Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Hormones, Emotions & the Female Nervous System: Why Women Feel So Much with Dr. Sonya Jensen

Episode Date: February 2, 2026

In this episode of The Resetter Podcast, Dr. Mindy Pelz sits down with hormone expert Dr. Sonya Jensen for a deeply honest conversation about how hormones shape our emotions, behaviors, relationships, and sense of self across every stage of a woman's life. Together, they explore why emotional reactions intensify during hormonal transitions, how resentment and rage often have ancestral roots, and why symptoms like anxiety, fatigue, and overwhelm are not character flaws, but signals from the body asking for support. Dr. Sonya introduces her "HER Cycle" framework, showing how hormones, emotions, and relationships are always influencing one another and how healing often begins in the body, not the mind. To view full show notes, resources mentioned in the episode, transcripts, and more, visit: 👉 https://drmindypelz.com/ep325 Explore our community membership at: 👉 https://resetacademy.drmindypelz.com Please note our medical disclaimer.

On this episode of The Resetter podcast, I bring you Dr. Sonia Jensen. Now, a couple of things to know about Sonia. For starters, she is a dear, dear friend. At one point, I actually did a podcast with her and another doc on women's issues. That was several years ago. We also know each other from a mastermind that we did together of all different types of doctors and healers, all masterminding around health. There's a really beautiful group of humans.

And she has a real passion for women's health. Like, I really want you to hear, this is what I want? I want you to feel her words because that's who Sonia is. She is the gal you want to sit on the couch with, and I've done it many times with her, and have a heart to heart. And that's what you're about to hear. You're about to hear a woman that cares so deeply about women and getting the right health information out to women. And she has a new book.

It's called, heal your hormones, reclaim yourself. And it's coming out in last week of February. And she's introducing a concept she calls the her method. And one of the things that I love about this book and what I love about this conversation you're about to hear is that she has done one. of the most brilliant jobs linking our emotions to our hormones. Now, think about this for a second. Walk through this with me. How many times have we been mad?

Have we been sad? Have we been feeling really irritable? And we always think it's the person, the place, the situation. But how many times do we stop and go, I'm stress intolerant today because I don't have enough estrogen? Now, hopefully those of you have been listening to me for a while. are starting to connect those dots. But what you're going to hear in this conversation is how do we start to translate our emotions?

And how do we understand if they are whispers from our hormones? How do we understand if our lifestyle changes can affect our emotions? How do we understand if it's inherited? We talk a lot about inherited emotions from generations before us. It's really probably one of the most. most in-depth conversations I've ever brought you on our emotional landscape of the female experience of life and how our hormones dictate our emotions and control our emotions and what we can do to ride that wave and to speak out more and to learn to have more compassion for

ourselves. It's just a juicy conversation and I'm really excited for you all to have it. to shut up now so that you all can hear the wise Dr. Sonia Jensen. And her book is out. Go grab it, talk about it, help other women find it. This is the level of conversation we need in women's health right now and especially in menopause. So we'll leave all the links on how you find her book, but most importantly, enjoy. Okay.

Well, Dr. Sonia Jensen, I am so happy to have you here. And there's so much in your book that I feel like I want to take a page of your book and like rip it out and be like, go into the streets and be like, we need to talk about this, everybody. Why aren't we talking about this? I'm so glad you feel that way. I do too. Yeah, because there's just so much depth in understanding hormones and behavior.

And I think you and I have both been on this crazy journey of educating women about hormones, going through our own hormonal experience. And I literally think like almost 10 times a day, I'm like, is that hormones talking and reacting right now? Or is this person really being egregious? Or is this situation really bad? Or am I overreacting to it? So what I want to do is start off with, can you help us understand how hormones, no matter what your age,

determine our personality and our behaviors? Yeah, great question to start with. I think what happens is our hormones and when we're in those transition phases, amplify what's already existing. So our emotions give meaning to our experiences. So we have an experience, whether it's a stressful one or a joyful one, and we have certain hormones that then tell the brain and the body how to respond. And so when we've been wired a certain way, to respond a certain way, our hormones now have a pattern that they've been following for a really long time. And then we hit these transition points in our life, whether it's through puberty or, you know, we're getting pregnant, postpartum, perimenopause and menopause as we're experiencing. And then all of a sudden, those feelings that we had about certain

scenarios or experiences, they just get really amplified and we become more vulnerable to our surroundings and to the triggers in our present day, which creates that hormonal chaos, which hormonal confusion of like, like you said, is this actually about him or about this moment? Is it my body? And I think it's all of it. But we're being informed in such a different way because we're not playing the old patterns and the roles and the identities anymore. And so I think that's what creates that confusion in a lot of women of being able to discern, okay, what's now, what's from before. Right. Okay. So is there a way, like I'll use myself as an example, there were many times in my perimenopause. So I'm about three years postmenopause now. In my perimenopause where I would have a reaction and I felt like somebody had hijacked my brain. I'm like, I've never reacted like this before. Why am I reacting like that? It would be easy when you have like a 180 turn.

in your personality to be able to see that it was hormones. But how do you know if you're like a 35-year-old woman and it's a week before your period and you're crying all the time, like how do you know, oh, it's hormonal, it's not hormonal? Like is there some kind of way we can to use your words like decode, oh, this is a hormonal moment? Oh, no, wait, this is actually a difficult moment that I've just having a human experience with, or this is actually both, I'm hormonally in a

different place mixed with, I just had a really stressful thing happened to me. Is there a way to tell the difference between those three? Yeah, absolutely. I think what you said initially is that self-awareness of like, okay, something's off. And maybe in our authorities, that doesn't come from internally from us. It might be from a partner. It might be from a child. It might be from a colleague of like, okay, you're behaving a little bit differently or this reaction is causing a challenge in a relationship and then we're reflecting on it. So the best thing to do is look at pattern recognition. And you mentioned, you know, a week before my Luteel phase, maybe something is off. So when you start to recognize, oh, this is turning into a monthly thing. So this is where

tracking and writing down our story throughout the month can be really indicative of like, okay, what are the patterns that are stressing me out or the triggers that are stressing me out in these moments, then we're able to create discernment from there. So then we're able to see, okay, I'm more vulnerable in this time. And so the noises outside are going to bug me a bit more. A conversation might be a bit more sensitive to it. So that's the first step. And then when you start taking that second step is understanding, okay, is there a theme to my reaction? Maybe there's something I'm not listening to that my body is trying to tell me I need to pay attention to, right? So that's that discernment of like, is it the relationship or is it my hormones?

So I could blame my hormones and say, okay, well, every month I'm going to, you know, not like what he's doing or, you know, what pressure I'm putting on myself or all the things that I'm caring for my family. But it'll be fine next week because I'll bleed and it'll be okay and I'll just ignore it again. But if that same situation is coming up over and over and over again, that's when we want to recognize, yes, your hormones are trying to tell you, they're amplifying your reaction on purpose so you can create a different life, so you can make different choices, so you can take action so that it's not so amplified at that time. Right, yeah. And I can go back.

I think we all could probably go back and see that pattern. I wouldn't even need to track it. I could go back and be like, oh, I can tell you exactly how. I felt the week before my period almost all the time. So, so I like that looking at the patterns. It made me think, are there, are there different expressions of our emotions at different times of the month? Like, are we meant to be happier at sometimes? We're meant to be more inner at others. Like, could we also see a pattern like that? We're not always, not necessarily just the negative patterns, but maybe I'm happy on day one to day 15 all the time. Like, what are we supposed to

to be. Yeah, and you know, you educate on this a lot too, and it's that experience, it's going to be different for everyone. I do believe that. And when you start to look at hormonally, when estrogen is high, often joy is a little bit higher because we're more confident. And when we're more confident, we're making different decisions. We're, you know, out in the world a little bit more. We're a little bit more extroverted because the confidence is there. Estrogen allowing more suppression of fear, so we're not basing our decisions off of fear. So we can do the things in that follicular phase. And after ovulation, when progesterone is supposed to be higher,

that is the hormone that's telling us to take a break. It is telling us to nurture ourselves a little bit more. And doesn't mean we have to hide out from the world, but maybe we just need to slow down. And maybe I will feel more reflective. So maybe I will feel a bit sad because I'm in reflection. Maybe I will have more memories of grief that I've experienced or maybe there's a loss that I experienced that,

the follicular phase maybe hides a little bit for me, but then in my luteel, I have this opportunity to feel and heal from that. So I think when we understand that, we can give ourselves some, you know, room to actually feel and not feel like we have to experience shame because of our emotions or our feelings or get labeled, oh, you know, it's just PMS, so she's just too emotional. But yes, there's rhythms through our month and we're wired to worry. Like women are wired to look at challenges. So our brain works in such a different way that we need to start honoring these emotions and understanding them and speaking to them so that we know what their cycle is too with our cycle. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I think you and I feel like had this conversation like 10 years ago

of like when I really started to wrap my head around hormones and how they ebb and flow, I thought, oh my God, I wasn't meant to have the same attitude all month long. Yeah. That's really exciting. And then there's sort of a moment where you do allow yourself to feel the whole spectrum. Like if you go into this rhythm that we're talking about, you do start, and I hope people listening do this. Like notice, are you happier in the front half of your cycle? And in the back half of your cycle, you're a little more inner. And I really have like a vision where I feel like we should be teaching this to every teenager because, right? Because I don't know about you. you, but I, whenever I felt like I couldn't work out the week before my period, or every time I felt like I wanted more carbs the week before my period, or every time I felt like I just couldn't, I was overwhelmed, I couldn't take one more thing. I thought it was a me problem. Well, we're conditioned to think it's a me problem always, especially as women. Yeah, you know, so, and I think self-awareness is really important to understand, okay, this reaction is coming from me, yes, and there's some allowance of, you know,

of, you know, how I can feel throughout the month, like the libido conversation. You know, women, I'll talk to them when they're 20s and 30s, and they're like, you know, sometimes I just don't have that same reaction to my partner, even though I love it. I'm like, yeah, because you're not meant to. You know, libido is highest around ovulation on purpose. And so, yes, a week before, you're not going to feel the same. You're not feeling the same in your body. You might be feeling bloated.

You're fatigued. All your energy is going into creating this tissue so it can bleed. and you can, you know, let go of that endometrium, of course, you're doing so much work there. You're not going to want to be intimate at that time. So I think it does give us permission and allows us just to like exhale. It's like, okay, there's not anything wrong with me. This is my biology, and it's my body just trying to speak to me so I can go back into that rhythm and make the choices I need to for myself.

Yeah. It's such a revolutionary concept on an ancient, biological process. I know. It's just because conversations weren't happening. I was having that conversation with myself in my mind just earlier today of how we're talking so differently about women's health that I think even women are still uncomfortable around it. And it's the little things. I was thinking about, you know, my hair is going gray and I have an aunt who's just 10 years older than me, my mom's youngest sister. And there is a moment where she's like, you know, I have this natural dye that you can use.

And I'm like, why do you feel like I need to use a dye? She's like, oh, you know, because you're starting to look older. It was coming from such a sweet space. I'm like, oh, yeah, this is uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable for women to accept themselves. It's uncomfortable to start speaking our truth. Like, this is creating, this is ruffling feathers, which we're not used to.

And which, but I think needs to happen. Right, which is why I want to. to like, I really wanted to hone in on this part of the conversation because I think that as women, we have a tendency to always think it's our problem. And your book opens up with this beautiful story of a woman who has an understanding of how her hormones have been affecting her whole life. And then she gets into work with you. You start helping her balance her hormones through lifestyle and all the things.

And then she has a different, like, relationship. with herself. Yes. Tell that story because I really want women before we even move on to understand that we have been wrapped up in all kinds of bows to make everybody else happy. And this has caused us to misunderstand ourselves. That's right. Caused so much suffering.

So much suffering. And the story of the woman you opened the book with, I was like, wow, that is every woman's story, I feel like. Yeah, I still get goosebumps every time. I even think about her and that story, and I do think she's the huge why behind this book, too, because those few words that she said to me that one day of you saved my life. And I was just really taken aback. I knew we were doing some good work, and she was feeling better and all of that,

but I didn't know how deeply she was feeling all of this. And so she had come to me just feeling really depleted, really depressed. She was taking care of a husband who was going through cancer treatment, having difficulties with her daughter who was a teen, having to work, having to manage the house. And as women, we just carry so much. Like, we carry such a mental low. So she's carrying all of that for the whole unit and just feeling stuck.

But was used to being the one that everybody relied on. She was the people pleaser. She came from a culture where that was modeled to her that women sacrificed in order to hold their family unit together. And so we started doing. the hormonal work first, I find as soon as you show a woman on a test or you start to speak to her about her physical symptoms, she starts to realize, okay, my body's telling me something. I can't go on longer. And, you know, in the beginning, I think we do it for others. She wanted

energy to take care of her husband. She wanted to be okay so she didn't react to her daughter. And so sometimes we have to start with that. And when she started to see, you know, this chronic stress was lowering her hormones. It was causing more. anxiety, more depression. We started doing that physical work. Then we were able to unwind the emotional patterns of people pleasing and putting up the boundaries, saying no to something so she can say yes to herself. She stopped abandoning herself to help everybody else. But in doing that, she was still able to help others because she was more full. And, you know, so she didn't have to rely on medication. And that's when she's like, I was at my end.

Like, I didn't know the choices I had because medication doesn't work for me. And the other choice was taking my life. And, you know, that's a conversation I think many women have in their minds and don't say out loud. It actually makes me quite emotional to say that. And so I think women need to know that you're not alone. Like, we all have those thoughts when we're so burnt out, when the world just feels so chaotic. And so when we understand that this is my body speaking to me so that I can heal,

there's so much hope that can be anchored into. So in that scenario, you worked on her hormones first, and then she started to see the patterns of thought change. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That would be pretty profound. You know, I had an experience this year with really acutely seeing my thoughts change

from just committing to get out into nature every day and getting out in the forest that's behind our house, getting in the water surfing every day. And I came in one morning to my husband. He was sitting on the couch. I'm like, I wish you knew what was going on up here. If you understood what was happening. The brain has stopped telling me worst case scenario.

And it's starting to tell me all the things that I should be grateful for and joyful for. My brain hasn't done that in years. Yes. And all I did is slow down and commit to getting into nature every single day because somebody told me when I moved here to Santa Cruz, they're like, let the land heal you. And I was like, I'm out of answers.

I'm going to let the land heal me. And so the reason I bring that up is I think we as women, always think it's our fault. We always think that whatever was showing up emotionally, physically, like we did something wrong. And I want to point out, in your book, you have a thing around the her cycle, and I want to go into that because what you're offering us is a lens to be able to say, wait a second, I'm depressed, I'm anxious, I'm suicidal, I can't focus, I have all kinds of problems, but what you're telling me is instead of trying to change those problems, I should work on changing my hormones and see if I react to those situations the same.

Just so we're clear, that's what you're saying, right? Absolutely. It changes the lens through which you're experiencing that problem. And then the emotion follows that. So I think that's why I called it the her cycle, the hormones, emotions, and relationship. It's because each one is feeding into the other. Sometimes it's hard to see the chicken, the egg, you know, what comes first because they're feeding into one another. So when you grab onto the thing that we can control, we can support our hormones. We can eat a certain way. We can move a certain way.

We can go out into nature. We can do all these things. And then all of a sudden it starts to feed the brain different information. And the information that we're receiving is like, okay, now, you know, progesterone's there all of a sudden. We can feel more relaxed. Okay, estrogen is being fed. Okay, I can feel some joy. Like, you know, I'm actually feeling happy when I go outside.

And so you start to see that, like, okay, now I can actually pause. when I'm in an experience that's uncomfortable or if I'm in a trigger, I can take a moment to recognize the reaction that's happening, which will then feed into our relationships. So just understanding that, I think, can give one so much hope and trust back into oneself because we lose so much trust in ourselves when we're having all those thoughts and it feels chaotic and also allowing the chaos a little bit, I think, is important too because that brings acceptance. It's like, this isn't my fault. this is what it is because of my story, because of my history, because of a generational history.

And here it is in front of me and I'm experiencing it. How do I nurture her? How do I understand this feeling? How do I talk to this feeling? So it starts to work for me instead of against me. One of my biggest ahas this year in healing myself was how important it is to bring the body into the healing experience so much so that I've even wondered like is is my mind making these thoughts up or is my body informing my mind on what to do? Have we ever done a percentage of like is it you know 70% of your thoughts controlled by your body? Do you have any? I'm sure there is I don't know what the yeah I don't know either but just coming from like a yogic perspective the reason why we do yoga is to train the mind because you can't train the body through the mind because the mind is all over the place we call

it the monkey mind right it's like those thoughts you were talking about like it's crazy what can happen in here but if we attach to every thought that's what's causing the suffering if we can observe them and understand them because that is translating into that feeling and into that subconscious space then we can start to make different choices and have different habits and things that will feed different thoughts and then we take different actions so it's that cycle again And it's just really that understanding is where we start. Yeah. And I just want to say before we, and I want to jump into her cycle and how we start to decode this.

But for everybody listening, if you haven't gone through the body to heal the mind, it's really transformative. And to just all of a sudden experience yourself reacting differently is like the greatest gift in the world. It's like, so I can see why that woman came into you and said, you changed. my life because she probably observed herself reacting in a different way, which is just so beautiful. Yeah, absolutely. So talk about the her cycle. Okay, so somebody's listening to this, and I just want, this is really for women of all ages, just so we're clear. This isn't just women that are bleeding or not bleeding. Once I've identified, hey, wait, my emotions may not be all about whatever I whatever I whatever's going on in my day to day it might be more the neurochemical messengers in my

body where do we go with that where does the her cycle take us from there yeah so I call it the hormonal hierarchy of healing and you start in that physical plane so this is where testing comes in okay and getting testing done and also recognizing asking the questions I feel like the quality of questions we ask in those moments are going to make a huge difference in the outcome that we have so it's befriending those feelings that we're having. So if you're having feelings towards anxiety, for example, asking yourself, you know, you know, am I stuck in the future? Am I stuck in worry? What are my fears that are coming up? Like being able to kind of label and understand and know the feeling that you are feeling because, you know, as children, we're taught these like,

you're feeling sad, you're mad and you're happy. Like there's these three emotions. And yet, it's so nuanced there's frustration in that there's rage in that there's joy in that there's happiness there's sadness there's grief there's all these elements of these emotions that we're feeling often all at once so being able to first identify and being self-aware of like what is going on in my body maybe it's showing up like a symptom so it might be fatigue you know another podcaster I'm carrie Jones our friend of ours asked me she's like what's a symptom we sometimes or we often think it's physical, but it's actually emotional. And what came out of my mind was fatigue right away and or came out of my mouth was fatigue right away because that chronic level of

stress we experience will get anchored into our body. So you might be feeling fatigued. You might, you might not be sleeping well. You probably have the hot flashes and night sweats or maybe your cycle is irregular. So first we want to understand how that translated into your hormones and your physical neurochemistry. So understanding, okay, if you're progestions, testosterone is low, that's translating to your GABA being low. So then that calm neurotransmitter is low. If your estrogen is low, then that's translating to your dopamine and your serotonin being low. Your testosterone is low, that's also translating to low dopamine. So that's going to equal low motivation. So kind of putting those pieces of that puzzle together for her. So she understands like, oh, okay,

so it's not just in here. It's in my body. It's in my brain. So now it makes sense. So now I can do the things to help support that physical body. So as a hormone start rising or balancing, then all of a sudden, the emotional pieces become more clear. There's more clarity of like, okay, actually, I'm still reacting to this. That means there's something deeper that I need to be working on. The rage is still there. What resentment have I been holding onto for so long. So that we can get into that emotional and mental body after that physical layer. Yeah, it's, you know, I'm so happy that you're bringing this up. And of course, this is going to lead me to the HRT conversation that I just need to have at this moment. And I've done something on

this podcast where I've tried to bring HRT experts of all different types on here because I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all. But what I've learned is that the more conservative medical doctors feel like we should be taking these hormones so that we can get the motivation back. We can get the happiness back and then we are able to do the lifestyle tools so you know take the exogenous hormones and then do the lifestyle tool i'm going to say my feeling is more like try the lifestyle do all the lifestyle and then nine out of ten times you realize you're not going to need the exogenous hormone um and yet if you don't have motivation if you are having suicidal thoughts like going to the gym and picking up some weights and eating 30 grams of protein at every meal is not

something you're going to feel pulled to. So what are your thoughts on where HRT fits into this part of the conversation? Yeah, so I've been prescribing now since 2012 is when I first started really diving into hormones. And what I have learned over those years with myself, with every patient that I've worked with, they both have to coexist together. And you can take the, so I do BHRT, bio-identical hormone therapy, you can take all of that to say you don't do the lifestyle things. At some point, you're going to hit a plateau

because we haven't done the other work. You're no longer going to be absorbing it like you were before. If you don't do the mental emotional work, those triggers are still there. They may not be as amplified, but as soon as those hormones go down again, they're going to be amplified because life happens. stress happens. And then I've seen on this side here, depending on a woman's, because it's so nuanced,

depending on her life, her circumstances, time, and all of that, sometimes she does need to start with the hormones to just give her that little oomph so that she can now make better decisions with food. She can have the sleep, the full eight to nine hours of sleep that she needed to have energy in the day, to deal with the kids, to deal with her partner, go to work, do all of that, and take care of herself. So sometimes, we need that to give the education on this side here. So I don't think it's one right answer for any woman. I've helped both sides. I've helped women with just lifestyle and their hormones are completely changed and we've used herbs and nutrition and going to the moving your body, I would say,

as like number one medicine when it comes to your hormonal health. And then there's some women that just can't even go there because they're so burnt out because they don't have the means or they don't have the time and they need it's like a lifeline to them that those biodentical hormones so yeah I think it's a new us conversation for sure yeah what are some outside of movement what are some other things that you would say just before we move like I just that or like hey you should absolutely do this like one of the things that I say is every 40 year old should have their hemoglobin A1c checked on it on a yearly basis and make sure their metabolic health is good yeah are there some and I'm also I just want to, I, you're always my favorite plant-based friend.

So I eat now. Oh, you eat meat now? Oh, let's talk about, okay, let's talk about this because especially on this, in this week, you know, the, our, we came out with a new food pyramid here in America. And I've been trying to dive in and see what I think of it, but proteins at the top. So, yeah, so maybe talk about food and what we can do to balance our hormones through food. And let us know why you're eating. meat. Yeah, I will. Well, I mean, the big reason for meat in our home really was our younger son,

and you know about his story. He came out with like these canines ready to be a carnivore, and I was forcing this vegetarian lifestyle on him. And soon as I introduced meat for him, his nervous system completely changed. So it just took me back to my roots of looking at an individual's constitution. So for me, when it comes to hormones and eating, again, it's been very nuanced in my own journey. So for many years, about 15 years, I was strictly vegetarian. And before that, just growing up, we didn't have a lot of meat in the home. So being from an Indian background, it was easy to be vegetarian. And we've had meat here and there. And it's something I could live with or live without. Didn't really notice anything with it. But come my 40s, when I went into perimenopause,

I could feel I was missing protein and a certain type of protein. Did your canines start crying a little bit. You know, they're getting sharper and sharper every day. I noticed your teeth look a little different. Right, a little bit different than before. Well, what I started to notice was my energy was shifting when I added the meat in. My sleep got better when I added the meat in. So there was things that were shifting for me in a positive direction. And I always tell people when it comes to belief around food, we don't want to hold on to them so tightly because we're always changing. and transforming. And it's so important to reassess depending on where you are in the season of your life. And so my season changed, so I had to change with it. I'm still mostly plant-based, but I've added in the healthy proteins with that. And so I think, again, it always goes to nuance.

In Ayurveda, when you go into perimenopause and menopause, the constitution that's higher is called the Vata constitution. So this constitution requires healthy fats, because it dries out very quickly. There's more anxiety that shows up with that constitution. So you need foods that are going to feel grounding in your body and for some that could be meat. And so I think it's important to listen to what your body is telling you to do in these times and have discernment around that instead of what the new trend is.

And that's where I think knowing yourself is so important to write how you feel after you've eaten certain a way to experiment with different ways of eating. eating and understanding your microbiome and what it needs, using tools like fasting, using tools like keto, using tools like going vegetarian for a couple of days, using these tools to understand what works for you and which season. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I just led a three-day water fast last week for 100,000 people. We do it at the first year. And I was trying to explain to them on the last day we talked about food. And I was trying to explain how fasting is like a mirror. It just, you know, whatever you need to work on, you're going to start to see.

And what I realized is that a lot of people didn't know that, this is going to sound crazy, a lot of people didn't know that when you eat, you're supposed to get energy. Like, they didn't know, like, if you eat and you're fatigued, we need to go back and look at either what you ate, the combination you ate. like there was this this missing link between food and mood and food and energy and yet i know like when my kids were little and um i would pick them up from a play date and they were like bouncing off the inside of the car i was like what'd y'all eat there like it's the first thing my brain went to and you know every single time there was some kind of food that was wiring them think about women that don't realize that, that they're eating food, it's affecting their mood, and then they're operating

their whole life from that mood. Yeah, that's that brain connection. Yeah, like, that's a key thing that I feel like we need to just get across that you will behave according to your food intake, which is why you went to go eat me. Yeah. Yeah, I think we normalize how we're feeling after meals, like, oh yeah, I always feel bloated. Oh, yeah, the food coma, that's me, or I have no energy in the afternoon. That's normal for me. So I think we normalize these symptoms, we don't realize that food actually is medicine and food is fuel. And if it's not behaving that way, we're not feeding the body what it actually needs. And as soon as we do, we feel more vitality. We feel more energy. We feel clear in our minds and not brain fog. And that starts at a very young age. So I think

there's a lot of unlearning we have to do as a society around food and to see that it is actually medicine. So if you treat it that way, we're going to make very different choices. And also, you know, in the book, I kind of lay out three different ways of eating for three different hormonal identities, for example. So depending on where you're at, like if you're the anxious overachiever, you're very busy, you're on the go all the time. You're probably not cooking a lot. So you're eating out. So your relationship with food really isn't there. It's a very discreet. It's very discreet. connected. So her diet is going to help her slow down. Her diet's going to be a little bit more of the one where there's like soups and stews and things like that are easy for her body to digest

because she's eating on the go. And so when you start to understand that how you digest your food is how you digest your life, like your emotions are connected to your relationship with food too. It's actually a mirror to all of that. We then start to change those choices and we start to realize that it's that food that's feeding our hormones as well. And everything's interconnected, which I think can feel really confusing for women when they first realize that. But really, if you just simplify and you make choices that are nourishing for your body, you move in a way that feels nourishing for your body.

Those simple things can go a long way. And take note. I think take note, do you eat and then what's the emotion you've had after you eat is what I think. is like we, if you just understood that there is a connection between mood and food, then like, even like today's a great example. I knew I had come, I had surfed this morning. I was upstairs in my kitchen table, just enjoying a beautiful day. And I went to go eat lunch.

I was like, how do you want your brain to work this afternoon, Mindy? Like that was how I decided is how do I want my brain to work this afternoon. And I think if we all pick food and understand food from that, level, it definitely could improve mood. And I'm so happy you put eating plans in here for women, because I think to go from that thought to, okay, now what do I eat? That could be kind of a big leap. So please, everybody get her book. The other thing you put in your book that I'm dying to talk about that I think you and I've probably talked about inside conversations is the emotional inheritance piece of this. And I'm going to tell you my story because I, over the last couple years, have really been thinking and working on a lot of my traumas.

I've been deep in work, not just with therapists, but I've been doing psychedelic work. Like, I've just been, I'm like, as my mom puts it, I'm so proud of you for taking yourself on. That's what I have done. And when I got to the emotional inheritance idea where I have inherited, some emotions from my ancestors. I literally was like, well, fuck that. I don't even know how to handle my own emotions. And now I got to deal with what my grandmother and my great-grandmother had.

Like, I don't have time in this lifetime. I've got enough. And so, right? So then I started diving in deeper and here's what's came up. My grandmother's parents were chronic alcoholics. and my grandmother used to tell a story very stoically that she would be careful who she invited into the house at night because she knew when she would open up the door that her parents would be passed out drunk on the floor.

Now, you have to understand that this story got told through my family. Like it was no big deal. Yeah. But when I dove into this idea that we inherit some kind of emotional spectrum, one of the things that I realized is that one of my biggest pet peeves in life is I don't like anybody I love to be drunk. I do not want to be around anybody who is drunk in my family. It is like nails on a chalkboard. I can watch you be drunk and think it's really funny. But if it's a family member, there's a visceral reaction. And I was like, wait a second.

then I dove in and looked at the genetic expression that changes when there's a trauma in order to inform the future generations that if this scenario ever comes up, here's the reaction you're going to want to have. And I was like, oh, well, this makes sense. Yes. So talk about that. It's all for protection. It is.

So, you know, yes, we inherit these stories. We inherit the wisdom of those stories too. Yeah, that's true. where your brain is trying to protect you and move that forward for survival. And so there's been several studies done on even Holocaust survivors and how that's changed in individuals' adrenal health and ability to manage stress in the future. When we look at a mother's lineage and we look at, you know, how women have been treated over the last like 100 years or 50 to 100 years

and the adjustments that women have had to make to their personalities to, be accepted, to belong, to fit in, to serve, to people please, to do all those things, we inherit those patterns because that's what was taught to our brain, that that's how you survive in this world. And so then the triggers today, like you said, that family member that's had too much to drink or whatever it might be, it's like this visceral feeling that we get very confused by because we don't know how to connect the dots. And then when you understand that story, you start to see like, okay, this wasn't mine to

carry. This is something that I can release. So I think that's the empowerment that can come in from understanding your lineage. So for example, in my lineage, because of colonization in India, it really changed our physiology. Like, it literally changed our beta cells. So for South Asian women, we're more prone to PCOS. We're more prone to heart disease and weight gain and all of these things. So me having that understanding tells me, okay, this phase of my life, I need to be more insulin sensitive. I need to pay attention, hence why I brought in the meat at this time. So I think these stories we carry, the emotional and the physical, they do produce the person we are today, but we don't have to be victim to them when we become aware of them.

And a big one I found in my lineage was resentment, because resentment bruise when you have to stay quiet. It bruise when we're not able to express who we are. So if you're born in a culture where just you being a woman is a bit of a person. burden and there's still you know young infants that are female being killed in india and like there's still all of that is still going on and so you inherit this story of like i'm not enough i need to prove myself my whole life to belong so i can survive so we start to carry this with us but it can really inform of like okay the reason why i'm pushing through i'm not taking a break i'm doing all this

because I'm trying to prove myself because of the story I'm carrying. So how do I change the narrator? How do I change the story so it can actually serve me now and not take away from me? So I think it can be a really, really empowering thing. And before we got on the call, Nick wanted me to message you about the Walmart guy. Oh, is this where the Walmart guy comes in? Yes. Okay, tell me about the Walmart guy. Yeah, we could talk about the Walmart guy now. And so the reason why he wanted me to bring that up is because when you're in that state of people pleasing or you're born in a culture where you just, you don't have a voice, you're taking everything in all the time. And so he pointed out to me, you know, and he was pointing out quite a few scenarios where maybe I had some hormonal rage.

I'm not really sure what the initial intention was, but he said, remember when you did this? You're like, no, I don't. But obviously you do. Exactly. And so, but after he said all those examples, he was like, what was, what's amazing though, it's like how you're using your voice and you're not letting things lie. You're not letting people cross their boundaries anymore. So this Walmart guy. So now it's Christmas time. It wasn't this.

It was, I think two years ago because it was after I turned 45. And, you know, it's Christmas time. I'm just trying to get some gifts from my nieces and nephews, trying to get out. And it's busy. I don't like being in busy places. You know, when your estrogen is low, all the noises, or you're just more sensitive to all of it.

And so I'm checking out, and he comes up to me and starts selling me their MasterCard or whatever their credit card to get a deal. He's like, yeah, you know, ma'am, you get $90 off. I'm like, okay, well, that's okay, that's an okay deal. Let's just do it. You don't have to do anything. And then he starts going off about all these other things that I have to pay and whatever.

And I just got so overwhelmed. I, you know, how they call it, the Karen came out to the point where my poor children were crying because they could see how upset I was. All eyes were on me. And I was just like, you lie to me. And I'm not going to take it. it. So you need to do something about this. So I was stern and maybe a bit ragey, but it had to happen because you crossed a boundary. But 10, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, I would have just

taken it and just left feeling resentful towards myself for not sticking up for myself. And that's like scenario after scenario. And today version of me just can't, even whether it's resentment or even grief and sadness. There was a moment at just like, just a moment. my mom's house a few weeks ago where she said something compared me to my sister and tears just came like gushing through and I couldn't even control it where in the past I would hold it all in and maybe it would get released in a different way I'd go to the gym or whatever or I'd work harder but now it's like I've softened so much or I've had to in that in those situations where I just I can't even keep it in anymore. Do you think do you think women in general?

or behaving like this more than ever? I think so. I think. Yeah, I do too. Yeah. There's definitely, I call it a revolution happening where, and maybe we're more aware of it because of the stage of life we're in. So our conversations are around this.

My hope is that the younger generation is starting to catch on too. And I think they are. They're definitely more ahead than we were at that age of being more self-aware. And so I do think it's shifting. And so we're in that uncomfortable shift right now. now where other don't know what to do with all of that. Well, they're not used to women speaking out. Yeah, our culture is not used to women speaking out as boldly as we are right now. And it makes me think you said something early on about these transitions. Like I feel like we go through so many

hormonal transitions. And the way I would explain menopause and perimenopause is like all of a sudden the veil got really thin. And like my ability to take. society's bullshit and my ability to be mistreated and my ability to hold back what I'm thinking, just like you're saying, like there wasn't a buffer there anymore. In my book, I call it in an age like a girl, I call it a neurochemical armor. And the way it feels like to me is like the armor comes down and all of a sudden you're like, wait a second, you've been treating me like that forever and I've been letting you I'm not going to do that anymore and it is in I mean back to everything you're bringing forward to the culture right now which is your hormones relate to your

moods I think sometimes our hormones can make us go to sleep as a good friend of mine said to me yeah you mean when we were drugged on estrogen yeah and I'm like yeah when I was drugged on estrogen you could treat me like that but now that I'm not drugged on estrogen I have less of it and there's no buffer between your bullshit and me, all of a sudden, you're going to hear what I think, and it feels so freeing, but I see woman after woman after woman doing this, and the world is interesting to watch.

It is interesting to watch. And imagine the women on birth control. Talk about that, yeah. Yeah, and just how mass their emotions get, how numb they get depending on what generation of birth control they're using, but it changes your whole chemistry. It changes your outlook on life. It changes your ability to discern so many important decisions. And so when we're masked that like that and the veil is really thick in those moments, we can't speak up.

We can't speak our truth because we don't even know what that truth is because it's getting numbed out so much. And so like you said, when that dissolves, it's like, oh, you know, here's the opportunity to finally listen to that inner voice because we made her so quiet. and she was speaking through the symptoms. And so when we start to listen, she doesn't have to yell anymore. We can hear her and then we can express her forward without the fear. And maybe that comes with age,

maybe that comes with experience of not fearing, not belonging or not feeling, not love the way we want to because now we have that self-trust and that self-awareness and we have faith in ourselves now. So it's easier to do that. So I do understand younger women may still have these moments of playing these identities and roles because they're figuring it out. Right, right.

And but I think it's just like we were talking about earlier and what I hope everybody listening is getting is that when we finally speak out about it, it starts to make it easier for the next woman to speak out. Yes. It's like you just, we have to make a commitment not to just ourselves, but to make a commitment to the every woman around us that once you free one, you start to free them all. I had a line that popped out of my head for age like a girl that was, went something like once a healed woman doesn't stay silent.

She turns around and heals another woman. That's right. It's the ripple effect. Yeah. We don't, we don't just. Yeah, we don't sit back and go, okay, I figured that out. I'll just sit here and hang out by myself. We're like, I got to do a ladies night so I can tell every woman what I just figured out.

Or crazy enough like you and me. I got to write some books and tell everybody. Tell the world. Tell the world. What's really going on. But I think we're at a really cool, pivotal moment in history where women are waking up. I don't know another way to say that. But the waking up is scary.

And I think it's in these hormonal transitions that we wake up the most. And so let's talk about rage for a moment because this is maybe. one of my favorite emotions because it shows up for me. And when it shows up, it comes out in ugly ways. And so I've done a lot of work on what rage is. And it's built around resentment. It's built around all the times I wanted to speak my voice and I wasn't allowed to. It's built around parents who had an expectation that I behave a certain way in a culture that said, you know, the way I was behaving wasn't okay. And rage was a very, very big one for me as I transitioned out into postmenopausal. And I've come to learn that the rage now, to me,

rage is ancestral, rage is cultural, and rage is personal. So can you speak a little bit about the rage that women are feeling right now because I don't think I'm alone? You're not alone at all. think that's probably one of the most common one's emotions that women are feeling when you become aware of it and it's so visceral and it's so raw because it is ancestral whether it's seven to 14 generations before it's like we're feeling all of that in this moment and it can feel really overwhelming and I do think rage is full of action so it allows us to take action So when we're in rage, we're ready to heal. I'm more worried about women that get stuck in the sadness and the depression and these other feelings that can keep us stuck.

Rage is full of action so we can actually take different. We can do something. We can set the boundaries. And so if we do it in that way at first, it can then allow us to have the other polarity, which is the softness. It's like we've lived in such a masculine world and we've had to operate in such a yang way. It's such a masculine way that the rage, I think, is actually there because we've been misguided and because our inner world has been in conflict for so long that it's like ready to burst open. And what I have noticed with women that have held resentment, and this is from a Chinese medicine

perspective too, it's like that's held up in the liver. And in our bodies, we actually increase interleukin-6 or pro-inflammatory cytokin when we feel anger and rage. And so that's the inflammation that we're feeling. comes from this emotion. And what I have noticed over and over again in my practice, those that feel rage and resentment often have some sort of growth in their body.

For me, it's been a cyst. That's been like an ongoing practice of healing. And I know it's like this ball of resentment. I saw the same thing in my mother. I don't know if my grandmother had any, but I know my mother did. And so when we're holding on to so much, that emotion needs to go somewhere.

And so when the rage shows up, I feel like in this stage of life, it's like, okay, now, finally, I can use my voice. It gives us permission to actually speak. So I do think that is where healing actually happens is when we recognize the rage. A lot of women I've talked to said, like, they don't like to express anger. And partly because, I mean, let's just be honest, our culture doesn't like angry women. No, then we implode.

Instead of exploding, we're imploding. That's right. That's no better. And we think about just, you know, the world, every, you know, humans first relationship is a woman. Your mother is your first relationship because you're living inside of her for nine months. So her experience is your experience. Her hormonal story becomes your hormonal story.

And so we carry those emotions forward. And so if we can help women heal today, we're healing generations forward because she's going to be then moving through life with softness towards herself. So she can be soft with her kids and her community and all of that. So it's such an important conversation for us to have around this, you know, women are just too emotional. That's one of my chapters too. Yeah, I love that. Your chapter title is a great.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. We are. Thank you. Thank you for recognizing that. Yeah. You know, it's funny. I have a good friend that one day I said something like, you know, I feel like I'm too much.

And she goes, she goes, you are. You are a lot. But you're not too much. are a lot, but you're not too much. And I thought, well, that's really sweet because I don't want to stop being all the things that I am. And yet it doesn't feel good to walk around thinking that you've, your emotions are too much. And I think there's a lot of women that, that feel that, that, that, like, if I express, I will be left, or something bad will happen to me because let's just be honest. We have

cultural historical example of women being hung when they thought differently. Like that's prevalent going even back into the European times. Yes. So as we start to bring this conversation up,

how do, like I was thinking, how do you use rage and the action that comes with rage in a responsible way? You don't want to like rage out on everybody. But how do we start feeling or how do you use the feeling of depression and still be able to get up in the day and do all the things you need to do? Because sometimes these feelings that

are associated with the hormones that are associated with everything we've been carrying for so many years, if you actually sat and felt it, you wouldn't be able to function. Yeah. Yeah. This is where I think those daily habits actually come in, like the really simple ones are just breathing. So using rage and if you're feeling it, putting on that music and starting to dance, breathing, being with yourself in that way, with movement. So in the book, I created some exercises that women can do with these certain emotions on a daily basis to kind of understand them and move through them. You can sit with it and then move through it.

It's when it gets stuck, that's where the challenge comes up. And so when we have these simple habits in our every single day, like a morning ritual, that reminds you that it's okay. So if it's really hard to get out of bed, maybe you give yourself a little treat of going outside in the morning or you're just opening your curtains and looking at the sun or looking at the trees.

Like those simple things activate something in our brain to tell us that it's okay. So there's affirmations, there's breathwork, there's yoga, there's movement, there's all these simple things that we can bring into our day and then we start to make those other choices that are going to fuel and nourish our body.

body going back to that conversation so we can then manage and understand the emotion afterwards. What about the emotion of shame? Yeah. Yeah, that one's huge. That's a tough one. It is a tough one because I do think, you know, when women use the word guilt, it's often not guilt, it's actually shame. And when I talk about trauma in general, I heard, and I can't remember where I heard this,

but I talk about it in the book that there's two types of wounds. that show up from trauma, it's either an invasion one or an abandonment one. And both anchor shame into our bodies. So an invasion one might be that, you know, someone didn't have boundaries with you, whether they were physical or emotional. And so that makes an imprint on you. An abandonment one might be, you know, someone would withdraw love from you if you didn't meet their expectations. And so now you've turned into that people pleaser. And so every time you please somebody else and not yourself, there's shame wrapped up in that because of that initial response or that initial wound. And so when we're experiencing shame, what we need to know is, A, it's not ours to carry.

And B, once we speak it, we take the power away from it. It's when it's unspoken that it's starting to stir up all of these imprints and emotions and this like self-doubt, self-negative talk, all of that self-criticism. But when we speak it and we can see it for what it is, we understand that shame, doesn't belong to us at all. It was given. And we also interpreted it as whatever we, that we did something wrong. I've heard shame, the phrase I like is shame can only live in secrecy. So the minute you speak it. Yeah. That's why we have to speak it. Which is again like what I'm hoping that women are getting listening to this is that when you talk about these things, even if you don't know

what's going on, like the rage. You know, I originally thought that the rage that showed up during perimenopause me was because I was tired. I was working too much. I was exhausted being the primary care, you know, breadwinner for my family, like, easy to say. But then when I started to look into the patriarchal messaging and I started to go back and look at even my relationship with my father and the way my mother protected some of the horrible behaviors of my father, I started realizing like, oh, oh, no. I don't just have rage from my father. I don't just have rage from my father. adult years I have rage from a lifetime yeah and I have therapists that were along the way that were like speak it talk about it you know and I'm like I don't

this is an energy that if I unleash it I have no idea who's going down yeah like maybe you could give me a little bit so one of the things that I started doing is my morning time and I just want to point this out is I really put on music and I I start doing whatever emotion I started last year. I had a date with grief every morning. I just listened to sappy music and cried my eyes out. I think rage, you know, these rage rooms are showing up everywhere. So I've actually gone and destroyed things and just like take a water bottle I didn't need and took a hammer to it.

And I'm like, this feels really good. But to your point and what I want to bring out and what your book is, is really giving language to is that all these emotions are welcome. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. There are signals to what meaning you've given your life and your experiences and then we're experiencing it through your hormones. And so when we start to change one, we start to change the other. And so the more we befriend them, the more we're befriending our hormones and ourselves and that understanding around this like chronicity of these stories and identities and roles and chronic stress that we've been carrying in our bodies, it starts to change and

starts to shift. And we can then understand the choices we need to make every single day. Yeah, it's so beautiful. What are you hoping people will do with this book? I really look at books as they open up conversations. I mean, women can have a very intimate experience on their couch with your words. It's a lot when you write a book. that really is what I imagine is a woman like sitting with this book. It's on her nightstand. And she's sitting with the words and seeing herself in these stories, seeing herself in these words, and finding hope in the words, that she's not alone and that everything is, you know, changeable, that there's an answer to everything to. And that she has every right to feel.

She has every right to experience her body, her world in the way that she, is and there can be shifts, there can be empowerment that comes through these stories that we carry. Yeah, yeah. It's so beautiful and so needed, you know, I just want to say this, that as somebody who just put out a menopause or an age, it was really a book on, it's a book about the aging brain and the neuroscience behind that. I'm just going to be in full transparency here. It's a really interesting time here in America to be putting out a women's empowerment

book. And the menopause conversation is very congested. And what I've been hearing from a lot of women is like, what do I have to do now? I got to pick up weights. I got to go to bed on time. I can't drink alcohol. And I've got to eat, you know, 30 grams of protein. Like, really? I'm just trying to breathe. And one of the things I love about your book is that there's no half of the, tooth and it's just like a cozy conversation with somebody who believes in you and I really hope that we start to move away the menopause conversation from adding more half-toes to women and help women understand themselves better and this is why I think every woman should rush out and get your book because nobody's saying what you're saying nobody's gone deep into how your hormones

affect your moods and how moods can affect hormones. And this is a relationship. Women will have their whole life, starting at puberty, at least. And we really need to know how to have a relationship with these hormones. So I really want to point that out so it doesn't get lost. I really don't want your book to get lost in the bazillion menopause books are out there. This one is got something special. So please, those of you,

they're listening. Please, please, please, please go get it. Engage with Sonia's socials. She is talking through a different lens that we are not hearing. So I just want to say thank you for everything you're doing. Oh, thank you. And my hope really is that we give ourselves to permission to fall in love with ourselves again. Yeah. That's really all it is. And you are so inspiring for me and all that you've done and the voice, you know, carrying your voice forward with the message that you are. So thank you and you are giving women permission to have this feeling on this platform. Thank you. Well, I wish more women had done it for me when I was going through menopause. I wish I had a mother who had done it for me. Like I, you know, and this is why I'm so adamant that

now once you wake up, express yourself so everybody can see what a truly authentic woman looks like. And the more authenticity we bring, the more we're like, oh, there's authenticity. and there's bullshit. Yeah. The discernment. Yeah. Yeah. We can see the difference.

And yet we have had a world of women who have behaved well for everybody else. And it's time for us to not to stop behaving. Yeah. Shake things up. It's your right. Yep. Yep. Exactly.

Okay. Where do people find you? Instagram at Dr. Sonia Jensen. And the book website is heal your hormones book.com. Beautiful. And I will tell you, I'm going to thank you as an author. because it is the most gut-wrenching experience to write a book, promote a book.

So please, everyone, if you like this book, please share it, get it out there. What you have to do as an author to get a book out into the world, especially in this very distracted culture, is quite a feat. And so if you resonate with it, please, please hand it to friends because it's that powerful. So thank you. I love you so much. I love you, and I appreciate you in so many ways. Me too. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode.

I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.