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Why Women’s Mental Health Requires Specialized Treatment Approaches

Women’s mental health needs to be approached differently than men’s. While women have some core human experiences in common with our male counterparts, women in particular benefit from gender-specific treatment. Trauma-informed care for women is often necessary to get to the root of our suffering. In this blog, we explore more about why women’s mental health requires specialized treatment approaches.

The Unique Mental Health Needs of Women in Recovery

At Villa Kali Ma, our team of clinicians, psychotherapists, practitioners, medical doctors and case workers are experienced in the field of women’s addiction recovery. As specialists in gender-specific treatment for women, we are intimately familiar with the unique mental health needs that women in recovery have. 

Most women in recovery from substance addiction have co-occurring mental health concerns, as well as underlying traumatization that needs to be healed at physical, emotional and neurobiological levels. Without addressing these factors together, the chances that women are able to achieve and sustain long term recovery are diminished.    

Here are some differences between men and women that impact the focus of the gender-specific treatment we offer for women at Villa Kali Ma.

  • Women are more likely to qualify for a dual diagnosis. Women who use substances daily to cope usually have serious co-occurring problems of thought, emotion and behavior that drive and interact with that substance use pattern. Women who use substances are often using substances to deal with severe depression, anxiety, or another serious mental health condition like borderline personality or bipolar. Women are more likely than men to present not only with complex post traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD), but also frequently exhibit additional self-destructive behavioral disorders. Eating disorders, self-harm and suicidal tendencies are not uncommon amongst women who use substances.
  • Women use substances for different reasons than men. Everyone who uses substances to the point of self-destruction is doing so in a desperate attempt to correct inner conditions of suffering. For example, substances can help people relax, or provide “liquid courage”. Women are more likely to be using substances to cope with the impacts of trauma, especially sexual trauma from childhood abuse, sexual assault, and intimate partner violence. Additionally, women are socialized to have different ways of processing emotions, meeting needs, and managing thoughts and behaviors than men. Such differences add up to having quite distinct drivers for using. Women also have different motivations for wanting to get sober and for doing the hard work of recovery.   
  • Women’s biology is affected differently by recovery. Although the majority of people who use substances are men, among those who do use, women are more likely to develop addiction. Tolerance and dependence to a substance develops more quickly in women’s bodies, after using a smaller amount of a substance, over a shorter period of time. Once addicted, likewise, women are subject to more intense cravings, withdrawals, and risk of relapse after achieving sobriety. This greater intensity of suffering means that women need different kinds of mental health support to succeed in recovery.
  • Women’s substance use, mental health, and trauma patterning are significantly impacted by female hormones. Factors like birth control, menstruation cycles, breastfeeding, pregnancy, parenting, menopause, and stress make substance use, recovery, mental health and trauma somewhat different for women for hormonal reasons alone. These complex biochemical interactions have huge impacts of mood, behavior, the effect of substances, and the mental-emotional challenges of recovery. Women’s mental health cannot be understood as well without taking hormonal influences into account. 
  • Women have greater economic challenges. Women are more likely than men to be financially dependent on others, including people who have abused them in the past and even people who are abusing them now. Women are the economically more vulnerable sex, and the realities of financial survival difficulties can have huge repercussions on options for mental health treatment, ranging from work, stress, parenting, job flexibility, and more. 
  • Women face gender-specific barriers to treatment. In addition to the greater likelihood of women having economic struggles, single parenting responsibilities, and eldercare, women face specific stigmas and challenges about needing and getting appropriate mental health treatment. In general, women’s suffering has been both over-pathologized (as with borderline personality) and at the same time minimized and dismissed (starting with concepts of hysteria), historically speaking. Many aspects of women’s genuine suffering are not seen or validated by the mainstream. One side effect is that many women fail to recognize that need or deserve help.   

How Gender-Specific Treatment Supports Deeper Healing

Gender-specific treatment settings are associated with better therapeutic outcomes for women. Women who attend gender-specific programs are more likely to succeed in recovery than women who attend mixed-gender counterpart programs of equal quality. 

This is because, naturally enough, women-only settings place primary focus on the most important problems faced by women. Topics like body image and appearance, female sexuality, intimate relationships, codependency, the importance of emotions, safety, impacts of menstruation and hormones, parenting, caring for elders, sexism, navigating career and workplace as a woman, and healing from sexual trauma are front and center in the treatment conversation. 

By contrast, mixed-gender treatment settings are more general, and don’t focus on the female experience of addiction specifically. Due to the historical bias to focus on men and men’s experiences of life as a default in medical settings, key pieces of the female perspective and needs can be de-emphasized, if not left out entirely, in mixed-gender treatment environments. 

Also, it’s important to understand that most women find same-sex settings to feel generally safer. This fact should not be surprising, since the clear majority of women qualifying for substance abuse and mental health treatment also have significant complex trauma to cope with. Very often the worst trauma that women have is sexual trauma, originating from childhood sexual abuse, sexual assault, sexual harassment, and/or intimate partner violence. Sexual trauma topics are very hard to heal in the presence of men, for most women who have been harmed by men in the past. This may change later on in the treatment process, but in early stages it is better to be in same-sex settings for greater feelings of safety. 

Finally, women are subject to social pressures in the presence of men which they do not have to face in female-only settings. Women usually require a same-sex setting to be able to fully focus internally, put themselves and their own needs first, and temporarily detach from who they are perceived to be in the eyes of men.

Creating Safe Spaces for Women to Process Trauma

It’s really important that women have access to safe spaces to address their traumatization. About half of women in America are exposed to one or more traumatic events at some point in their lifetime, according to the National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  

Women’s traumatization is different than men’s and needs to be understood in context of women’s subjective experiences, their biology, and their socialization as the disadvantaged sex in society. Women generally experience different forms of trauma, from events taking place at different stages of life. Women are more likely undergo traumatization at a younger age, and are also more likely to experience sexual trauma. 

Both sexual trauma and trauma that takes place at a young age have greater impact than other kinds of traumatic events. Complex trauma has the most negative developmental influence, affecting personality and neurobiology. While accidental injury and war-related violence are more likely to impact men, women more commonly develop a trauma diagnosis as a result of sexual assault and childhood sexual abuse. Women may be up to three times more likely than men to develop PSTD than men. 

Complex trauma is linked with many mental health consequences, including but not limited to substance abuse. Panic disorders, suicidal depression, ADHD, obsessive compulsive disorder, borderline personality, eating disorders, self-harm, and several other conditions may be side effects of women’s trauma. There are also several physical health conditions that can be better healed when also addressing underlying trauma, such as auto-immune disorders, chronic pain, digestive problems, and inflammation. 

Women need complete safety to be able to release long-held trauma out of their bodies. That safety can’t be faked. The true safety of a healing environment, both physically and psychologically, is perceived subconsciously. 

At Villa Kali Ma, our daily structure, together with the design and stewardship of the space itself, creates a strong, safe container for healing. Our firm, compassionate program helps women feel safe to engage at every level with the treatment they need. 

Experience Women-Only Treatment at Villa Kali Ma

Villa Kali Ma is an innovative, holistic treatment facility providing cutting-edge trauma treatment, mental health, and addiction recovery programs for women. Our compassionate, female-centric programs cover all the treatment needs that women have, addressing mind, body and spirit. We help women do the hard work of clearing their traumatic pasts for good, learning to be happy and healthy at last.  

Villa Kali Ma offers residential inpatient, as well as outpatient treatment options. Experience several powerful evidence-based trauma therapies integrated with holistic wellness modalities. Breathwork, yoga, meditation, nutrition, massage, acupuncture, energy medicine, and shamanic journeying are examples of the offerings you can find alongside our core clinical program. EMDR, Brainspotting, Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy, Somatic Experiencing, and Internal Family Systems Therapy are examples of the trauma-specific treatments we offer. Equine Therapy, Expressive Arts Therapy, and Mindfulness and Self-Compassion are additional modalities that women who attend our programs enjoy.

Because trauma affects so many facets of a woman’s life, we at Villa Kali Ma are ready to support each woman with a variety of approaches and levels of sensitivity. Not every therapy works for every woman, and most women experience the most benefit from a combination of approaches. We invite you to discover how different life can be, after healing trauma. 

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Internal family systems model of healing Mental Health Mental Health Treatment

The Unburdening Process in Internal Family Systems Therapy 

internal family systems san diego california

Women recovering from addiction, mental illness and trauma can find relief and improve their lives through learning to use the healing tools of Internal Family Systems Therapy. That’s why Internal Family Systems Therapy is one of the many trauma-informed approaches we offer at Villa Kali Ma. We use IFS tools to help women who are reclaiming lives of purpose, beauty and meaning. In this post, we’ll dive in to the topic of unburdening, a key component of the IFS approach to healing trauma. 

What are Exiles in Internal Family Systems Therapy? 

Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS) is a parts-work model, which holds that all of us have many different sides of our nature, sometimes called sub-personalities in other psychotherapy approaches. Figures like the inner child and the inner critic are examples of parts, but IFS shows that there are a surprising number of parts inside of each person’s system, and that parts can be very unique and personal. By learning to relate kindly to each of our parts, we dramatically improve our inner world, learning to meet our own needs assertively, and eventually behaving very differently in the outer world as a result.

IFS divides parts into two categories, protectors and exiles, based on their role within the inner system. Protectors act defensively and reactively to try to shield us from overwhelming amounts of pain. Protectors are recognizable within the concept of psychological defenses, where behaviors like rationalizing or denial serve a protective function. 

IFS holds that the parts of us that try, preventatively and reactively, to block us from feeling too much pain all at once are well-intentioned, misunderstood heroes. They have been helping us get through what otherwise might have completely blown us to smithereens, psychologically speaking. Protectors are the parts of us tasked with meeting expectations and maintaining relationships deemed necessary for our survival, such as making sure loved ones don’t abandon us and that we keep our jobs. Protectors can be quite extreme, but IFS says the extreme roles our protectors take on reflect accurately just how extreme our childhood circumstances were.  

Exiles, on the other hand, rather than taking strategic action or trying to manage pain, are the ones that feel the feelings. These are the parts of us that have been burdened with extreme beliefs, thoughts, feelings and behaviors. An example of an extreme belief could be “I am a bad person” or “I don’t deserve love”. These beliefs are considered burdensome and extreme by IFS, because it is impossible to hold such a core belief and function well in the world for long. As long as a part of us continues to believe that about ourselves, the way that we perceive our lives, and how we feel about being alive, will be painful and dysfunctional. Burdens ultimately create suffering and problems in our lives. For us to get better, it is suggested that burdens be cleared from our system and fully healed, so that we can operate in a healthier way. Once these burdens are removed, we can expect that our parts become naturally free, happy and high-functioning, turning from burdened parts into wonderful versions of themselves!.  

Other common burdens include shame, guilt, fear, rage, abandonment, betrayal, and powerlessness. Those of you who are familiar with the effects of trauma will notice that the feelings, thoughts, sensations and beliefs that exiles hold as burdens match the unresolved emotions and stresses of traumatization. The exiles are the parts within us, in fact, who are traumatized. 

Recognizing Parts as Helpful

Because of the way that trauma works in the psyche, most of us found a way to divide our inner world into parts that can function well in the world, perhaps even carrying on with normal life. It was necessary to carry on with daily life tasks without excessive pain, shame, guilt, fear and anger. The way that this is possible is through a kind of compartmentalization, which means that the trauma-generated beliefs, thoughts, feelings and sensations are stored separately, sometimes in a completely different part of the brain.

This capacity of separating out parts internally is not pathological, but rather an ingenious mechanism invented by a psyche facing life-threatening circumstances. It is a way to temporarily not process what would otherwise be overwhelming to be consciously aware of in that moment. 

In IFS, the parts that were stored away, who are holding the trauma experience, are in need of a process called unburdening. Although we have hidden traumatized parts away, their thoughts, feelings, emotions, and sensations still have influence on us. These wounded parts hold baggage that is weighing us down, and they keep trying to release it. 

Their feelings and needs erupt to the surface at inopportune times. If you’ve ever overreacted to something, that suggests hidden parts inside, to whom that big reaction rightfully belongs. For example, we sometimes react “childishly” to something. In such cases, rather than calling ourselves immature, it is probably more accurate to say that a child part within us has surfaced. That child part’s way of looking at the world, the feelings she’s having, her very immaturity, are actually completely developmentally appropriate for a child her age. 

The IFS Unburdening Process

IFS therapy calls the process of healing exiles “unburdening”, in honor of the fact that the goal of the process is to allow exiles to lay their burdens down once and for all. The heavy trauma baggage that these exiles have been carrying can, more often than not, be transmuted and transformed into something positive for the individual.

The unburdening process requires relating very differently to the parts within that are still carrying the beliefs, feelings, and sensations of our traumatic past. Rather than shutting them up and pushing them aside, we learn to support them by giving them what they didn’t have the chance to receive back then when the bad things were happening. By listening to them, believing them, and validating their feelings, we get into a position where we can give them the opportunity to drop the burdens they were forced to take on.    

IFS likes to use symbolic processes inspired by the natural world during the unburdening. These metaphors serve to help young parts intuitively grasp how toxic mental, emotional, and even physical baggage can be utterly transformed into a new state. Burdens can be burned up in fire, faded in sunlight, or liquified in a volcano. They can be dissolved into the ocean, washed away in the rain, or pounded to bits by a giant waterfall. Old beliefs and emotions can be buried and digested by the earth, whisked away by the wind and evaporated in fresh air. 

Once a part has told her story, and all the aspects of the burdens have been identified, the part is asked whether she would like to get rid of her burden using one of the natural world elements. There is no pre-defined way to use the elements – the burdened parts get to choose how they want to dispose of the material they have been carrying. Unburdening is, therefore, a creative, spontaneous, and unscripted process, drawing on images that arise naturally in the mind’s eye of the person who is healing. Intuition, instinct, and imagery are important parts of the unburdening process. 

When in the Therapeutic Process Does IFS Unburdening happen?

Unburdening generally takes place at certain spontaneous openings in the healing journey, quite a bit later on in the overall arc of the IFS process. It is not at all unusual for most of the IFS session work to be centered on working with protector parts, rather than exiles. As with all trauma work, a certain degree of safety and stability must be established first.  

This is because it is not possible to safely unburden exiles without the full permission and cooperation of our protector parts. Protector parts, like the inner critic and the addict, are powerful forces. If they do not feel it is safe to access our pain, or are afraid that healing this pain would somehow lead to consequences that wouldn’t be safe for us in the outer world, these parts easily sabotage or derail our attempts to heal. Sometimes the desire to heal runs directly counter to a protector part’s mandate. 

If we try to heal our exiles without the express consent of our protectors, we will fail and experience backlash. Symptoms that are present in our inner system as the result of the operations of one of our protectors will increase rather than decrease. For example, if we have a substance-using part in our system, we must have the trust and cooperation of that substance-using part before trying to access an exile that substance-using part is protecting. If we do not first gain permission, the substance-using part could very likely increase the substance use as a way to defend against conscious contact with the traumatized exile.

If and only if we have first befriended protectors, understood their concerns in full, and come to a friendly agreement about unburdening some of the exiles’ load of pain, is it a good idea to try unburdening an exile. 

Gaining consent from our protectors can be a long process. We must honor the wisdom and experience of our protectors, proceeding very slowly and with utmost respect. 

For all of these reasons, it is not recommended to try to undergo the unburdening process in full without an IFS practitioner to facilitate. At the same time, learning about the unburdening process can be helpful for anyone, as long as you remember not to venture into dangerous territory without a professional to help you. In that spirit, we offer the following exercise, for you to explore on your own time and authority, as you see fit. 

Journal Exercise to Explore the IFS Concept of Burdens

Please take what you like and leave the rest of the following journal exercise for exploring the concept of burdens and unburdening. If you notice that you are getting activated, take that as a sacred “no” and stop doing the exercise. There is no benefit to pushing through or overriding your boundaries or concerns; that will only result in backlash. 

Please, we mean it. Slower is faster with all healing work! 

This exercise zeros in on one particular part of the unburdening process, which involves asking the question, “What would you have rather experienced?”

  1. Think of a specific, light-to-medium burden that you already have noticed you carry, which you can use to explore this process. The way to detect a burden is you notice that there is constriction, heaviness, resistance, or a sense of unhappiness around a topic.  

Please don’t go for an item that has a lot of emotional charge. Instead, pick something that you know you will be able to explore without getting triggered. 

For example, perhaps you feel under-confident in your cooking abilities. It’s not enormously triggering to think about, but you know that you have some kind of negativity around it. 

  1. Think of a specific time when you encountered this burdened feeling, thought, or sensation in yourself. Recall the scene in which you encountered this burdened energy, and write down the following:
  2. Sensations-What happens in my body when I encounter this burdened topic? Sensations, postures, & movement impulses, etc?
  3. Feelings-What emotions do I feel? What comes up for me? 
  4. Thoughts -What goes through my head?
  5. Behavior Impulses-What do I notice I want to do?
  6. Beliefs-What core beliefs get activated? What negative self-concepts seem to get confirmed?
  7. Do-Over time! For each of the above items you noted, what would you have rather experienced? 

I would have rather experienced…

  1. Sensations
  2. Feelings
  3. Thoughts
  4. Behavior Impulses 
  5. Core Beliefs

Congratulations! You have explored one aspect of the unburdening process – identifying what you would rather have had.

IFS Therapy for Women at Villa Kali Ma

Villa Kali Ma is a licensed provider of integrative mental health services, trauma treatment, and addiction recovery. In all of our programs, we use a combination of clinical and holistic approaches to help women heal from substance abuse, psychological disorders, and trauma. 

Our clinical program is built around evidence-based practices widely recognized within the addictions, mental health and trauma field to work best with women. These effective clinical modalities include Internal Family Systems Therapy (https://villakalima.com/internal-family-systems-therapy-for-women-with-addiction/), EMDR, Ecotherapy, and several other wonderful approaches, such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (https://villakalima.com/sustainable-recovery/acceptance-and-commitment-therapy/), Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Therapy (MSC), and Somatic Experiencing (https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-somatic-experiencing-5204186).  

In addition to our clinical core, we administer a comprehensive suite of holistic interventions, in complementary sessions interwoven throughout main treatment hours. Our holistic program includes yoga, breath work, acupuncture, nutritional medicine, spiritual coaching, and more. 

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Trauma Trauma Therapy Treatment

The Mind-Body Connection: Somatic Approaches to Trauma Healing

In the words of pioneering psychiatrist, researcher and educator Bessel van der Kolk, when it comes to trauma, it is the body that keeps the score of what we have lived through, more so than the thinking mind. Trauma arises and lives on embedded into the tissues of the brain, nervous system and physiology. And while the mind may repress or forget memories, the body keeps a faithful record. 

Even when the conscious personality has chosen to minimize difficult aspects of our past, our personal history is legible in posture, breath, muscle tension, levels of nervous system arousal, and habits of movement, orientation and attention. 

According to van der Kolk and other luminaries in the field of trauma recovery, like Dr. Peter Levine and Dr. Pat Ogden, trauma healing needs to begin with the physical body itself. Through working therapeutically with the body, in its own native language of sensation, breath, movement, and impulse, a true repair of traumatic experiences can be achieved.

Enter the field of somatic therapy, realm of body-based trauma healing. Somatic therapies, of which there are several, restore health and sanity through working with nervous system regulation, muscular tension release, progressing interrupted survival movements, and other body-based psychotherapeutic interventions. The premise of somatic therapy is that since it is the body that is the bedrock of experience, shifting at the level of body consciousness has powerful knock-on effects upwards into emotion and personality layers.

How Somatic Therapy Helps Women Heal Trauma Stored in the Body

Somatic therapies are considered a “bottom up” approach, which means that practitioners start with the body, and work “upward” to developmentally later aspects of self, like personality, cognition and emotion. Somatic therapy fills a void left by talk therapy, which shines in the arena of helping a person develop self-awareness, but can also fail in cases where a dysregulated neurobiology is influencing experience heavily. 

Symptoms like anxiety, depression, attention troubles, sleep disorders, psychosomatic illnesses, and dissociation, for example, can in some instances be caused not so much by disease, or even inner conflicts and psychological complexes, so much as unresolved traumatic experiences lying deep in the body’s unconscious memories. Sane decision-making and higher executive functioning are sometimes unavailable, or only intermittently available, when a person hasn’t yet worked out how to feel safe being alive in a body. 

While in reality the interactions of consciousness are enormously complex, the model of “bottom up” (body first) versus “top down” (mental understanding first) approaches to healing can be helpful for understanding the order and priority of treatment for people with trauma. It might not make sense to fix the roof of a building, if there’s work to be done at the foundation. The body is the foundation of human experience.  

The conception of bottom up approaches comes also from the observation that in brain imaging studies, it appears that the brainstem and midbrain, located towards the bottom of the brain as compared with the cortex, have important roles in perception and the assignment of meaning to sensory signals. The cortex, by contrast, which is the upper and outermost part of the brain, is generally accepted to be the area of the brain responsible for “higher” thought, like abstract concepts, planning, and learning. 

In order to be able to use our capacities for higher thought in a sane and grounded way, the responsibilities of the cortex need to be integrated with the other parts of the brain, the ones that handle signal processing, sensation, basic safety, emotional attunement, and relationships. One reason that some of us have a harder time with impulse control and foresight may be that we have unresolved material relating to our basic physiological and relational safety. We may have trauma that needs to be healed, before we can operate our executive levels of the brain in a more helpful and coherent way. 

A significant portion of women who seek out treatment for substance abuse have a history of trauma, often sexual trauma or sexual abuse. Others have a heavy burden of traumatization from adverse childhood environments that contained physical or psychological abuse and/or neglect. For any woman with trauma, with or without addition substance or mental health diagnoses, somatic therapies are going to be an incredible assist. 

Most women with trauma histories did not have the experience of being fully safe – both nurtured and protected from harm – in their physical bodies. This missing element of basic safety has to be corrected before any woman will be able to flourish in other domains of her life. Better said, perhaps – although women can and do survive and thrive against incredible odds all the time, healing can be much, much easier with a bodily foundation of sufficient safety. 

Understanding Trauma’s Physical Manifestations

Trauma leaves a significant impact on every aspect of experience. Thought disturbances like dissociation, memory problems, attention disorders, impulse control problems, and even psychosis can be caused by unhealed trauma in the body. Likewise, in the realm of emotion and relationships, traumatized women endure a range of painful subjective experiences, including terror of abandonment, fear of engulfment, enmeshment, codependence, and even intimate partner abuse, in part due to deep unresolved material relating to safety and survival. 

It’s also important to see that many physical symptoms may be coming from, or influenced by, our trauma history. Trauma is one possible source of chronic pain, unexplained aches, and other “mystery” conditions. How the body works with pain is intimately connected to the other body systems which are responsible for processing and releasing trauma. 

Similarly, digestive issues, including irritable bowel syndrome, gut problems, inflammation, and stomach pain, may have an origin in traumatization. The stomach is very sensitive to any form of stress, including post-traumatic stress. 

Another trauma symptom many women will recognize is fatigue. Due to its connection with the nervous system and states of arousal, trauma is responsible for taxing and depleting our existing energy levels. Being tired all the time can also be a sign that the body is using a kind of “dorsal collapse” technique for blunting the edges of extreme overarousal, or mobilization of the fight and flight system. 

Finally, muscle tension, headaches, and jaw clenching can also be signs that the body is holding trauma. Somatic therapies are one way that the body can be gently coaxed to let go of the burdens associated with trauma. Through physical release of tensions and energies of thwarted survival impulses that arose and got trapped in our physiology long ago, we have a chance at restoring not only physical but also mental and emotional health.

Heal your Trauma at Villa Kali Ma  

Villa Kali Ma is a licensed provider of integrative mental health services, trauma treatment, and addiction recovery. In all of our programs for women, we use a combination of clinical and holistic approaches to help heal from the following burdens: 

  • Traumatization. Acute & chronic PTSD, complex trauma 
  • Substance abuse and dependence. Addiction to alcohol, street drugs, cannabis, pharmaceuticals, and poly-substance addiction
  • Mental health symptoms. Anxiety, depression, ADHD, obsessions and compulsions, and behavioral disorders

The core of our clinical program features evidence-based practices and other gold standard treatments widely recognized within the trauma field to work best with women facing severe challenges. These effective clinical modalities include Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Therapy (MSC), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFST), Ecotherapy, Expressive Arts Therapy (EXA), and Somatic Experiencing (SE).  

Complementary to our clinical program, we provide an array of holistic interventions, scheduled around core treatment programming hours. Our holistic package includes yoga, breath work, acupuncture, nutritional medicine, mindfulness, and many additional alternative healing modalities. Our purpose is empowering women to recover lives of heartfelt relating, meaning, beauty and purpose. 

Women with trauma who don’t qualify for substance abuse or mental health disorders, may also be interested to know about the Retreat, our state of the art licensed trauma-healing facility. Whoever you are, and whatever your burdens, you are welcome here with us!

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Mental Health PTSD Treatment

How Childhood Trauma Impacts Adult Mental Health and Relationships

best trauma therapy san diego california

How Childhood Trauma Impacts Adult Mental Health and Relationships

Childhood trauma has far-reaching effects, shaping the course of our lives in significant ways. Depending on several factors, including genetic predisposition, temperament, position in the family, and how young we were when encountering adverse childhood events, we may be burdened with a variety of symptoms.

For women recovering from addiction and mental health disorders, it’s important to recognize childhood trauma effects when they show up within our own personalities and patterns of relating. We will want to invest some amount of personal work healing our inner child, and undergo trauma therapy, in order to restore our true selves and regain control of how we show up in the world with others.

It is not necessary to fight darkness, but rather to turn on a light, the saying goes. It is very similar with traumatization. By restoring the flow of life force within the body, psyche, and spirit, trauma blockages will eventually dissolve, allowing psychological development that was once arrested to proceed. 

The first step is to recognize trauma’s presence by its signature energetics and impacts. In this post, we take a look at how trauma affects adult mental health and relationships.    

The Lasting Impact of Childhood Trauma on Women’s Lives

In order to complete the most basic developmental tasks involved with growing up physically, emotionally, and mentally into a healthy, high-functioning adult, a degree of physical and psychological safety is required. Safety means both that we are nurtured and that we are protected. All humans have needs and boundaries. Children cannot thrive when developmental needs are unmet, nor when boundaries are violated. 

Provided we are sufficiently nurtured and protected, we naturally grow up, learning in a self-directed fashion through exploratory play and interactions with people, animals, and nature. In addition to safety, we need a high amount of autonomy – the chance, permission, and support to grow into our own unique self, in our own unique way. 

For a variety of reasons, many families are not able to provide the right mix of safety and autonomy that is required for children to have a healthy sense of self. In fact, our families may have done very poorly in one or more requirements of meeting needs, protecting boundaries, and supporting autonomy. If our families did a good job of this, that still doesn’t mean that our peers and teachers were able to.  

It’s important to understand that trauma is not in the events themselves, but in the way that a human nervous system responds to certain events. Many relatively common childhood experiences are identified by trauma experts as being traumatogenic, which means that children who are exposed to such adverse events tend to develop recognizable symptoms of trauma and even patterns of personality. Examples of traumatizing childhood events include physical, sexual and emotional abuse, physical and emotional neglect, having a parent who uses substances, witnessing domestic violence in the home, and separation, death of a parent, or divorce.   

What this means is that if you survived such circumstances in your childhood, chances are high that this impacted you in ways that are so ingrained into your personality and way of perceiving the world, that the effect might be invisible to you. Common signs of having been traumatized in childhood include sleep disorders, substance abuse, relationship troubles, intense emotions including fear and anger, spacing out, fatigue, illness, inability to relax, and shame. 

Understanding How Early Experiences Shape Adult Patterns

The key to understanding how untreated trauma from childhood affects life as an adult lies in recognizing trauma’s presence underneath cognitive, emotional, and behavioral patterns. Many mental and behavioral health symptoms can be unmasked as ingenious adaptations to trauma. Symptoms are likely to be mechanisms for coping with stress from being exposed to too many threats in the past. An excess of fear and anger indicates unintegrated experiences of being exposed to impacts which were life-threatening and violating. 

Keep in mind that events can be traumatizing to the human nervous system, brain and body, even when the people who affected us didn’t mean to hurt us. Remember also that many aspects of our culture which the majority of people consider to be normal are considered by some experts in the field to be lightly or even heavily traumatizing.   

We can begin to recognize trauma by getting curious about ourselves. Specifically, we must ditch the idea that we are sick, and ask instead how a symptom is helping us. What is the purpose of our depression? How does our irritability help us? What is anxiety good for?

When we get to know our anxiety, irritability, anger, and depression, as well as our seemingly counterproductive behaviors like substance use, self-sabotage, and low self-compassion, we may come to see that in actual fact, these legacy symptoms once helped us adapt to an environment that was trauma-generating. If we have symptoms of excess fear (anxiety, insomnia, dissociation) and excess anger (depression, irritability, self-harm, etc), that almost certainly means that we have spent some time in an environment that failed to meet our developmental and nurturance needs, violated our natural boundaries, or both. 

Breaking Free from Trauma Bonds and Unhealthy Relationships

It isn’t easy to heal trauma, but it is absolutely possible and certainly worth it. One area of life which can improve significantly through trauma healing is relationships with loved ones. 

If you experienced physical or emotional neglect, physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, or any combination of those in your early years, it is very likely that you have had trouble with founding and maintaining healthy relationships as an adult. You probably unconsciously sought out partners with whom you would experience a bond that resembles the bond you had with the same people who neglected or abused you. 

This may mean that you accept a low level of nurturance, a high level of boundary violation, or both. You may have an enmeshed, codependent relationship, in which you give your partner the love that you actually always needed to receive. You may prefer partners that treat you in a way that matches your own low self-esteem – with some level of neglect, misunderstanding, or disregard.

All of this is terribly common among women, and please hear us that this isn’t your fault. Rather, fraught relationships are unavoidable until trauma is addressed. Until we have healed our trauma, we likely wouldn’t know healthy love if it walked right up to us. Rather, we will tend to fall intensely in love with people who have similar patterns of relating as the people who hurt us the most. 

Nevertheless, each relationship attempt, even when it clearly mimics certain patterns of our childhood, is also a sign that deep inside, we have not given up on trying to get the genuine and appropriate love that we have always wanted and needed. And the good news is that, through trauma healing, we get one very important bonus: a chance at experiencing that love. We get this love when we activate our inner Self (https://ifs-institute.com/resources/articles/larger-self), becoming a source of the parenting, kindness, and even adoration that we always needed. We become the loving person we have always needed to have in our lives.

Learning to love ourselves, to recognize our own value, we attract a higher quality of emotional intelligence in partners, and interact differently with existing love relationships than we used to. Overall, we can expect that we gradually learn to behave with dignity and self-compassion, requiring that others treat us the same.   

Reclaim Your Story with Compassionate Trauma Treatment

If you have a trauma history, you have probably had moments in your life when you wanted to give up on trying to be yourself. Trying to be here in your best potential, in this world, in your skin, has felt too much at times – too painful and too difficult. 

To live openheartedly and authentically in this world, amid the interference of loud and often self-conflicting trauma symptoms; amid emotional instability, self-attack, and demoralizing outcomes; amid escalating substance abuse, relationship problems, and career struggles; it has undoubtedly been a lot for you at times. 

But hear this: trauma healing is possible. The work that it takes is worth it. The path of healing is emotionally intense, it’s true – but nothing you haven’t already been living with every day since the trauma started. There will be psychological pain at times, yes – but no more intense than the pain you already cope with. There is nothing to lose by healing trauma, and a lot to gain. In facing trauma, you risk short term triggering – having to re-experience what you already have experienced, and most likely still re-experience on repeat – for the potential reward of at last healing the wounds in a permanent way. 

You might be surprised, furthermore, to find out how sweet, rewarding, deepening, and meaningful the trauma healing journey is. You might feel silly for not starting the journey earlier, and have to remind yourself that you needed all the time you did, to get to the point of facing it. You might be happy with every aspect of your history, in the end, recognizing how each wounding poison also brought its own magnificent antidote into your life. You just might.

Villa Kali Ma offers trauma-informed treatment for women struggling with substance addiction and mental health disorders. We also run a state-of-the-art trauma treatment center, offering several forms of cutting-edge treatments for helping women address their trauma.    

Categories
Mental Health Women's Mental Health

Understanding Complex PTSD: Signs, Symptoms, and Hope for Healing

ptsd treatment san diego

Understanding Complex PTSD: Signs, Symptoms, and Hope for Healing

Famously, some cultures have more words for snow than we do in English.”Snow on the ground”, “snow in the sky”, and even “drifting snow” were once purported to have different names in Inuit languages.

Accurate or not, the oft-quoted idea of Inuit peoples having seven words for snow illustrates the fact that there can be many ways of naming and conceptualizing the same phenomenon. It also suggests that those who are directly exposed to something, who see it and work with it every day, and who have good reason and opportunity to pay close attention to it, will naturally perceive distinctions significant enough to call by another name entirely. 

Those of us who work with women to recover from addiction and mental illness have our reasons to pay ongoing attention to the heartbreaking, baffling mystery of psychological trauma. It is no wonder then, that collectively we have discovered new names for trauma’s many different faces, forms and phases. 

Once upon a time, trauma wasn’t even a concept, at least not in its modern form – the word, from the Greek, means simply wound. What was originally observed by psychology pioneers like Jean Martin Charcot and Sigmund Freud, a phenomenon that eventually earned the name “shell shock” around the time of the first world wars, was known of, but only very imprecisely understood. Fortunately for the traumatized among us, as the field of psychology evolved, the term and its subcategories have become more delineated, astute and refined. 

In 2026, we now have more names for trauma than ever before. Acute trauma, complex trauma (C-PTSD), developmental trauma, intrauterine and pre-verbal trauma, trans-generational trauma, vicarious trauma, collective trauma, and religious trauma are categories meriting distinct therapeutic approaches, according to the International Trauma Professionals Associationfor one. Professionals in the trauma field today generally concur that there are many different variants of the phenomenon that Freud long ago referred to as an “hysterical attack”, in keeping with conceptualizations forged by his mentor Charcot.

There is one form of trauma which is very important to be aware of, especially for women. This type of trauma is called complex post traumatic stress disorder, or C-PTSD. C-PTSD first entered the collective awareness through the truly pioneering work of Judith Hermann (https://www.yourcomplextrauma.com/blog/dr-judith-herman-on-complex-ptsd-and-what-survivors-need). Hermann discovered that PTSD was not the only kind of trauma, and that trauma originating from chronic exposure to abusive and neglectful circumstances was widespread. Since then, collective awareness and understanding of this less obvious, but in many ways equally insidious type of trauma and its impacts on human development has grown. 

We at Villa Kali Ma hold that C-PTSD is exceptionally important to be aware of, as women. Many of the women we encounter struggle with C-PTSD symptoms, without knowing that there is a name for the pervasive negative experiences they are enduring. C-PTSD treatment can be a life-changing form of trauma recovery for women. So much so, that we feel every woman should know about the disorder and about the options which are available to her for healing it. In this piece, we share a little bit more about C-PTSD and how it affects women, to that end.

Understanding Complex PTSD and How It Affects Women

Complex post traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) is more subtle, as well as more integrated into personality. This means that it feels like “me”. For that reason, it is usually harder to detect than traditional PTSD. C-PTSD feels like water to the fish, meaning that the symptoms have been with a person for so long, that she wouldn’t know that it is always there in the background, informing and affecting her experience. 

Many chronic mental and physical health conditions, such as ADHD, depression, anxiety, and physical health problems like migraines, autoimmune problems, and inflammation, may actually be manifestations of traumatization. Because trauma affects the brain and the nervous system, in turn impacting hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, it affects every aspect of the human experience.

C-PTSD pervades women by impacting their brains and neurology, their very perception of events, influencing cognition and interpretation of what is going on in the moment. Whether we are in a state of high nervous system arousal (irritable, anxious, edgy and on guard), or on the other hand in a kind of nervous collapse (numb, fatigued, spacey and drained), either way our sense of who we are, as well as our read on what is taking place in the moment, is highly skewed. Specifically, our experience is flavored by social or physical survival fear, and deep dread. 

This constant state of low-grade social and/or physical survival fear has widespread influence on our work and relationship lives. Whatever women with C-PTSD encounter in love, family and career, tends to be at least slightly tinged with a background sense of terror and dread. Additionally, acute episodes of severe emotional distress commonly interrupt daily life and make it hard to participate at the same level of capacity as non-traumatized people. 

Recognizing the Signs and Symptoms of Complex Trauma

Here are some common signs of C-PTSD. 

Emotional Flashbacks

For women with C-PTSD, their bodies, minds, and emotions have a tendency to return to bad, scary, dreadful memories on repeat, rather than leaving memories in the past. We aren’t able to process or release those feelings once and for all, and instead are prone to emotional flashbacks. 

An emotional flashback means feeling the old bad feelings even when the old bad situation isn’t actually happening again. For example, no one is actually abandoning us, but we feel just as distressed and fearful as we did back when we really were being abandoned and our lives depended on the person staying with us.  

Flashbacks are often triggered by stimuli in the environment that were coupled with the event itself. For example, a person can be triggered by a certain smell, place, person, or type of situation.

During flashbacks, it feels like a bad thing from the past is happening again, or is still happening. The body perceives danger, and signals this to us with a racing heart, sweating, and shaking. Tunnel vision, muscle tension, and feeling unreal can also be part of the experience. These physical symptoms are signs that the body has mobilized for action, such as running away, fighting off an attacker, or clinging to a protector. It is also common to collapse and go numb after a certain amount of over-activation into stress. Flashbacks are often triggers for relapse in substance abuse, eating disorders, self-harm, and other 

Shame, Guilt, and Low Self-Esteem

Shame is the belief that you are bad, that you don’t deserve love and belonging. Guilt and feelings of worthlessness are close by when there is shame. Women who have C-PTSD may have the classic “doormat” personality style, apologizing for their existence and not consciously aware of their inherent value as beloved members of the family of life. Crippling perfectionism and harsh self-judgment are chronic conditions. For women with C-PTSD, any life event can trigger shame, since the shame is attached to who they believe they are in essence. Shame is one of the tragic legacies of childhood sexual abuse, as well as emotional and physical abuse or neglect. 

Hypervigilance

Hypervigilance means that a person is always on guard, expecting the worst to happen at any moment, and being prepared to take preventative, protective action if needed. The classic example of hypervigilance is a combat veteran with PTSD, who can’t stop seeing danger everywhere, even when the war is over. 

For women with C-PTSD, the danger they’re on guard against may be social or relational rather than physical (though it can also be that). Women with C-PTSD tend to feel like they need to be in control and feel very threatened when facing uncertainty. They also pay close attention to all details in the environment, including facial expressions of their loved ones. Depending what type of danger was experienced – aggression, neglect, abandonment, sexual violation – women will be on the lookout for signs of these interpersonal events at all times, ready to take action to avoid the social or relational danger they are expecting to happen at any moment.   

Substance Abuse, Eating Disorders and Self-Harm

Women with C-PTSD often have a problem with substances, abusing food through overeating or restricting or both, self-harming behaviors like cutting, and suicidal tendencies, feelings and thoughts. This is because the pre-existing condition of chronic stress, fear, dread, and shame is so hard to live with, that it sets a person up for seeking relief through whatever works to block out the feelings, sensations, and thoughts.   

Self-Sabotage

Finally, women with C-PTSD may have a lifelong pattern of self-sabotage. Any time a good thing gets going in their lives, whether it be a loving partner, a good job, or another positive life event, they may be triggered to subconsciously take negative action or act out in such a way that destroys progress made, burns bridges, and returns them to life circumstances that are smaller in scope, less lovely, and more shut down. 

The reason for this is that women with C-PTSD are on the search for basic safety, and are still trying to solve the puzzle, on some level, of what went wrong in the past that so deeply destroyed their intactness. To open up into higher vibrations of love and purposeful life is enormously threatening to the traumatized parts of the personality, that would rather lock a woman up in her own fear prison than risk exposure to new forms of danger (or to risk having to encounter the old forms of danger again).

For more in-depth information about C-PTSD, we highly recommend the work of Dr. Arielle Schwartz. 

Evidence-Based Treatments for C-PTSD at Villa Kali Ma

C-PTSD responds to several forms of treatment. At Villa Kali Ma, we offer many  forms of trauma treatment in parallel, to help women heal their PTSD in the most holistic and global way. 

EMDR and Brainspotting 

EMDR and Brainspotting are believed to change the way that the brain recalls a memory. Not erasing memories, but changing the amount of activation in the nervous system that takes place when thinking of certain memories. Before this type of trauma treatment, it may be impossible to think of a certain event without re-experiencing the emotions, thoughts and physical sensations of the event, as if they are happening now. EMDR and Brainspotting help the brain to differentiate the present from the past, at least in terms of how it feels to the body and emotions. 

Body Work and Somatic Therapies

There are several wonderful modalities that help women with C-PTSD build feelings of basic safety in the body, improve their here and now orientation, and complete trauma responses. Trauma Tension and Release Exercises (TRE), Somatic Experiencing, massage, and trauma-informed Yoga are some of modalities we offer that help women allow their bodies, brains, and nervous systems to process unfinished business at the level of physiology. 

Internal Family Systems Therapy and Mindfulness and Self-Compassion

Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS) is a highly transformational psychodynamic therapy that helps a person to heal all the traumatized inner children that live inside the soul of a person who has C-PTSD. IFS changes a woman’s subjective sense of herself, shifting her from a state of chronic shame and low self-worth, to an accurate recognition of her own inherent and unconditional marvelousness. Symptoms like rage and fear transform into more balanced and helpful forms, like boundaries and appropriate caution. 

Mindful Self-Compassion, likewise, is a popular modality that helps women accustomed to treating themselves with severity, harshness and coldness, to activate their inner fountain of self-love and kindness. Both of these powerful approaches are offered at Villa Kali Ma because they are so good at restoring a foundation of softness, love, and self-support. 

Begin Your Healing Journey with Trauma-Informed Care

It’s important for women to receive trauma-informed care. Trauma-informed care means that emphasis is placed on subjective experiences as well as objective measures for safety, control, and empowerment, placing each woman in charge of her own choices in recovery. 

Trauma-informed care insists on respect for all parts of a woman, understanding that each symptom has a role which has, at its origins, a positive intention of helping a woman to cope in challenging circumstances. Rather than viewing negative and even self-destructive behaviors as a problem, trauma-informed care understands that every feature in the ecosystem of the psyche needs to be understood in full, before any changes are suggested. Finally, trauma-informed care means that women are given the body and nervous-system support they need to gradually shift gears out of a mode of perception that feels dangerous, to a perception which feels safe, before they are encouraged to be “positive” or “look on the bright side”. 

At Villa Kali Ma, trauma-informed care is integrated into all of our services, in our several facilities in northern San Diego County. We also offer a stand-alone, trauma treatment facility that administers cutting edge treatments which can be difficult to access outside of such a licensed facility. 

Categories
Women's Mental Health

Understanding Women’s Mental Health Over a Lifetime: A Guide

Here at Villa Kali Ma, we believe in the power of gender specific treatment for women. We focus on offering services that foster mental health, trauma healing, and addiction recovery specifically for women.

Throughout the life of a woman, different mental health topics come to the fore, based on changing developmental stages. Read on for Villa Kali Ma’s overview of how women’s mental health may evolve over a lifetime.

What role do sex and gender play in mental health?

Sex and gender both play a part in mental health. There are biological differences – hormonal, chromosomal, and reproductive – between men and women, which have impacts on mental illness and recovery. Differences in social roles and expectations assigned to femininity versus masculinity also affect mental health significantly.

Some mental health disorders are more prevalent among women, for biological and/or societal reasons. Women also experience trauma and addiction in gendered ways.

Mental Health in Childhood: ADHD in girls

Mental health doesn’t exist in a vacuum. On the contrary, it is quite fluid and exists within the contexts and dynamics of the people we are most closely bonded with. During childhood, girls are not yet individuated psychologically from their family systems and are merged with their families as a whole, for better or for worse.

If a family is reasonably healthy and resourced, a girl has a better chance of having healthy thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. On the flip side, if a girl grows up in a family that is experiencing serious mental health trouble, for example in which a parent has an addiction or in which a main caregiver has major unhealed trauma themselves, the child is likely to have symptoms.

One way to understand symptoms experienced by girls is through the trauma lens, as children are psychologically and physiologically damaged by adverse childhood events like neglect, abuse, and various common forms of household trouble.

However, mental health troubles often also arise in children who are supported in reasonably healthy families. Even when protected and nourished by ideal family conditions, children are very vulnerable and can be affected negatively by many stressors that adults can handle without problem.

Little girls’ mental and emotional states are affected by their experiences in school and with their peers. They are also impacted at biological levels by exposure to chemicals through pollution, lack of access to green space, poor nutrient quality of food, and other environmental factors.

While biological differences between males and females are less important until puberty, girls are nevertheless affected by gender impacts at any age. The overall cultural devaluation of femininity (or conditional valuation of femininity for certain uses only, such as to be attractive or helpful) begins eroding a female-born person’s self-esteem right at birth.

One mental health condition that affects some girls is attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD. The symptoms of ADHD are impulsiveness, trouble with attention, and hyperactivity. Girls are less likely to manifest hyperactivity and less likely to behave in ways that adults find disruptive. Nevertheless, girls may still be having problems with attention, which impacts their ability to organize, remember, make decisions, and prioritize.

The following symptoms are considered signs that a girl may be having trouble with ADHD-like symptoms:

  • Difficulty paying attention during class
  • Difficulty keeping up with schoolwork
  • Dreaminess
  • Higher than average levels of anxiety
  • Social withdrawal
  • Verbal aggressiveness (like teasing or name-calling)

However, please keep in mind that many conditions present in the same way, and each child is a unique being deserving of careful attention to understand what’s at play before concluding that a mental health disorder is the reason for a child’s behavior.

Depression, Anxiety, and Eating Disorders: Women’s Mental Health During Adolescence

During adolescence, mental health symptoms bloom for all humans, and preexisting tendencies become more prominent. Many fluctuations in mood and energy are explained by the effects of new hormones. Equally, the difficult social-emotional experiences of puberty, which represent a psychological stage of development, place great pressure on the psyche of a child.

Teenage girls are most prone to experiencing depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. These conditions may present separately or together.

Depression

Depression is generally manifested as a low mood (feeling down), negative thoughts, loss of interest in previous sources of enjoyment, and loss of physical energy, sometimes leading to an increase in the need for sleep. A depressed teenage girl may appear lethargic and sad, may withdraw from her friends, and become socially isolated. The struggle with girls experiencing depression for the first time is that they may not have words to communicate the onset of bleakness, heaviness, and desire to withdraw emotionally.

The most important thing to understand about depression is that it can be dangerous. Depression is connected with self-harm, attempted suicide, and risky behavior. Depression can also be part of substance use and/or a sign of having sustained a sexual trauma of some kind.

Common sources of depression include bullying and peer group related pain, such as exclusion by “mean girls”. Depression may be a signal of sexual boundary violation or traumatization, and it’s important to understand how vulnerable girls are to inappropriate sexual expressions by adults and peers.

If depression is observed, it’s important to engage, express care, offer help, and give love. If addressed in time, the wound to the soul may be healed before depression becomes a lingering state of being.


Anxiety

Anxiety is a common kind of suffering among teenage girls. In general, women are considered to be twice as likely as men to manifest symptoms of anxiety, and that is true in adolescence too.

Anxiety is excessive worry and tension and may include intrusive thoughts and obsessive behavior.  An anxious girl may appear worried and preoccupied, have looping thoughts, or be unable to relax.

As with depression, anxiety can be introduced by hormonal changes and is also a psychological response to a change in developmental stage. Anxiety may present as pressure placed upon oneself to perform well academically, to have a perfect appearance (leading to obsessive dieting or other disordered food behaviors), or other forms of perfectionism. Anxiety is also commonly somatically experienced, for example as a stomach ache.

Some signs of anxiety include:

  • Worrying about things that are out of one’s control
  • Physical body tension
  • Worried, uneasy appearance
  • Fidgeting, inability to relax
  • Obsessive thoughts and/or compulsive behaviors

Eating Disorders

Teenage girls frequently struggle with eating disorders. For many reasons, young women are socially trained to identify with their body weight, size, and shape, and to find self-worth (or more often, lack thereof) by critically examining how they appear in the mirror or photographs.

Eating disorders are more common among women than men in general. Adolescence tends to be the time in which eating disorders start and can include self-starving, fad dieting, self-induced vomiting, overeating, and even abuse of laxatives.

Eating disorders are very serious mental health conditions and are a form of self-harm that has addictive and compulsive aspects. Eating disorders have many physical health impacts, including damage to major organs, and are also psychologically damaging, resulting in arrested development and impairments.

Some signs of an eating disorder include:

  • Obsession with weight and body image
  • Obsession with monitoring calorie intake
  • Restricting food and dieting, trying to lose weight
  • Food rituals
  • Thin, dry brittle hair, degrading teeth and fingernails

Mental Health in Women During Adulthood: Reproductive-related mental health issues in women

During adulthood, women’s mental health continues to be affected by hormones as a strong factor in overall well-being.

Premenstrual Syndrome

A common, recurrent impact for many women is Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS). Over the week before and sometimes also during menstruation, reproductive hormones may negatively affect mood, self-esteem, and energy levels.

PMS is often accompanied by headaches, moodiness, and physical bloat. These conditions may be experienced more dramatically by women who already struggle with depression, anxiety, and eating disorders.


Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder

In cases where symptoms are extreme, a woman might be given a diagnosis of Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD), a more severe form of PMS. When a woman has severe mood swings, irritability, and significant depression every month, she may meet the criteria for such a diagnosis.

However, the diagnosis of PMDD is generally reserved for women who are affected to such a degree that it is interfering with important life functions, for example, if it is affecting work and relationships. PMDD is more common among women who also have depression and anxiety.


Postpartum Depression

Women can also be affected by hormone fluctuations connected with giving birth. Postpartum depression, or the baby blues, can create mood swings, depression, anxiety, sleep problems, and overwhelm. Postpartum depression is more severe for women who already struggle with anxiety or depression.


Menopause

As a woman shifts out of her reproductive years, hormones again become a factor in mood and state of being. Many women experience depression and anxiety, partly in response to changes in phase of life. Again, women who have depression and anxiety already tend to experience hormonal impacts more intensely than other women.

Other mental health disorders in women

Due to biological and social impacts, women experience mental health disorders in gendered ways.

Substance Use Disorders

Substance use disorders have critical impacts on the body, mind, and spirit, negatively affecting relationships, work, and finances.

In terms of numbers, men make up the majority of people addicted to drugs and alcohol, though women’s use of drugs and alcohol is on the rise. Women are more likely to be prescribed addictive prescription drugs such as opiates and anti-anxiety drugs.

Women who do use substances are more likely than men to progress quickly through the stages of addiction, becoming dependent on substances. Women appear to experience greater pain levels during withdrawals and have a higher rate of relapse than men.

The stressors that cause women to seek out drugs and alcohol tend to be different than for men. Social obligations and family roles, such as parenting and caregiving of elders feature more prominently in sources of stress.

Substance use disorders frequently start during teenage years, manifesting as addiction during adulthood.


Borderline Personality Disorder

Borderline personality disorder is a difficult mental health condition affecting many people. BPD symptoms include emotional instability, impulsive behavior, intense attachment problems (fear of abandonment) leading to dramatic interpersonal relationships, and severe problems with self-worth. BPD is associated with intense anger, depression, anxiety, self-harm, suicidal gestures, substance abuse, and risky sexual behaviors.

BPD has a history of being prescribed much more often to women than to men. It is now believed to have been over-diagnosed in the past because of cultural bias against women. Currently, it is believed to affect men and women equally.


Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar disorder is a painful condition that involves severe mood swings, between mania and depression. There are different types of Bipolar Disorder, and one of them (Bipolar II) is believed to affect women more than men. Men and women are equally likely to have Bipolar I.

In general, women who have bipolar disorder are likely to also have other health problems and to be more affected by hormone-induced mood problems such as depression after giving birth.

Dementia: Mental Health in Older Adulthood

In older adulthood, mental health struggles for women center on dementia, especially Alzheimer’s, which affects more women than men.

Symptoms of Alzheimer’s include forgetting important names and faces (such as loved ones) and struggles with executive functioning.

How can a woman struggling with mental health look to the future?

At Villa Kali Ma, we believe that at any stage of life, a woman has many internal resources working in her favor. Assets like intelligence, resilience, humor, and kindness get us through and make meaning out of difficulty.

We have our hearts and our creativity, and we are adaptable creatures. Life asks us to use the many gifts we are given, to face challenges that shift and change over time, as we do.

Looking into the future, a woman can expect both that her resilience will be on her side, and that there will be times of needing more help than before.

We are not meant to stay the same. We change, and so does our mental health.

It’s important to know that at no stage is it necessary to go it alone unless we want that. Whatever aspect of our womanly life we are facing, there are women by the millions who are going through the same, and many elders ahead of us with wisdom to spare. In our common experiences, there is strength, laughter, comfort, and joy in great abundance.

Villa Kali Ma can help women ages 30-60 with mental health

At Villa Kali Ma, we help women discover their native gifts for mental health, from deep within themselves. With a signature combination of clinical Western modalities and Eastern healing approaches, we guide each woman who comes through our doors to find her unique path through her unique life.

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