Menopause Support in Solihull and Birmingham for the Mind and Body
Memory Lapses, Brain Fog and Anxiety in Perimenopause, it's not all hot flushes.
You’re the one everyone relies on. You’ve built a career, or you’re holding down a demanding role, and you’ve always been sharp, on top of things, the one with the answer. Lately you’re not so sure. You walked into a room and forgot why. You lost your train of thought mid-sentence, in a meeting, in front of people who look to you. You’re hot, then cold, then wide awake at 3am, and somewhere in there you’ve started getting anxious for no reason you can name, sometimes tipping into a full panic that makes no sense given nothing’s actually wrong. You’ve started to wonder, quietly, whether you’re losing your edge, or losing your mind, or both.
You’re not. This is perimenopause, and the part nobody warns you about isn’t the hot flushes — it’s the memory lapses and brain fog, affecting up to 93% of women. Menopause hypnotherapy at MindAbility deals with that directly, combining nervous-system regulation with breathwork, delivered by a CNHC-registered specialist with lived experience.
I know exactly what that looks like because I’ve lived it. A few years ago I was driving my kids to swimming and heard a small voice from the back seat asking where we were going. I’d forgotten they were in the car. I pulled over, made light of it in front of them, and they had to talk me through the rest of the directions. That moment was the wake-up call. My first thought was that I was losing my mind. It wasn’t until I did my menopause specialist training that I understood what was actually going on: perimenopause.
Its funny now but not so much when you don’t know what’s happening or why.
Research backs up what that moment actually is. Memory problems affect 93% of women during perimenopause and menopause, and difficulty concentrating affects 91% both more common than hot flushes and night sweats, which ranked 18th and 14th on the same list.
Up to 62% of women report real cognitive difficulty. For most women it’s temporary and eases again post-menopause, which doesn’t fix the moment at the back gate, but does mean you’re not heading toward something worse.
Here’s why it compounds the way it does. Chronic stress and cortisol impair the part of the brain responsible for problem-solving, working memory and decision-making, while making the threat-response part of your brain more reactive. That’s the anxiety and the panic attacks explained, not imagined. And it’s a loop: the forgetfulness becomes its own source of stress, which raises cortisol further, which impairs the problem-solving more. You feel incompetent, which makes you more anxious, which makes the fog worse. None of that is a character flaw.
It’s a mechanism, and it’s the one I specialise in interrupting.
My Clinical Background in Menopause, Anxiety and Nervous System Regulation
Before menopause became my focus, I spent years working with people for whom stress, overwhelm and anxiety had taken over completely. In addition to my general CNHC and NCH accreditation, I’ve completed specialist menopause CPD training, and I’ve built real clinical hours working with South Asian women, where the pressure not to admit any of this adds a whole extra layer most providers never think to ask about. You can read more about why I do this work and about my own experience of burnout and anxiety.
I’ve delivered workshops and spoken at national menopause events specifically on the power of breathwork, and it’s this combination that sets my approach apart from most menopause coaches. Many practitioners in this space focus on mindset or lifestyle changes alone. I bring a certified breathwork coach background into the clinical work itself, which means you’re not just talking about calming your nervous system, you’re learning the specific mechanics of how to do it, backed by the same techniques I teach to rooms full of professionals at national events.
Emotional symptoms
- Persistent worry or fear
- Anxiety or panic attacks
- Mood swings
- Loss of confidence
- Feeling tearful for no clear reason
Cognitive symptoms
- Memory lapses and forgetfulness
- Difficulty concentrating
- Brain fog
- Word-finding difficulty (losing your train of thought mid-sentence)
- Trouble multitasking or making decisions
Physical symptoms
- Joint pain
- Ringing in the ears (tinnitus)
- Disrupted sleep
- Skin crawling or itching sensations (formication)
- Fatigue and low energy
Menopause and Burnout in South Asian Women: Why It’s Time to Be Seen
You’ve been carrying this quietly because you’re told from an early age that women’s health is not spoken about.
The sense that you’re just supposed to cope because that’s what women have done silently for years. No acknowledgement of the exhaustion or mental or physical load carried. South Asian women are 1.5 times more likely to experience anxiety or depression than the general population. Only 13% access support for it. That’s not a small gap. You’ve been managing more than anyone gave you credit for, and nobody thought to check.
In the community that gets called being good daughter/mother/sister and in the workplace, it gets called resilience. It’s not. A 2025 Greater London Authority report on Bangladeshi and Pakistani women in the workplace didn’t set out to study burnout, but the women interviewed described it anyway — one solicitor, excluded and harassed at work, ended up on sick leave: “My hair was falling out; it was really bad.” Another was passed over for a promotion after being excluded from after-work socialising, and took six months off once it affected her mental health. Nobody in that report used the word burnout. They didn’t need to, and maybe you haven’t either.
South Asian women in India and Pakistan reach menopause several years earlier than the UK average — 46.7 and 47.16 against roughly 51. There’s no equivalent UK data collected at all. SWAN, one of the biggest studies into women’s midlife health, doesn’t include South Asian women. You’ve been navigating this with less information than most women get, and less permission to talk about it. That’s what my clinical work with South Asian women is built to address
17 years supporting vulnerable individuals, including survivors of domestic and sexual abuse
Trauma-and culturally informed practitioner
CPD-accredited in menopause-specific hypnotherapy
CNHC & NCH registered
Specialist clinical hours with South Asian women
Please note: hypnotherapy is a strength-based approach. Everyone is different and results can’t be guaranteed. It works best when you’re ready to make changes, and it doesn’t replace medical care, so please keep your GP in the loop. Your FREE initial consultation is a 15-minute telephone consultation.
- Award-winning therapist
Your Menopause Specialist
With specialist menopause CPD training on top of my general CNHC and NCH accreditation, I combine clinical hypnotherapy with nervous-system regulation. I’m also currently navigating perimenopause myself, and I’ve built real clinical hours working with South Asian women specifically.
The Managing Menopause Method
A 10 sessions programme over 12 weeks, £997. Six weeks is enough to see hot flushes drop, but in clinic, week five or six is usually where things wobble — this programme is built to hold you through that, not end right before it.
The Managing Menopause Method includes:
- 10 x 1:1 sessions over 12 weeks
- Breathwork (Oxygen Advantage-informed)
- Nervous-system tools for between sessions
- A plan built around your actual symptoms, not a generic script
- NCH - National Council for Hypnotherapy
- AfSFH - Association for Solution Focused Hypnotherapy
- CNHC - Complementary & Natural Healthcare Council
- Multi-Award-Winning Practitioner
- Certified Oxygen Advantage Instructor
- CPD Certified Professional
Frequently Asked Questions.
What's the difference between perimenopause and menopause?
Perimenopause is the transition leading up to menopause, when your hormones start fluctuating and symptoms begin, but your periods haven’t stopped completely yet. It typically starts in your early-to-mid 40s, though it can begin earlier, and lasts anywhere from four to ten years.
Menopause itself is a single point in time: the day you’ve gone twelve months without a period. Everything before that, the hot flushes, the brain fog, the mood swings, the disrupted sleep, is technically perimenopause, even though most people just call the whole thing menopause.
The distinction matters practically, not just semantically. If you’re still having periods, even irregular ones, and you’re already experiencing symptoms, you’re not imagining it and you’re not too young.
Perimenopause can start well before your periods actually stop, which is exactly why so many women get dismissed by their GP or told they’re “too young for menopause” when what they’re actually describing is perimenopause doing exactly what it does. You don’t need to wait for periods to stop before getting support. If your body’s already changing, that’s reason enough to start.
How do I know hypnotherapy actually works for menopause symptoms, not just relaxation?
The strongest clinical evidence for hypnotherapy in menopause is specifically for hot flushes: a trial comparing therapeutic hypnosis against a placebo found hot flash frequency dropped by up to 48% within six weeks, and 56% by the twelve-week mark, against roughly 7 to 13% in the placebo group over the same period.
There’s also a hormonal piece worth understanding, because it explains why anxiety and low mood aren’t just in your head either.
Oestrogen and progesterone don’t just affect your body, they help your brain produce the chemicals that make you feel calm and in control. When those hormones drop during menopause, that calming support drops with them, which is a real physical reason anxiety gets worse for so many women, not a coincidence or a weakness.
On top of that, high cortisol, your stress hormone, actively gets in the way of your body making what oestrogen and progesterone it’s still got left to give. So stress genuinely makes menopause harder, not just in how it feels, but in what your body’s able to produce.
Bringing cortisol down doesn’t turn back the clock on menopause, but it can stop stress from making an already hard transition even harder. This is exactly why I use so much breathwork with menopause clients, it’s a quick, physical way to bring your stress hormone down yourself, in the moment.
This isn’t a replacement for HRT if that’s the right route for you. It’s a complementary, non-hormonal approach addressing the stress response underneath several symptoms at once.
Is this only for South Asian women, or can anyone book?
Anyone can book, this isn’t exclusive, and I’d hate for a woman to read that headline and assume the door’s closed to her.
What’s true is that I’ve built real clinical hours working specifically with South Asian women, and I’ve named a genuine research gap openly on this page: South Asian women in the UK aren’t represented in SWAN, one of the largest studies of women’s midlife health anywhere, and reach menopause on average several years earlier than white British women.
If you’re South Asian, you’ll probably recognise things here that most providers never think to ask about, the guilt around making a fuss, the family expectations, the sense that admitting struggle simply isn’t allowed in your household or community. If you’re not South Asian, you get exactly the same clinical protocol, the same CNHC and NCH registered practitioner, and the same evidence base underneath every session.
The cultural depth is context I bring to the work because I’ve earned it through actual clinical hours, not a gatekeeping criteria for who’s allowed to book a consultation.
I'm exhausted and don't have time for another commitment. Why 10 sessions over 12 weeks, and what actually happens in a session?
Because a shorter programme quietly sets you up to stop right when it gets hardest. In clinic, the same pattern shows up again and again, almost like clockwork: around week five or six, something throws people off course entirely, a flare-up, a family crisis, or simply exhaustion finally catching up with them after weeks of holding it together.
A standard six-week programme ends exactly there, at the worst possible moment, and you’re left believing it simply didn’t work for you. Twelve weeks puts that predictable dip in the middle of the process, with support still actively around you, rather than stranding you at the finish line with nothing left to hold onto.
It’s also genuinely long enough to work through at least one full cycle, which matters far more than people expect, given that perimenopausal cycles rarely behave predictably. I understand that another commitment feels close to impossible when you’re already running on empty.
Sessions are deliberately built around your working week, not stacked in competition against it. As for what actually happens in a session, you remain fully aware and in control throughout hypnotherapy is a relaxed, focused state, not unconsciousness, and nothing happens without your active participation. For the fuller explanation of how hypnotherapy works, our dedicated page on what hypnotherapy involves covers that in depth.
How much does the Managing Menopause Method cost, and is it worth it?
The Managing Menopause Method is £997 for 10 sessions over 12 weeks.
But the number on its own doesn’t tell you what you’re actually getting.
This isn’t a generic wellness package with menopause added to the label. I’ve spent years working with people whose anxiety, stress and overwhelm had taken over their lives that’s the clinical background this whole programme is built on.
On top of that, I’ve completed specialist menopause CPD training, and I’m going through this myself right now, using the same breathwork and hypnotherapy tools I teach you, in my own life, not just in a clinic room. That’s how I’ve stayed functioning through my own hardest weeks.
What you’re paying for is ten hours of direct, focused time with someone who understands anxiety and depression at a clinical level, has built specific menopause expertise on top of that, and isn’t asking you to trust something I haven’t lived myself. There’s no hidden add-on cost, breathwork, nervous-system tools, and your personalised plan are all included. If you’re still deciding, the first step costs nothing. Book the Clarity call, ask me anything you need to, and decide from there.
Take the first step — book a FREE 15-minute Clarity Call.
If you recognise the symptoms mentioned above take the opportunity to contact Mindability on 07902580703
or contact us below to arrange your free telephone consultation