These responses may have helped someone in your family survive. But when the pain is never acknowledged or understood, those ways of coping can become normal and continue into the next generation.

I often notice deeper breaths begin to take place as someone cries. I welcome the release to take the time it needs. Processing emotions is not something to be rushed. It is something to be handled with care.

Most women try three or four therapists before one actually fits. Here's why that keeps happening in midlife, and what a therapist who understands both perimenopause and your history actually looks like.