Are you a caregiver? The shoulder for everyone else? The fixer in your family? The workplace workhorse? Is there no time for self-care?  Women are hardwired to nurture, and it can be very difficult to know where to draw the line if we think that other people need us. 

And that can be a real issue, because self care is a non-negotiable for women in midlife and it can make a world of difference to the way we experience the menopause. But many of us aren’t very good at it, although we’re brilliant at looking after other people!

That’s why I’ve called in the big guns for this episode, with Jess Baker, psychologist and co-author of The Super Helper Syndrome, which is a survival guide for compassionate people. She’s a chartered psychologist and an award-winning coach, and her new book is a fabulously helpful guide to supporting people who want to adopt a healthy helper mindset so that they can meet their own needs, as well as supporting those around them. 

In this episode we explore where the urge to help comes from and how it can often lead back to childhood and the influences we encounter as we grow up. Jess talks us through the classic signs of someone who is a compulsive helper and explains the implications this can have on health and wellbeing. We discuss how to set boundaries in our professional and our personal lives so that we don’t overload ourselves and can take the time to look after ourselves too. 

She’s full of very practical advice on how to get the balance right in our lives, so that we become healthy helpers. As she so beautifully puts it: “When helping comes from a place of compassion and not from compulsion, that’s when caring gives us courage.”

This episode is for all the women out there who are so busy helping everyone else that they often don’t give a thought to themselves, their health and their wellbeing.

Find out more about Jess and her work in the Show Notes on my website: www.well-well-well.co.uk/podcast.

If you’ve enjoyed the podcast, please give it 5-star rating and a short review on Apple podcasts, or whichever platform you listen on, I’d be so grateful. And do tell your friends and family about it too. It really does make a huge difference to the visibility of the podcast, so that more women can find the show. Because every woman deserves to have a happy menopause.

🎉 Win a free 1-hour menopause nutrition consultation with Jackie!
Pre-order The Happy Menopause Guide to Energy and enter the prize draw.
👉 Click here to choose your retailer and upload your proof of purchase or visit my Instagram @wellwellwelluk for the link.

Check out the full Show Notes for this episode on my website www.well-well-well.co.uk/podcast, where you'll find all the relevant links and references for each guest.

For ad-free listening, bonus episodes, a monthly live nutrition Q&A and a whole host of other exclusive content, join The Happy Menopause Club at TheHappyMenopause.com for just £6 per month.

Learn how to build your own menopause diet to manage your symptoms with my latest book The Happy Menopause: Smart Nutrition to Help You Flourish. It's available in all the usual places.