Thank You for Joining the Pain in Menopause Webinar 🌟
Our session introduced the latest thinking on pain—especially persistent (chronic) pain—and how it can emerge or change during perimenopause and menopause.
It was designed to start a conversation: to offer fresh insight into what many women experience, yet often struggle to articulate or get adequate support for.
We intend to follow up with a deeper dive into perimenopause and menopause care for pain. Pain is a huge field spanning all others. Understanding the basics creates the foundation.
Why This Matters in Clinical Practice
We know many women experience pain in perimenopause and menopause, but pain is often missed, dismissed, or treated piecemeal.
Hormone therapy can be very helpful for some, but is rarely the complete solution.
🛠️ Women need a strategy
🎯 They need personalised guidance
đź’ˇ And they need practical skills to build health and ease pain
This is the foundation of Pain Coaching—an approach I’ve developed and practised for over 20 years, combining pain science, coaching, rehabilitation, physiotherapy, motivational interviewing, and compassionate care.
It’s about helping people understand their pain, reconnect with what matters, and build the capacity to move forward—step by step.
What is pain?
Women know their pain.
Only they can feel it. And often, there’s nothing to see.
Yet it’s real. It matters. And it deserves to be understood.
But what is pain?
A foundational view is this:
👉 Pain is what the woman says it is.
This honours her experience. It’s where trust begins.
And for women navigating perimenopause or menopause, being believed can be transformative.
Let’s go deeper:
- Pain is a need state, like hunger or thirst.
- Pain is an inference, or prediction, to best explain the person’s lived world in that moment — predicting the causes of the sense data in the light of past experiences, beliefs, expectations, emotions, context, environment.
- Pain is asking for a shift, not a fix — a shift in understanding, beliefs, behaviours, living; to meet your individual needs (perhaps to discover them first) and to be working towards meaningful goals.
- Pain has an evolutionary purpose — chronic pain is not maladaptive; there is a reason that needs clarifying and addressed by the person with guidance. Persistent pain is one of the sticky situations humans face. Others are anxiety, depression and anxiety. There are many similarities in the biology features of these lived experiences, including how you recover. It seems these are trade-offs for keeping going, which is the primary purpose of the body systems.
When you’re working with women in perimenopause and menopause, consider this:
Pain is often entangled with hormone changes, identity shifts, emotional load, and social expectations.
And behind the pain, you may find unmet needs like:
đź’ Acceptance
đź’ Safety
đź’ Connection
đź’ Self-compassion
đź’ Rest
đź’ Clarity
đź’ Purpose
What helps?
âś… Deep listening
✅ Belief in the woman’s story
âś… Collaborative care
âś… Validation, education, and skills-building
✅ A shift from “fixing” to guiding
Pain Coaching is one way to meet this need: a compassionate, personalised approach that blends science with story, and empowers women to understand, ease, and transform their pain.
🌿 A Reflection for Healthcare Professionals
Take a moment. Breathe. Let your mind settle.
Now gently reflect:
🔹 What are the needs behind the woman’s pain?
Needs such as:
- Safety
- Connection
- Rest
- Self-compassion
- Clarity
- Agency
- Purpose
- Reassurance
- Belonging
- Expression
- Hope
You might think of others. Add them to your mental list.
Now—bring to mind a woman you are supporting in perimenopause or menopause.
You know she is living with pain.
đź’ What might her unmet needs be?
đź’ Has she named them? Has anyone asked?
💠Is her pain a signal—an embodied call—for care, for change, for being heard?
Pain is not just a symptom. It is a lived experience—a moment-by-moment expression of how her body systems are trying to make sense of her world.
Her beliefs.
Her expectations.
Her memories.
Her context.
Her relationships.
Her sense of identity.
Her safety—emotional, social, physical.
Now ask yourself:
✨ How can I help her meet her needs?
✨ What practical, compassionate ways could I support her—today, this week, next time we meet?
This might be:
- Offering space to talk, without needing to “solve”
- Supporting rest and rhythm
- Encouraging gentle movement or nature connection
- Sharing knowledge to shift unhelpful beliefs
- Helping her clarify what matters now
- Naming what’s strong, not just what’s wrong
Sometimes, your presence is the medicine.
Sometimes, the shift is simple—but deep.
You don’t need to fix her pain.
You can help her reconnect with her self.
And walk beside her as she learns to live into a new story.
đź’ This is the spirit of Pain Coaching.
đź’ This is personalised, compassionate care.
Keep an eye out for the next webinar.
If you have questions or would like to discuss or refer a client, you can contact me here.
Resources
Musculoskeletal Syndrome of Menopause
Musculoskeletal Pain during the Menopausal Transition: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
An Embodied Predictive Processing Theory of Pain Experience
Pain and the field of affordances: an enactive approach to acute and chronic pain
An enactive approach to pain: beyond the biopsychosocial model
Expecting Some Action: Predictive Processing and the Construction of Conscious Experience
The Predictive Dynamics of Happiness and Wellbeing
The Experience Machine by Andy Clark
Your Brain Hallucinates Your Conscious Reality | Anil Seth | TED
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