Family Words

Why Menopause Makes Old Family Criticism Hurt More — And How to Let It Go

There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes not from work, or from poor sleep, or even from the relentless juggle of midlife, but from an afternoon with the family you grew up with. You walk in feeling like a capable adult. You leave feeling like your thirteen-year-old self.

Does this sound familiar? It’s certainly a common topic in my clinic room and Anchor Collective Community. For many women going through menopause, self-belief can wobble in exactly these moments – when an old comment lands and suddenly, you’re not so sure of yourself after all.

I see this all the time with the women I work with. Brilliant women. Women running businesses, leading teams, holding families together. And yet a single comment from a parent, a sibling, or an in-law can undo all of that in an instant.

Because being related to us seems to come with a free pass to say whatever they think, whenever they like.

Why do family comments affect us more than anyone else’s?

It might have been something said about the size of your body. A raised eyebrow at what was on your plate. A quiet but loaded question about a decision you’d made. Or that particularly cutting brand of ‘concern’ that was never really about you at all.

These comments rarely come with malicious intent. But intent and impact are very different things.

What they do – especially when they come from the people we love and whose approval we grew up needing, is poke at something already tender. That quiet, persistent feeling of not being quite good enough.

And here’s the thing about those words: we carry them long after the conversation has ended. Sometimes for decades.

Why does menopause bring up old insecurities and self-belief issues?

Perimenopause and menopause have a way of stirring things up, and not just hormonally. This season of life often prompts a reckoning. With how we’ve been living, what we’ve been prioritising, and whose voices have been guiding our choices.

Many women find their self-belief tested during this time in ways it hasn’t been since adolescence. Old questions resurface about their bodies, about what they should be doing, eating, weighing, achieving. And so often, when we trace those beliefs back, they lead us to a parent. A grandparent. A family member who didn’t realise the weight their words would carry.

Generational opinions sit deep in our core. And they don’t loosen their grip easily.

How do you let go of beliefs that don’t serve you anymore?

So today, I want to offer you something. Think of it as a spring clean, but for your mind rather than your kitchen cupboards.

Are you holding onto beliefs that genuinely don’t serve you anymore? Things you absorbed from family, from childhood, from a time when you had very little say in what you were told about yourself?

Because you are allowed to let them go.

You are allowed to look at those inherited ideas – about your body, your choices, your worth – and decide they no longer belong to you.

That’s not disloyalty to the people who shaped you. It’s loyalty to yourself. And rebuilding self- belief in menopause starts with exactly that kind of letting go.

And if you’re not sure where to start, that’s exactly the kind of work we can do together. Enjoyed reading this blog. Why not receive my weekly newsletter for similar vibes?