This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - Aging Out of F*cks (Your Confidence Upgrade) with Ellen Scherr | 394

Episode Date: March 11, 2026

Let’s talk about the glow-up no one told you about: the one where you hit midlife and suddenly cannot be bothered with other people’s bullshit anymore. Because somewhere between perimenopause, professional burnout, emotional labor overload, and decades of people-pleasing, something shifts. You stop cushioning your words. You stop managing everyone else’s feelings like it’s your unpaid side hustle. And when someone asks, “Are you okay?” the answer is, “Better than ever. I just ran out of estrogen—and tolerance.” In this episode, Nicole sits down with licensed clinical therapist Ellen Scherr to unpack the neuroscience behind what she calls “aging out of f*cks.” Spoiler alert: this isn’t bitterness. It’s biology. As estrogen declines in midlife, it impacts multiple neurochemical systems in the brain—systems tied to anxiety, people-pleasing, anger regulation, and emotional buffering. The “popular girl at the party” (aka estrogen) leaves… and suddenly the whole dynamic changes. What once felt like obligation starts to feel optional. What once felt terrifying starts to feel negotiable. And what once felt like “I should” becomes “Do I even want to?” They dive into: The neuroscience of perimenopause and menopause—and how hormonal changes impact confidence, risk-taking, and people-pleasing Why women’s confidence actually increases with age (and can surpass men’s in their 60s) The lifelong cost of emotional labor—and why it starts to break down in midlife How negativity bias keeps women stuck in fear (and how to reframe it) The difference between legitimate feedback and social punishment Why so many women make bold career, relationship, and life changes in their 40s, 50s, and beyond Whether it’s possible to “speed up” the process of caring less in your 20s and 30s This isn’t about blowing up your life. It’s about understanding the neuroscience of midlife, reclaiming your authenticity, setting boundaries, and rewiring old people-pleasing patterns. Aging out of f*cks isn’t decline—it’s development. It’s honesty over harmony. And if you’re suddenly “too much”? Good. You’re not here to be palatable. You’re here to be you. Thank you to our sponsors! Shopify has everything all in one place, making your life easier and your business operations smoother. Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial today at shopify.com/tiww  Connect with Ellen: Website: www.lifebranches.com Substack: https://substack.com/search/blog.lifebranches.com?utm_source=global-search  Oprah Daily: https://substack.com/search/blog.lifebranches.com?utm_source=global-search  Related Podcast Episodes: The Stress Paradox: Why We Need Stress (and How to Make It Work for Us) with Dr. Sharon Horesh Bergquist | 294 How To Listen When Your Parts Speak (IFS Therapy + Ancestral Wisdom) with Tamala Floyd | 376 Am I Being a B**ch? (…or Just Finally in My Power) with Megan Walrod | 349 Share the Love: If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! 🔗 Subscribe & Review:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I am Nicole Khalil and you're listening to the This Is Woman's Work podcast. We're together. We're redefining what it means, what it looks and feels like to be doing women. work in the world today. Sometimes that work looks like building companies, raising humans, or leading teams. And sometimes that work looks like realizing you physically, mentally, and emotionally cannot be bothered with other people's bullshit anymore. And I, for one, love when the work looks just like that. I mean, the older I get, the fewer fucks I have to give, which might be my favorite thing about aging. If losing your tolerance for bullshit as part of the deal and neuroscience

apparently says that it is, well, then sign me up. Because somewhere along the way, usually midlife, something shifts. We stop cushioning our words. We stop pretending not to notice what's staring us right in the face. We stop managing everyone else's feelings like it's our unpaid side hustle. And suddenly, people start asking, are you okay? You're damn straight I am. I'm just done worrying about you and everyone else's crap. We're told that this means we're getting bitter, difficult, bat shit crazy. But that doesn't jive with the research. Confidence, for example, tells a very different story. Women's confidence actually increases with age surpassing men's for the first time in our 60s, which is why I fully plan to throw an absolute banger for my 60th birthday to celebrate my extreme

confidence in having zero fucks left. People will call me crazy and I will not care. And it's not just confidence. There's actual neuroscience behind this shift. So imagine my delight when I came across an article called Aging Out of Fuchs that explained this change not as a phase but as biology. Not anecdote, neuroscience. I read it and immediately thought I have to talk about this on the show. So that's what we're doing. Our guest today is Ellen Cher, a licensed clinical therapist who helps women over 40 rebuild their lives when the old version stops fitting. Through her substack community life branches, she writes,

honest, cutting, deeply validating reflections on midlife, identity, divorce, anger, ambition, and the grief and relief that come without growing your own life. She creates space for women to stop performing strength and start telling truth about aging, about becoming, and about what happens when your brain quite literally runs out of the chemicals required to give a damn about what other people think. Ellen, clearly I could not be more excited about this conversation. So let's start here. When women hit this point where they just can't pretend anymore, what's actually happening in the brain? And why does it feel so sudden?

So what happens is the neuroscience behind it, Nicole, is that women, we start to lose our estrogen, which everyone knows. But what we don't realize is the impact that has on so many different factors in our brain. And so in one of my posts, you'll see I made a comment that estrogen is like the popular girl at the party. And when she leaves, everyone leaves. Okay. And everyone does leave. I mean, like at least five major neurochemical systems in our brain that help us to function. So whether that is maintaining anger, anxiety, people,

people pleasing, whatever it might be, all of those chemicals are on its way out. And so we're never really taught to understand that these are actually biological functions that we have no control over. We can pay attention to them, but we don't have control over them. But nobody ever talks about it. And so that's why I decided to write this post of we get to a certain point. and the estrogen that was kind of keeping us together as, as, quote, women, starts to disappear. So all of a sudden we go like, yeah, I don't think I want to be pleasing everybody anymore.

Yeah, and they'll go to Target in my pajamas. I don't give a shit. Which I absolutely love, by the way. But so I guess it explains what's happening. But what does estrogen do in our younger years? Is it about social pleasing and conformity? Is it about community and collaboration? What is it that it is having us do in our early years when we have more estrogen that's like kind of going away?

So when we're younger, that estrogen kind of keeps us encapsualized in a little bubble in a way. And so all the conditioning and all the things were taught as women from a child early on are all kind of protected by this estrogen. Now, some of us have more people pleasing than others. Some people don't have it at all. So again, a lot of it's, you know, upbringing, life experiences, personality. But when you start to strip away, think about like stripping away an onion. when you start to strip off some of those layers, now some other things start to happen. And as women were like, oh, my gosh, what's going on with me?

So it's funny, I had a client a couple of weeks ago. And she said, I've been working with her for a while. And she said, Ellen, I need anxiety medication. And I said, well, tell me what's going on. And she proceeded to name like five different things. And I said, no, that's not anxiety. That's paramedopause. And so a lot of us just aren't aware of all the different changes we really go through.

It's getting better. But back when I was going through it, you know, doctors just kind of poo-pooed it. Nobody really talked about it. It's like, yeah, it's part of life, deal with it. But we're becoming more educated as women as to really what's going on, not only in our bodies, but in our brain as well. Yeah, it is getting better and I'm about to turn 50 and I will tell you that I feel like most of my symptoms were dismissed or just sort of like, yeah, that's part of the deal. And I really didn't make that connection between more of the mood or behavior or feeling side of it. Like the weight gain. I was like, oh, okay, that makes sense. But I didn't equate it to giving less fucks, right? So as this is happening, I think, think a lot of us worry that we're becoming depressed or anxious or bitter or difficult or too much

or fill in the blank. What are your thoughts and why is it important to reframe this shift as it's happening? So what I'm recommending that women do is they take a look at where their life is currently. We all go through a certain point in our life where we're like, I don't know if I want to do this job anymore. I don't know if I like this anymore or whatever. We start to reevaluate all these things. Probably because we're getting older. And we know now we're going towards the second half.

So we're paying more attention to it. So most of it is understanding what you're going through and using your thoughts to control what you're going through. And so what I mean by that is we all have what's called cognitive distortions. And those are primary ways that all of us think unhealthy, dysfunctional, whatever word you want to use. But by controlling those cognitive distortions, we can control some of the behavior and some of the things that are going on with us at the that time. And it's not just for this time of life, but it particularly helps women during this time. It's just the hormones are just like roller coaster up and down. Yeah. And it's very hard to

manage that for yourself, much less other people around you. So you have to start being conscious of what those thoughts are, whether it's negative thinking, it's doing the what ifs and trying to projected to the future, looking, regretting from at the past, whatever it might be, you need to start to work on reframing those thoughts for a new chapter in your life. And we know it can be done because scientists uncovered that our brain is neuroplastic. What that means is those automatic connections, let's say people pleasing connections. They can be undone. It's just a matter of using your thoughts and training your thoughts to undo some of that.

We just reach a point in our life when I think we just say, I'm done, you know, I'm just, I'm tired of just saying yes all the time. So I clearly am very excited about heading in this direction of stepping further and further away from people pleasing and from everybody else's opinions and from. caring about things that I don't actually care about. It seems to me like there is a lot of upside. But I think that there is always upside and downside in every stage and every phase and everything that we do. So let's talk first about all this emotional labor we have and continue to do as women. The reading the room, the managing the reactions, the softening the truths, the people

pleasing, the paying attention, the nurturing, all this stuff. What is. What is. the cost over our lifetime and why does that start to break down midlife? I think age, we just get, we just get tired of it along with all the other biological changes. But it's difficult when we're in our 20s and 30s. So it's not so easy when you're in the workforce to, as a young woman, to open your mouth around the table and say, Yeah, I don't think I really agree with that. So we're kind of conditioned not only from childhood, but just even culturally, especially in the workforce,

to just be agreeable and go along with everything. Then we get older, we get more experience. Now, like I said, some of those hormones are changing. Some of that estrogen is reducing. And so now you get to the point where you're like, I don't care anymore. I've got an opinion, and I'm going to say it, whatever would cost me. But women are so conditioned to be afraid to open their mouth that they just don't.

Yeah. I'm curious your thoughts on this. As you were thinking, I think like many women, I have taken on the lion's share of emotional labor and the extra work, whether that be in the workplace or home or whatever. And one of the learnings I've had that makes me feel better about giving less fucks and not stepping in all the time and not doing all of that labor is a realization that I have limited people along the way and enabled people and created codependent relationships and that there was an actual cost, not just for me, but for the other people I worked with in my life. The example, I always stepped in and made sure things got done on my work teams.

And I limited people's growth opportunity. I limited their accountability. I limited their learning and leadership. Or like taking on the lion's share of things at home, I'm actually limiting my partner's ability and capacity to step in as a parent and be a dad and be engaged and make decisions. So I think there are personal costs to us that we get done with. But sometimes, as I think about the earlier years, recognizing that there is a cost to everybody involves somehow it like it makes this feeling of wanting to get there faster of

wanting to give zero fucks faster not having to wait till menopause something about that triggers that for me what are your thoughts or reactions well it's interesting i got i got thrown into that point in my life without me unexpectedly so i had a long-term long-time sales career and i got to the point, I just hated it. But financially, it brought in nice money, household, my marriage, kids, whatever. When I was 45, I started, and this is kind of typical of a lot of women, maybe not just at this age, but in 40s, 50s, sometimes even 60s, I don't want to be doing this for the rest of my life. And I started questioning what I wanted to do. do. And so it took me a year. I finally decided that I wanted to give that career up and go back to

grad school and become a therapist. So a big decision? Yeah, major. I had to take out a major student loan. I hadn't been in school in a while. So it wasn't a decision taken lightly. So at 46, I started grad school. And two weeks, literally two weeks into the program, my husband 18 years decided he didn't want to be married anymore and left. So here I am without any financial support from him or emotional support. I've got an 11-year-old and a 15-year-old. All of us are devastated and shocked. And I'm like, oh my gosh, there's no way I'm going to be able to do this. And luckily, I think because I was at that point in my life, that I finally said, no, I need to do this for me.

So when you talk about the costs, yeah, I've got an 11 and 15-year-old at home. And I'm at school and I'm studying, but I'm still trying to take them to hockey. and all the other stuff. So that guilt we feel as women starts to come into play. And sometimes that guilt can get so heavy that it prevents us from doing what we really want to do. Sorry to break in, but this part matters. Rate the show, share it, and support the sponsor

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I'm Doc G, semi-retired hospice physician and host of the Earn and Investors, podcast where we have the 201 or next level conversations about money and life. Not only how you make money and grow it, but also how you use your wealth to create a better and more fulfilling existence. Join us every Monday and Thursday wherever you listen to Fine Podcasts. I just, I don't know if there's research or data behind this. I wonder how many women are making big changes proactively and purposely, like changing jobs or ending relationships or whatever,

or when it happens to them, approaching it differently than they would have 10 or 20 years previously. I'm curious if there is anything out there about that. Most of the women that I work with, and I have spoken to over 15 plus years practicing, is that they get to a certain point in their life, and they're just done. They're not happy.

So, for instance, I've just been working with the client 46, I think, and not happy where she's been living, want to move to a different state. So then go move. She's like, I can't. I got a good job. And that's the stuff we do. And guess what?

We worked it out. She still doesn't know really what's going to happen. I don't either. I don't have a crystal ball. February 1st, she's going to be in her new place in a new state. And she's never been happier. So sometimes we need that little push because our brains have what's called a negativity bias inherently, every human brain.

And so when you talk to other people, which we tend to do, especially as women, to get opinions, it's usually negative. So, of course, when I did that, it was, why would you leave a good sales job? You know, therapists don't make a lot of money. well how are you going to do that with two kids at home it's always negative negative comments even the head of the grad school program when he interviewed me for the program said you do realize you're not going to make as much money in this profession as you did in sales i said yeah i'm i'm very well aware of that right i hear you and completely agree from a personal experience that it's

like i'm done not being happy right and and that does become often the reason, but what's really curious, at least for me personally, is I was the least happy in my entire lifetime in my 20s, but I also did the least about it because I was so focused on proving and pleasing and performing and all the things. So what I really love about whatever is happening in our brains is that being happy, generally speaking, or not being happy, generally speaking, becomes a good enough reason for us to move, for like us to do or choose or be something different where, and again, I know my experience isn't everyone experience, but all of those things existed in my 20s, but I didn't do anything about it. Yeah, it's, it's funny you said that

because that is very true is when we're in our 20s and 30s, we're too scared to make those changes. but then we reach a certain point in life. And I do believe it has a lot to do with the hormonal changes going on, as well as just reaching that a certain point in life. I mean, men go through a period of midlife changes too, just not to the degree that we do. But the risks become greater, but more women tend to take more risk in midlife than they do on their 20s and 30s. Okay, so aging out of fuck seems like all upside to me, but I know that that's not the case. So let's talk about some of the potential challenges or downsides.

First, the backlash can and might be really real for some people, whether it's people like, are you okay or deciding that you're difficult or changing and shifting relationships or ending relationships. Talk to us about how to navigate. or move through some of that backlash. Yeah, when I talk about, you know, making the changes, I'm not talking about, you know, blowing up your whole life, you know, if you haven't been happy in your marriage for 30 years, okay, yeah, maybe you need to leave it, but I'm not talking about going to that extreme,

but at least starting to expand your life outside of that and looking for other opportunities. You know, most women right now in their 60s are majority of forming their own companies. And if you look at the women on Substack, many women, 70s, 80s, they're writing books. They're doing all sorts of things. They're saying, I don't care what people say, you know. Yeah, I'm old, but I still have other stuff I need to get done. It's really important to try to maintain what's right for you.

I'm not suggesting everybody go and, you know, change the career if they're not happy or plus you've got other constraints from society. Right now, I talk to a lot of women, unfortunately, that are in their 50s. They're being pushed out of corporate America. And to some degree, the good and the bad is just forcing them to now say, okay, well, I hated that job anyway. So now what do I want to do? Yeah. again anecdotal, but my mom a couple years ago got divorced after 50 years of marriage. I should say my parents got divorced after 50 years of marriage.

And people are often like, oh my gosh. And like it was a long time coming. The difference from my perspective is that my mom finally was like, I can't do it anymore. Nothing actually changed or was different or whatever other than I think, you know, and again, I'm with you. We're not encouraging everybody to go get divorced or, leave companies or make radical changes. It's just curious how this sort of perfect storm happens with perimenopause and neuroscience and all that. So a kind of offshoot of that question

is how do you help women separate legitimate feedback from social punishment? I know there are times where I am, in fact, being difficult. I also know that there are times where society deems me to difficult for breathing. How do I tell the difference? Sometimes we don't. So it's an issue of do I want to be my true self or do I want what persona do I want to continually put out into the world? So yeah, when we're at work, there is a certain persona we have to put out into the world. But I can't even tell you how many jobs I've been fired from from opening my mouth. Just making suggestions. either, you know, I'm not a team player, or I talk too much, I asked too many questions, couldn't do it. It didn't work for me. Now, if I had a different personality, maybe I could have tempered it a little bit more.

I could have found ways to deal with it. But it really comes down to your authentic self. Who are you really? Now, if you have to play that role in corporate America, because, just the way it is, okay? Then play that role if that means your livelihood. But that doesn't mean outside of work, you can't be your true self. And that's where women tend to stop. They'll do it at work. They'll put up with everything they have to do,

maybe put up with spouse behavior or whatever, but they don't do anything for themselves. And so my suggestion is, be curious. No matter what age you are, just be curious. And by that I mean, see what opportunities there are. You know, we think we know everything. We don't know everything. And do some research.

Go figure it out. One of my clients yesterday just told me she's quitting her job at a major bank. She hates it. And her dream was always to get a food truck. Awesome. Yeah. Go for it. Right.

But again, it also comes. down to your for risk reward and and what kind of tolerance you have for that. So five years ago, I moved to Florida because I got tired of the Chicago winters. And I said to my kids that are adults wrong. I said, mom's moving to her happy place. If you want to come see me, fly to Florida. And I took off and I left. Yeah. Of course, again, I heard all the negative from friends. It's what else if you don't like the weather? But you don't know anybody there. I mean, there wasn't one positive statement.

There wasn't one person that said, that sounds awesome. Go for it. Yeah. It's interesting. It is really that negative bias, right, that you talk about. We see all the potential things that could go wrong. I often ask myself, like, what's the worst that could happen? Because that's what my brain defaults to anyways.

But then I force myself to ask, what's the best? that could happen. And the reality is more often than not, it's somewhere in the middle, what actually happens, but often leans a little bit more towards the best that could happen. And to your point, like, okay, let's say you move to Florida, you don't actually like it being hot all year around and you don't meet anybody you like, well, then you just move again. I mean, it's not oversimplifying, but. I don't like it. I'll move back. It's just one-way ticket. You know, it's like, I can do whatever I want. But a lot of people don't think about that in terms of leading our life.

Just like this young woman who's moving to a different state, something doesn't work out. So figure it out. We always seem as women to figure it out. If we look back at all of our challenges and obstacles and all the things that have happened in our life, the reality is we have 100% track record of figuring it out. Why? Because we're still here. And I always like to think about that. Like, I don't know how it's going to work out, but I trust myself to figure it out because that I've done and women are doing everywhere we look. Oh, and my last question is, obviously, I have a lean towards loving this idea

of aging out of fuchs. I'm super excited about it. My last question for anybody who's listening who might be in their 20s or their 30s is, is there any way to start? speed this up? Is there a way to let go of care less about everyone and everything else? Or do we actually have to wait till perimenopause and menopause for it to happen? I don't think we have to necessarily wait for perimenopause or menopause. But I think it's extremely difficult to do it when you're younger because our brain is operating differently. We're young. We don't have as much experience. there is more fear involved. There's a lot of other things.

But can you temper some of it? Can you manage the people pleasing? Can you manage not giving in and being everybody's emotional sounding board? Can you set boundaries? Can you do those other things? And yes, you can. But we're never taught. We're never taught how to do that.

And that's part of what I do in therapy is with cognitive distortions, is how do you undo that? There's a reason you're people pleasing. It doesn't just happen out of nowhere, okay? So why is it happening? And how can you change it? Well, I'm sure people want to learn more of how to do that. So I want to remind our listener that you have a substack called LifeBranchis. And Ellen also has a website, LifeBranchis.com.

We're going to put the links to both in show notes, as well as any other way to follow, Ellen, that we have. Ellen, thank you for writing this article. I'm so grateful it found me. And thank you for being our guest today. Oh, thank you. It's a pleasure. Pleasure was all mine. All right, friend, aging out of fucks isn't decline. It's development. It's your nervous system choosing honesty over harmony. It's biology backing up when your mouth finally says what your soul has known for years. So if you're being labeled too much or difficult or not like you used to be, well, then good because you're not here to be palatable. You're here to be you. And the version of you that's emerging now, she's unapologetic and undeniable and infinitely

more interesting than the version who spent all of her energy pleasing, performing, and proving. So trust the shift. Age out of all of the fucks that you no longer want to give. This is woman's work.