a much different situation than so many cities and, and towns and states across the US and across the world.

But regardless, there was a point where your community, your state, your area reopened. What happened then?

Well, for most people, they ran straight back into the grind, right back to the overwork, back to the being busy, back to [00:12:00] the working 50 hours a week, and this glorified exhaustion and this wearing this, this tag of I'm super busy, or I'm crazy busy, as a badge of honor.

We had the chance to shape our post pandemic lives into a new normal. But for most of us, we just rushed back to the old one because it was familiar. It was familiar, Even if it wasn't fulfilling, really. Think about that. There was this gift, this opportunity coming outta the pandemic, a chance to rethink how to live and work in a new way moving forward.

Like we could ask ourselves, do I really wanna work in the office 50 hours a week? Do I really wanna commute to work each day? Do I even wanna stay at the job or the career or the relationships that I'm currently in? Big, big questions that many of us didn't actually take the time to ask ourselves. And [00:13:00] instead of reshaping our new normal, we just rush back to what we knew before.

Because it was comfortable, because it's familiar, because we expected to feel something different this time around because we were different. We'd experienced a pandemic. Obviously things were gonna be much different because we were different people coming outta the pandemic. Midlife is the same. It is this incredible opportunity to feel more like yourself than ever before.

Uh, that, that of course is after a period of perimenopause into menopause where your brain is literally rewiring itself. Obviously, your physical body is changing. During that period of time, you absolutely don't feel like yourself at all, so I get that. But after you get the physical pieces dialed in, there is this opportunity in [00:14:00] midlife

that you can literally become the woman you are always meant to be, and live the life you are always meant to live. If you choose to.

But hear me, you can't do that by just focusing on the physical. It has to go deeper. There's, there's some internal family systems or some childhood trauma. You have to address some lingering doubts about career and relationships where you're at in life and, and then you have to make some decisions that align with the real you.

What do you want? How do you define success? What does your best life look like? You literally hit this moment in midlife where everything in your body and your brain is telling you, reevaluate, reimagine, reinvent. And instead, if you're like most of us, instead of reevaluating or reimagining or reinventing, you default to what [00:15:00] you already know, which is more doing, more working, more proving, more earning.

Same patterns, same burnout, same numbness. Same indifference, same out of alignment, same I just don't feel like myself.

It's because you expected to feel something different this time around because you are different now. I get that. But you didn't change your life. You just changed your habits. And here's the problem with that.

When we try to fix the internal disconnection that we're feeling with external solutions, it doesn't work. So we start HRT, maybe we change jobs, we eat more protein, we take a different Pilates class, maybe we try another productivity hack. Those things, they're great, [00:16:00] but they're not the thing. Because at some point you've gotta stop asking, how do I fix this?

And start asking, who am I now? Who even am I now?

Here's what I want you to know, midlife. It's an invitation not just to feel better, but to become you finally. Not the version of you that your boss wants, not the mom version, not the resume version, the real you. And you don't get there just by fixing your physical body.

You have to go deeper. You have to unpack those old stories that are keeping you stuck. You have to heal the trauma you've been too busy to deal with. Get busy, press those feelings down, just like stuff 'em in there. Right. But we'll deal with those later. Well, it's, it's about time. I mean, we're, we're decades in, it's about time we, we heal with that trauma we've been too busy to deal with.[00:17:00] 

We have to let go of the identities that we've outgrown and get radically honest with ourselves about what is working and what isn't. Because at the end of the day, hear me. Doing more of what burned you out will never make you feel whole.

You will never get that sense of happiness or satisfaction or fulfillment that you have always been seeking just by doing more. Because if that were the golden ticket, you'd have it now. Am I right? I mean, you are no stranger to hard work. So if the outcome, the happiness is success, the fulfillment, the feeling like yourself, the being comfortable in your own skin, if you haven't done that so far, then you need to try something different, which means you have to stop trying to out exercise your overwork or

out- lift yourself abandonment or sleep your way through a life [00:18:00] that no longer feels like it's your life. It no longer fits.

Here's what happens. And, and if you're being honest with yourself, this pattern probably looks, sounds, feels familiar. You feel better physically. So you think, okay.

Now I can handle more. And you run right back to the overworking and the caretaking and the people pleasing. You just, you throw yourself into another project. You default back to the over-functioning, and then you wonder why the emptiness comes back, why you don't feel fulfilled. Why the quiet resentment that lives just below the surface, that you've become such a master of keeping hidden.

Why doing the same things that you've always done, why that isn't making you feel different or better. Because what's going on here that no one else is talking about is doing more of what [00:19:00] burned you out will not make you feel better. When it really comes right down to it, it's not about doing more, it's about doing something that's aligned.

Things that feel authentic to you. What is real and right for the woman you are becoming? And you might be thinking, okay, Laurie, you're saying to do less, do what's in alignment? What's authentic? How am I supposed to do that when everyone around me is counting on me, when life is lifeing and there's too much to do every day and not enough hours in the day?

And I get it. I, I've been there. I have felt that. I completely understand why you might be thinking that. That's why every coaching relationship at the School of Mildife, whether it's one-on-one coaching with me, or group coaching with a group of similarly situated like-minded women, starts with answering these three questions, and you've heard them here before.

What do you actually want? Not [00:20:00] what you were raised to want, not what you're conditioned to want, not what your parents told you'd want, not what some influencer on social media tells you you should want, but what is it you actually want? And that that my friends is harder than it sounds because if I were to ask you right now, what do you want, you are probably, if you're like most people, your entire mind goes blank. I, I don't know. I don't know what I want. And we have tools to back into that. And one, what do you actually want?

Number two, how do you define success now? Because for most of us, success has meant job title, money. How much am I making on that paycheck? But after decades of chasing those job titles and the more money and the bigger paycheck, I think we can all say that that hasn't left us any happier or more fulfilled.

But success on our terms? [00:21:00] That feels like alignment. That feels like the satisfaction and the fulfillment that we've been seeking. So we gotta figure out what that looks like to us.

And then number three, what does your best life look like? Not a life that looks good on paper, not a life that sounds great to everyone else, but one that feels real to you.

What does that look like? What, what does a perfect day in your best life look like?

If you don't know what it looks like, you will never know when you actually get there. When you can stop chasing. And it's so hard to know which direction to go in if you don't actually know where you're headed.

So three questions. What do you actually want? How do you define success now? What does your best life look like?

 Don't be fooled though. It is not as easy to answer those questions as it may seem. Yep. [00:22:00] I, I, I, I get it. They seem pretty simple on the surface, but given the way we approach them at the School of Mildife, those questions, and in particular your answers to them, they're anything but simple.

And what I found from working with hundreds of high achieving midlife women is that until you answer those questions, you're gonna keep living the same year over and over again, waiting for something to change, without ever changing anything. And notice that has absolutely nothing to do with addressing the physical changes that you're experiencing in midlife.

Huh. Right. We're so focused on the physical, but if we really want true and lasting change, we have to start doing the inside work.

Because here's one I know for certain. At the end of the day, you can take all of the HRT you can convince your doctor to prescribe you. You can lift [00:23:00] all the weights, eat all the protein, but if you don't address what's going on inside of yourself, you're gonna fall right back into those same patterns of doing more and experiencing the same feelings and emotions and expecting different results.

To, to no end. And that my friend is not a recipe to getting back to feeling more like yourself. That's, that's just a recipe to getting back to feeling the same overwork and overwhelm and burnout and resentment that you've always felt.

I, I think that this is probably going to be the hardest truth of the entire episode, and that is: You will not feel like yourself again until you stop trying to return to a version of yourself that was built to just survive, not thrive.

That version of you who performed and achieved [00:24:00] and over functioned, she got you here. Bless her, thank her. Appreciate her love on her because she did a lot of heavy lifting. But honestly, she can't take you where you're going next.

You wanna feel like yourself again, maybe for the first time ever. Then you need to stop living on autopilot. You have to stop chasing someone else's checklist.

You have to look inside. Get comfortable listening to your intuition. Start listening to your own voice.

So here's what I want you to do. If you've been doing everything right and it still feels like something is missing, know that you are not alone. You're not broken. There's nothing wrong with you. This is part of growing up.

You are literally being invited into a new season of life, one where you get [00:25:00] to stop doing so much and start becoming. If you, if, if you want any support with that, dm me the word help on Instagram or send me an email with the word help on the subject line, and I'll send you all the details about coaching and the Gap Year.

 Because I, I don't want you to feel out of sorts, I don't want you to feel misaligned.

Midlife. It can be a gift. Midlife should be a gift. Midlife is that opportunity, that awakening, that chance to do something different and something meaningful. But for most of us, we can't do it on our own. So if you want help, just reach out.

I'd love to chat with you about it and we'll, we, we can figure out there's, there's no pressure at all. There's no sales pitch or anything. Let's, let's just have a conversation about what would potentially work best for you.

And if, if you wanna try and do it yourself, start with those three questions that I [00:26:00] talked about. Seriously, write them down today. Answer them honestly.

Because the truth is you can take the HRT that your doctor will prescribe, eat all the protein, deadlift your body weight, but if you don't deal what's going on in your mind and your patterns and your identities, and your beliefs about you and yourself and your, what's possible for you in your life, You'll, you'll likely never feel like yourself again.

And you, my friend. You deserve to feel like yourself. The real you, fully expressed, fully alive, completely fulfilled, filled with joy and happiness, fully present in a life that fits.

There, there's no, there are no specific journal prompts for this episode because I know that this was a heavy one. We talked about a lot of things that no one else is talking about. So instead [00:27:00] of turning your focus and attention to answering specific questions, I'd just be curious to hear in general what's coming up for you as you listen to this episode. What were the big takeaways or the aha moments? How are you going to move forward in midlife now knowing that it's not just about the physical changes in midlife, that if, if you actually wanna feel like yourself again, you have to do the inside work.

That's probably the most important. You gotta do the inside work. Yes. Dial in the physical side, but you gotta do the inside work too. How does that feel?

As always, I am so grateful that you chose to spend part of your day with me. Thank you so much for being here today. If this episode spoke to you, made you think, raise some questions or issues that, that you just haven't thought of before,. I would, I would be so grateful if you would share it with another woman who needs to hear this because we're all in this [00:28:00] together. And the way that we can collectively make midlife and beyond our best life for all women is to support all women.

So if you've, if you took anything outta this episode and you know someone who would. Benefit from it, please share it with her. I'd be so grateful. Until next time, thank you so much for being here at the School of Mildife podcast today. Take good care. I'll see you back here next week when the School of Mildife is back in session.

 Thank you so much for listening to the School of Midlife podcast. It means so much to have you here each week. If you enjoyed this episode, could you do me the biggest favor and help us spread the word to other midlife women? There are a couple of easy ways for you to do that first. And most importantly, if you're not already following the show, would you please subscribe? That helps you because you'll never miss an episode. And it helps us because you'll [00:29:00] never miss an episode. Second, if you'd be so kind to leave us a five-star rating, that would be absolutely incredible. And finally, I personally read each and every one of your reviews. 

So if you take a minute and say some nice things about the podcast, well, that's just good karma. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you right back here. Next week when the School of Midlife is back in session until then take good care.