Letting go of shame around ageing for women

I feel like “the horrors persist – but so do I” has become my perimenopause mantra. The weird physical symptoms, the random emotions, the exhaustion for no reason at all. But what I’ve noticed gets really loud around this time for many women – and to be honest, way before this point too – is shame narratives.

Even if on the surface life is ‘going well,’ shame around anything to do with ageing tends to be loud. And when your body turns devil’s advocate and all your careful coping mechanisms are blown to smithereens? Well, that’s when this stuff can overwhelm you. So, let’s talk about how to stop that from happening.

Shame: the hidden force shaping how we feel about ourselves

Most of us, when asked the question “Do you struggle with shame?” will say no. But when asked about things that are indicators of hidden shame will feel recognition.

Here are some of them:

• feeling like you have to ‘earn’ rest
• reacting defensively
• feeling exposed when someone cares for you
• rehearsing conversations in your head
• feeling embarrassed for wanting reassurance
• avoiding letting people see the real you
• explaining your needs instead of stating them
• feeling like you take up too much space
• discomfort with physical ‘imperfection'

Even one of these can indicate that you're carrying a well of shame somewhere inside you, and it's influencing how you respond in life.

Age shame comes from what we believe about age, not age itself

Feelings of shame can get a lot worse as we get older, especially for women, because we’re often sold the idea that a woman’s prime years are the ones in which she is young. But it's not the ageing itself that creates this, it's the meaning we give to it.

Think about the stories we’ve been taught to tell about those numbers. All the things you’re not supposed to wear after 40, everything you can’t do over 50, how ’invisible' you'll be past 60, how ‘small’ life gets after 70.

These controlling, negative ideas of one perspective, that age = decline, come from social conditioning (the messages in our media, culture, religion, etc.). And it gets loud and brutal for women as we age because, despite all the hormonal challenges around this time of life, it’s also when many women start to feel powerful. Free. And authentically themselves. 

As hormone levels shift during perimenopause, many women notice changes in mood, energy, and how they relate to others. That’s what’s causing a lot of the physical ‘horrors.’ But as estrogen leaves us, so too does the desire to fawn and please. It might become easier to say 'No.' To reject what may have previously controlled us and find the audacity to decide how to think and feel for ourselves, regardless of our body shape, relationship status, or what's in the bank.

And I think that’s why the shame narratives are pushed extra hard on us at this time of life, because we have the potential to stop conforming and start demanding, living and taking up space instead.

Age = loss?

Of course, we’re prepped for this moment way further back in life. Taught which versions of ourselves are celebrated and which are to be sidelined. Youth is equated with relevance. Beauty with worth. Desirability with visibility.

Age, meanwhile, is framed as a loss of appeal, opportunity and permission. Over time, these messages become internal narration, and the brain does what brains do best: it repeats what it has learned. And so women dread getting older because of these things. 

How youth-focused culture keeps the pressure on women

Awareness alone doesn’t undo conditioning. Your nervous system still reacts to this constantly because conditioning is designed to make us fear. 

And then there’s the use your inner critic makes of these shame-driven narratives when you experience things like perimenopausal weight gain, grey hair, wrinkles, incandescent rage, etc. Like all of these are a reflection that you're nearing your expiry date, rather than signs of a life being lived. 

Ideally, you’ve turned down the volume on your inner critic before you get to this point. But if you haven’t, this is the first place to start. Be more aware of what your inner critic says, challenge it always, and stop believing it like it’s gospel. If it's the only voice you've ever really heard, then we need to talk.

Something important to note about shame

Shame is a social inheritance, rather than an instinct. It’s something that we were taught. And then something we repeatedly do to ourselves to keep us in line. With that in mind, who taught you to first feel ashamed? Think back to that moment and what it related to. How often have you repeated that to yourself in various forms through your life?

Mapping your shame back through the years can often show you just how deep it runs and just how many of your habitual thoughts about yourself and your potential may be based on this warped perspective. It's something I often do with clients, and it can be both liberating and revealing.

Resilience is the answer – but not in a survival way

Resilience is often misunderstood as coping better with stress, or gritting your teeth and surviving. In reality, resilience is what allows you to stop organising your life around threat –including the threat of judgement that shame dangles in front of you.

Part of building resilience is dipping into your mind and removing the social conditioning that is the root of this – and which is clipping your wings in so many ways. Do that, and you become less compelled to compare, less hooked by internalised narratives and less reactive to standards that were never designed to serve you. 

As a result, shame begins to lose its grip. And you will start to experience a freedom you may have never thought possible.

You don’t need positive thinking to beat shame

This is more about noticing which narratives you’ve been repeating – and asking whether they were ever true. Do you really think 40 is ‘over the hill’? If you stop and think, do you actually have a problem with your body ageing, or does it feel more like a privilege to be alive? Does it seem logical to you that when you eventually become free of periods, child raising, etc., that life would narrow rather than expand?

Increased resilience means you gain more choice in how you speak to yourself and stop the constant, automatic self-correction that shame-filled social conditioning can make habitual. You can question what you 'should' do and start doing what feels right to you instead. You will have space for discovering the authentic you and actually living your life instead of just existing.

It’s time to have a different relationship with age

The reality is that age shame doesn’t protect you or keep you relevant. And it doesn’t make life safer or richer. It only keeps you tethered to a system that benefits from your self-doubt.

Resilience does something far more radical because it gives you back your authority, your agency and your sense of self. In resilience coaching, we focus on building authenticity – who you really are, what matters to you, where you’re going and what you want next, regardless of age – and undoing unconscious narratives that have been limiting you in so many ways.

And from that place, ageing stops feeling like something to manage or justify. It begins to feel like ground you can stand on, without apology.