CPD Credits
4.5
Event Type
Live Online Event
Location
Zoom & Recording for 365 days
Time
1:30 pm - 6:00 pm
Standard
£90.00
Trainee/NHS
£76.50
Saturday, February 24, 2024
Unsilencing the Menopause in Psychotherapy
A live webinar with Margaret Altemus, Sarah Benamer, Letticia Banton, Yansie Rolston and Jane Catherine Severn
With Margaret Altemus, Sarah Benamer, Letticia Banton, Yansie Rolston & Jane Catherine Severn
Mirroring society, the menopause is an area of women’s lives that has been overlooked by psychotherapy, in theory, research and practice. This live webinar will address why a legacy of misogyny prevails in silencing discourse about the menopause and how as psychotherapists we need to confront this by focusing on it as an area of training, so we can better empower our clients to navigate this fundamental life-transition.
As the menopause is a bio-psycho-social-spiritual phenomenon we have designed the programme to offer multidisciplinary perspectives to enrich your understanding of what the menopause can mean for women. The speakers will offer their expertise from medicine and psychiatry, psychoanalysis, intercultural therapy with a focus on the black experience, and humanistic psycho-spirituality, and the neglected arena of affirming lived female embodiment. They will also offer personal, case insights and suggestions of how to work with the menopause in practice. There will be plenty of time for questions and we will close the webinar with a panel discussion which will enable some integration of the new learnings throughout the day.
Please note the content will primarily be about women’s experience but we acknowledge not all women experience menopause and not all people who experience menopause identify as women. We intend this to be an inclusive event that recognises subjectivity. We welcome therapists of all genders to join us to learn about how the menopause impacts people of all genders in a variety of ways.
Programme
13.30 Introductions
13.40 Letticia Banton
How history has silenced the menopause
This introductory talk will provide historical context as to why menopause has been overlooked in psychotherapy and where this leaves us today.
14.00 Margaret Altemus
Understanding how hormones interact with menopausal mental health
At menopause, women go through a new stage of psychological, social and physical development, in part driven by a sequence of hormonal changes. During perimenopause, the 3-5 years prior to the last menstrual period, physical changes can include weight gain, increased migraine severity, urogenital changes, and musculoskeletal pain. There is also an increased risk of mental health difficulties, including depression, suicidality, anxiety, irritability and psychotic symptoms at perimenopause. A variety of hormonal and non-hormonal treatments are available which can improve quality of life at menopause. However, treatment use is limited by lack of appreciation of menopausal symptoms by both women and their clinicians.
14.30 Q&A
14.45 Sarah Benamer
Menopause matters: Challenging misogyny in psychotherapy
In patriarchal societies, women have historically been subjugated to male norms and depicted as mad, untrustworthy, and dangerous because of their wombs, menstrual cycles and fluctuating hormones. This misogynistic legacy has been inherited by psychoanalytic theory which has demeaned and pathologised women’s bodies and minds. Women are either depicted as irrational victims of their own bodies, or shamed if they express their physicality and sexuality. Nowhere is this degradation clearer than regarding the menopause. Therapeutic attention to this transition in women’s lives is limited and inadequate. Top-down misogynistic notions which perpetuate the Cartesian divide between mind and body are imposed rather than supporting a woman’s subjective, holistic and sociocultural meaning-making of her menopausal experience. Sarah will consider how if we seek to integrate psychological and physical menopausal experiences as part of the psychoanalytic endeavour rather than exclude it as a ‘medical concern’ we can better empower women today.
15.15 Q&A
15.30 Break
16.00 Yansie Rolston
Black and Menopausal: Intimate Stories of Navigating Change
In this talk Dr Rolston will share a collection of deeply empowering and personal stories bringing together a wide range of Black experiences on the menopause journey. Drawing on the historical and cultural importance of storytelling traditions in African and Caribbean ancestry, these stories break through a taboo topic that has too often been mired in shame and silence with courage and vulnerability. With a focus on emotional, mental and sexual health this talk will offer a space to think about the experiences that black women face in the menopausal journey from more extreme physical and psychological impact combined with a less responsive system of support and understanding to help as they navigate this important transition.
16.30 Q&A
16.45 Jane Catherine Severn
Femenome®: A Psyche-Logical Approach to Therapy with Menopausal Women
Jane Catherine has developed ‘Femenome®’ a radical psyche-logical approach to therapy with women, which challenges predominant narratives of menopause as a solely negative and debilitating time in a woman’s life. She illuminates how it can offer a revelatory connection to a deeper feminine consciousness and connection to Self, leading to a more fulfilled and satisfying second half of life. Jane Catherine’s talk will offer a clear model for understanding what the menopause is trying to create within us. She will provide tools and practical strategies for working with the menopause as well as case examples. With passion and profound insight, Jane Catherine will illuminate the whole new world of therapeutic potential that the menopause can open by listening to rather than ignoring it in psychotherapy.
17.15 Q&A
17.30 Panel Session with Q&A
Drawing on a multidisciplinary perspective to support clients through the menopause in psychotherapy
18:00 End
Margaret Altemus
Margaret Altemus, MD is an associate professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and director of women’s mental health services in Primary Care in the Veterans Administration Connecticut Healthcare System. Her research interests are neuroendocrinology with a focus on the impact of reproductive hormones and reproductive events on mood and anxiety disorders and stress response physiology. Dr. Altemus went to medical school at Georgetown University and did her psychiatry residency at Yale New-Haven Hospital. After residency she moved to the Intramural Research Program at the National Institute of Mental Health where she worked with patients with eating disorders and anxiety disorders. From 1996-2015 she directed the Women’s Mental Health Program at Weill Cornell Medical College.
Sarah Benamer
Sarah Benamer (UKCP, MBACP, SEP) is a relational Attachment Based Psychoanalytic psychotherapist and supervisor who works with individuals and couples. She originally qualified as a psychotherapist at The Bowlby Centre and has subsequently trained as a psychosexual and couples therapist and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. Prior to being a psychotherapist Sarah was a community worker, advocating for those in crisis within the NHS psychiatric system, and supporting individuals living with chronic pain, long-term illness and severe physical disabilities. In addition to therapeutic trainings she has an MA in Applied Anthropology, a grounding that informs her ‘participant observer’ approach to clinical practice. Sarah has a particular interest in the many roles of the body in our emotional and relational worlds. In her clinical and written work she seeks to integrate psychoanalytic and attachment understandings with an appreciation of individual body narrative. Sarah is deeply committed to the accessibility of therapy and theory that is relevant in the clients’ world.
Publications: ‘Telling Stories’ Attachment Based Approaches to the Treatment of Psychosis (Ed) , Trauma and Attachment (Edited with Kate White) , Killing Me Softly; A Relational Understanding of Attachment to Pain in Attachment Journal ‘Not So Hysterical Now’ Psychotherapy, Menopause, and Hysterectomy in Attachment Journal In Press: ‘Embodied Intimacies’ a clinical chapter in a book edited by Brett Kahr to be published in honour of Susie Orbach.
Letticia Banton
Letticia is a UKCP-qualified integrative psychotherapist. She is also in the final stages of completing her doctorate in Counselling Psychology and Psychotherapy at the Metanoia Institute, London. Her doctoral research is an interpretative phenomenological analysis on cisgendered female clients’ experience of their menstrual cycle in therapy with a male therapist. She is an advocate for integrating overlooked issues, such as the menstruality and menopause, into contemporary psychotherapeutic theory, research and practice. Her broader clinical and research interests include a focus on gender and sexuality, and she has considerable therapeutic experience working with transgender and non-binary people.
Yansie Rolston
Yansie Rolston PhD has a depth of experience and expertise in health equality development. She is a reflective practitioner as well as an academic – a combination of roles which allows her to combine her considerable community based skills and experience with evidence base to underpin her work.
In her quest for knowledge about the menopause she has travelled to the USA, South America, the Caribbean and Africa listening to stories about the diversity of experiences and learning about symptom management.
Yansie is the Executive Producer of 3 menopause films and co-editor of Black and Menopausal – intimate stories of navigating the change. She has also appeared on BBC Women’s Hour.
Jane Catherine Severn
Jane Catherine Severn is a Psychotherapist, Menstruality Educator and Writer in Aotearoa (New Zealand). She has spent over 40 years assembling an intuitive and phenomenological body of knowledge on the psycho-spiritual design of women’s “4M” hormonal sequence: menarche, menstrual cycle years, menopause, and mature life. In 2003 she created Luna House (www.lunahouse.co.nz), an educational and therapeutic service, through which she offers workshops, courses, seminars and specialist consultations for women at each stage. She also offers professional development training for therapists in her new modality called Femenome Therapy. Her first book, The World Within Women: the femenome guide to your menstrual cycle, was published in 2021, ( https://www.lunahouse.co.nz/shop) and her next, The Alchemy of Menopause, is on its way.
- Psychotherapists
- Couple and Family Psychotherapists
- Psychoanalysts
- Psychologists
- Clinical Psychologists
- Psychiatrists
- GPs
- Counsellors
- Social workers
- Teachers/Educators
Margaret Altemus
- Explain the hormonal changes across the menopause transition and how they relate to physical symptoms of menopause, include vasomotor instability, weight gain, musculoskeletal pain, migraine and urogenital symptoms.
- Describe the effects of hormone changes across the menopause transition on mood and cognition in healthy women and women with psychiatric disorders
- Appraise risks and benefits of hormone replacement therapy for physical and mood symptoms associated with the menopause transition.
Sarah Benamer
- Integrate the unacknowledged often body-based narratives that women need support to name in therapy.
- Use menopausal themes and issues in therapy more generally with clients regardless of gender or age to normalize this issue.
Jane Catherine Severn
- Identify any elements of cultural conditioning, prejudice, assumption or unawareness that could unconsciously limit or influence their work with menopausal clients
- Apply an understanding of female hormones as catalysts of consciousness and co-facilitators of therapy
- Discover a new psycho-spiritual model of specifically feminine human developmental maturation, in which the “symptoms” of menopause can be recognised as diagnostic and remedial guides in psychotherapy with menopausal clients (and in their own lives)
Yansie Rolston
- Appreciate the cultural and historical significance of storytelling traditions in African and Caribbean ancestry as a means to break taboos and foster courage and vulnerability in discussing menopause, especially among Black women.
- Understanding of the unique challenges and experiences faced by Black women during the menopausal journey, particularly concerning their emotional, mental, and sexual health, and will be better equipped to advocate for and support the needs of Black women in this important life transition.
Standard Registration: £90.00
Trainee, NHS staff and Third Sector: £76.50
Group Rates (for 4 or more): Contact lucysam@trtogether.com for customised pricing.
Trainee discount: To qualify for this offer you need to be taking a course which provides core practitioner training in counselling or psychotherapy that is at least 1 year full time or two years part time and recognised by the BACP or UKCP. TR Together reserve the right to ask to see evidence of training being undertaken.
Alumni: If you are a TR Alumni (TRAPC member) please email anitabruz@tavistockrelationships.org for a discount code to add at checkout
Your CPD certificate will be available to download from your TR Together account within 48 hours of the event.