Today’s podcast guest, Dr. Sonya Jensen, is a first-generation immigrant who grew up navigating two very different cultures and the rules imposed on her about how she should look, who she should be friends with, and how she should perform in school. Around age 13, she developed anorexia as a way of gaining control of her own life.
Ultimately, her experiences with anorexia, processing childhood trauma, and working with patients led her to put the pieces together between emotions, trauma, and physical health.
In this episode, we discuss the deep work she does with women, where she focuses on the well-researched links between emotions and physical health.
Table of Contents
In this podcast, Dr. Jensen and I discuss:
- A 66,000-woman study over 16 years found every single woman with a fibroid had childhood abuse, whether physical, sexual, or emotional (this is when Dr. Jensen started piecing together trauma and physical health)
- When progesterone is low, GABA is low – so you may feel anxious – when estrogen is low, dopamine and serotonin are low, so you’re not accessing joy as quickly
- Constant production of the stress hormone cortisol creates more pronounced estrogen dominance; one woman manifests tender breasts or cysts, another manifests fibroids, but all have low progesterone
- Fibroids can become worse by pseudo-estrogen from environmental toxins (pesticides, phthalates, plastics)…if your body can’t detoxify them, they recirculate and create estrogen dominance
- Dr. Jensen was previously against bioidentical hormones, but she then realized women go into midlife very depleted, and physiological dosing helps them feel like themselves again
- Progesterone dosing is nuanced: One of Dr. Jensen’s patients went into psychosis on progesterone because her OB-GYN doubled the dose – not everyone can be on the same dose or same kind of hormone
- Holocaust studies show infants born to survivors have adrenal insufficiency; their ability to adapt to stress isn’t as optimal due to generational trauma
- If mom was stressed during pregnancy, her preteen will have more anxiety, if mom had really low cortisol, the child’s nervous system regulation isn’t as efficient
- Women who use hormones along with lifestyle changes and emotional work thrive on minimal doses, and some can even take breaks; women who only do hormones hit plateaus and cycle back
Listen or download on iTunes
Listen outside iTunes
Transcript
Ari: Hey, this is Ari. Welcome back to the Energy Blueprint Podcast. With me in today’s episode is Dr. Sonya Jensen, who is a naturopathic physician, international speaker, author, and embodied healer who guides women to reclaim their power through hormonal wisdom, emotional depth, and ancestral healing. From her roots in cell biology and naturopathic medicine to her practice alongside her husband, she integrates trauma-informed modalities, herbs, nutrition, hormone therapy, longevity medicine, and nervous system support to address the unseen patterns behind hormonal imbalances in women.
As founder of the HER Method and the HER Community, Sonya helps women decode the stories their bodies are telling from stress, emotion, and generational trauma to transform relationships, fertility, perimenopause, and life’s transitions. With all of that said, enjoy this conversation with Dr. Sonya Jensen. Sonya, welcome to the show.
Dr. Sonya Jensen: Thank you for having me. So great connecting with you at last.
Dr. Jensen’s Story: Cultural Pressure & Recovering from Trauma
Ari: Likewise. I want to start by just asking you to talk a bit about your personal story and how you got into doing what you do now.
Sonya: Yes. How much time do you have? It’s one of those stories where I didn’t actually know this was where I was going to end up growing up in an Indo-Canadian home. First-generation immigrant trying to navigate two different cultures and understand who I am in that landscape created some difficulty for me growing up. Going through a traumatic experience around that time, as well, really shifted how I saw my world, and so became a little bit more left-brain and went into science, did cell biology, thought my root was going to be in that medical field.
At first, I actually thought I was going to do something completely different, like go into law and protect people, and really wanted to be that rescuer in that way, but then translated that into becoming a doctor instead. As I started navigating my own story, got into naturopathic medical school, started uncovering the why behind my body and how it was presenting itself and symptoms in terms of hormones and energy, and all of it. Then, working with women in my third year, realizing that there’s a mirror in front of me of what my life is going to end up like in my 40s or 50s.
As I started to uncover my own work through that journey, I started to realize this connection between our story, how we feel, and how it manifests in the body. Then it really has been over the last 17 years of actually working with families and women and still doing my own work, that really putting these pieces together and understanding how important it is to understand your emotional body so that we can clear all the stories that we’ve had from the past so we can understand why we’re feeling uncomfortable right now so that we can actually heal.
I know it’s a long-winded answer to your question. It’s so nuanced, and there’s so many layers and angles that got me to this place. Even by accident, I actually called the wrong number when I got into naturopathic school. I was trying to call somebody else. I feel like the universe just lifted me up and put me on this path because it’s the path that’s helped me heal.
Ari: Hopefully, that’s not how you found your husband, too. You just called the wrong number, and then whoever picked up the phone, you were like, “Do you want to get married?”
[laughter]
Sonya: That’s actually where we met, which is funny because I was married before and ended up getting a divorce through that whole process. Nick and I met in naturopathic school, so kind of. [laughs]
Ari: Oh, cool. I actually don’t find it to be long-winded at all. I would love to learn more about some of those details. You mentioned that you came from two cultures. I’d be interested in that element and then also the element, to the extent that you’re willing to talk about it, the trauma aspect of what you went through and how that affected you.
Sonya: Absolutely. I share a lot of that, actually, in my first book. Being Indian descent, there are certain rules that women live by, and men live by. Even though I was born in Canada, raised in Canada, my parents came here in the ’70s and were trying their best to really hold on to the culture that they had from back home. It was their first time around being a parent, too, so for them also navigating two different cultures.
The rules that were imposed on me, I found really difficult in terms of how I’m supposed to look, who I’m supposed to be friends with, what I should be doing in school. The one gift I would say in that realm that my parents really gave me is, they’re like, “Education is everything because that’s something that no one can take away from you.” They were already clear that in our culture, the males did get more than the females did. They just got more rights, they got more freedom, they got all of that.
For them, it was like, “Okay, if we really pour into her in terms of schooling, she can stand on her own two feet at the end of the day.” With that came a lot of pressure. Came a lot of pressure to perform. Came a lot of pressure to behave a certain way and do the right thing for them, knowing how much they sacrificed for us to be here, for us to get education. A lot of the decisions I was making along the way then were to please them unconsciously, not even knowing that I was actually doing that.
When I was quite young, I would say around 13, it became really difficult. You’re a teen, your hormones are changing, you’re looking at the world in a different way. I wanted that sense of freedom. It wasn’t happening. I actually ended up being anorexic because I think that was my way of fighting back, maybe, or getting some sense of control of my own life to make my own decisions, and a way of, I think, punishing my parents when I really think about it from hindsight but then also realizing that it’s not going to work and that that one change in mindset actually shifted my trajectory from being really sick.
It was over the years that when I had another traumatic event, a close person to me, I lost a cousin who was quite young, he was only 20, something just popped open in my brain. I had this dream. I thought it was just a dream. I had a vision of being molested when I was probably around seven or eight years old. At first, I brushed it off. I was like, “Oh, I think that was just a weird dream,” but it was very vivid. Then all these memories started popping back in. The sight, the sounds, the conversation, how I actually felt in that moment. Everything came flooding back.
Then all of a sudden, something just unraveled in me when I started to realize the before and after that event of who I was before and who I became after to protect myself unconsciously, of course, and the decisions I made after that, even the person I chose to marry, who I was friends with. All the decisions I made in school in that time of my life were based off of that experience and that whole experience of the story that I’m carrying from a young age.
While I’ve been doing this work on me and understanding me and seeing how that actually played a role in my physical health, in terms of ovarian cysts and PCOS and just a whole bunch of different things, I started to see that in my patients and started to see that relationship.
Finding Healing: From Naturopathic School to Southeast Asia
Ari: What was the transition? I assume that there was a degree of meta-awareness, which you’re just speaking to there, that at some point in your adult life, I don’t know, maybe it was when you were going to naturopathic school, you decided to shift your focus to the story of how our mind and our emotions and our past history and trauma and things like that impact our health. What was the transition that led you to focus on that area?
Sonya: It was in my third year. It was in naturopathic school. The beauty of a system like that is you do look at all the systems. You’re looking at the emotional body, the mental body, Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic, all of it. I was constantly questioning in myself those reactions that I was having, but it really was these women that I was sitting with and were talking about how now they’re 40 and wanting to get a divorce, or now they’re in their 50s, and they don’t know who they are anymore.
I was starting to notice, I’m like, “Wait, the stories that they’re sharing with me, I’m feeling that already. I’m only 25.” It really, for me, was deciding to get a divorce, basically being disowned by my family, living in Southeast Asia for two years, and really uncovering all the conditioning and the beliefs that I was carrying for a very, very long time. I would say that was that pivotal moment that got me to investigate more, to learn more, to meditate more. I went into yoga teacher training.
Just being away for two years in Southeast Asia, and I was actually just talking to a friend today because we’re headed to Bali in a couple of weeks. I’m like, “I can’t wait to be in that environment again, where spirituality is just everywhere. It’s an everyday life, whereas here, I have to find the moments, the time. Even though it lives in me, it’s like I get distracted from it so easily. I think living out there for those two years really got rid of the noise for me. Then, when we came back in 2009, so that’s when Nick and I were together, and we opened our clinic, that’s when I started to put pieces together slowly over the years.
I can’t say it was that one patient or that one thing, but I would say over the years of becoming a mom, of understanding emotions more, of wanting to work on my emotional intelligence more, and understanding more about myself, I started to see the stories in the other after that.
The Mind-Body Connection: How Unexpressed Emotions Wreck Hormones
Ari: Fascinating. Much of your work at this point focuses on this connection between the classic cliché mind-body thing, like what’s going on in the mind influences the body. I assume you’re on board with the idea that they’re not as separate as our words and concepts imply. I’m curious how you conceptualize that link on a physiologic level. How do you conceptualize what’s going on, the communication between the mind and the body?
Sonya: My lens has been through hormones for a very long time, and when I started to first just look at the patterns that women are facing throughout the month, and even myself. In that luteal phase, when a woman I can see is more estrogen dominant, has less progesterone, maybe is dealing with cysts and fibroids, but also is feeling anxious, also is feeling immense amount of rage that she can’t express. Then I started to investigate, “Okay, well, there’s obviously a connection here. When progesterone is low, GABA is low, so we’re feeling more anxious. When estrogen is low, dopamine and serotonin are low, so we’re not accessing joy as quickly as we could.”
“Our reactivity is more pronounced or more amplified when we’re not getting that hormonal support.” Then I started to learn stuff about just anger in general will increase pro-inflammatory cytokines in our body, and start to understand how these emotions that we’re feeling on a daily basis, especially when unexpressed, are actually getting carried in our organs.
The Shocking Link Between Fibroids and Childhood Abuse
The trend I started to notice with women, and there’s actually a study to show this, where they followed 66,000 women for about 16 years, that every single woman that had a fibroid had some form of childhood abuse, whether it was physical, sexual, or emotional.
That’s when I really started to piece those puzzles together. In my practice, just noticing I could do the physical work. I could get her on hormones. I could do the lifestyle, get her on some herbs, get her eating better, but there was always something lingering. There’s still some dread that she can’t release, or she’s still feeling anxious, or these other things are going on. That’s when I started to see the physical impact that these emotions have.
What Causes Fibroids? Estrogen Dominance & Cortisol Steal Explained
Ari: I want to come back to fibroids for a second. Can you talk a bit about what they are, what creates them, and what are the problems that result from them?
Sonya: A fibroid is basically like your endometrium lining. It coalesces together, and often it’s because of the change in your estrogen and progesterone. It’s fed by estrogen. Women become more estrogen dominant due to either your environment, if there’s toxins like pesticides, phthalates, plastics, all that thing, and your body doesn’t have the capacity to detoxify those toxins out. Then it recirculates in the system. We’re getting it from food, and we’re getting it from other places.
The other way we create that gap between estrogen and progesterone is that when we’re under stress, when we’re in that fight or flight or just that chronic level of stress, we release cortisol, which is our stress hormone. That stress hormone comes from progesterone. Now we’ve created a bigger gap, creating more estrogen dominance. One woman, it might manifest as tender breasts or cysts, or another woman, it might manifest as those fibroids, because there’s so much stagnation there.
There’s stagnation of blood flow, there’s stagnation in the liver. We’re just not detoxifying. Then it’s coalescing together, which will create heavier bleeds, bloating, cramping, and just a lower quality of life, because these women sometimes can’t even leave their homes when they’re bleeding.
How Hormonal Imbalances Destroy Relationships & Communication
Ari: What’s the broader impact of this connection between emotions, mental health, trauma, and hormones on a woman’s life more broadly, life, relationships?
Sonya: It’s everything. When we’re not feeling grounded in our body, when we’re feeling like it’s betraying us, and we’re feeling just everything is against us, we’re going to be overreactive in our relationships. It’s going to impact relationships. We once had this couple come to us. This was many, many years ago. You were asking before what got me onto this path. The one that got me onto this hormonal path really was when this couple came in, and I had no idea they were on the brink of divorce and that they were having a really rough time.
Then I was still doing more of that physical work. It was a couple of months after, when their friend came in, and was like, “You saved a marriage.” I had no idea that it was that bad. The woman was going through emotions, things were going on, but it got to the point where the communication was awful. They didn’t understand each other because both of them were going through changes. When we don’t feel like we have a hold on our life, or we’re feeling this loss of control, we tend to take it out on the person that’s most closest to us. Also, we just don’t even know why we’re reacting that way often.
When we start to understand that, we can start to pause. We can respond instead of react and understand each other just a little bit more, so that we can have more grace for ourselves and each other.
Bridging the Gap Between Psychotherapy and Physical Medicine
Ari: Beautifully said. When you go into this domain that you’re describing here, when you start talking about the links between mind and body and the links between emotions and past life events, adverse childhood events, these kinds of things, trauma more broadly, into health later in life, this now gets into a whole different territory, almost the realm of psychotherapy, the realm of clinical psychologists and psychiatrists. It used to be psychiatrists, then they shifted to more of a drug model, where every problem is perceived as a chemical imbalance to be medicated away, but more the realm of clinical psychologists and psychotherapy.
Within that domain, that in itself is this huge landscape of lots of different competing paradigms, or I should say different paradigms, different ways of understanding this mental health, emotional landscape, and also, very different methodologies, practical ways of trying to heal what’s going on in terms of mental health or the emotional state, past trauma. There’s so many different approaches in that landscape. What’s interesting also is that this realm of psychotherapy is generally pretty siloed off from physical health.
If you go to school to be a clinical psychologist, which actually I’ve done, I did all the three years of coursework in clinical psychology, there’s almost no coursework taught that teaches you about the link between what’s going on in all of that mental landscape and health outcomes. You’re in this territory that’s partly overlapping with, let’s say, traditional natural medicine, naturopathy, more holistic approach to physical health. You’re also in this realm of psychotherapy and mental health. Then these two dimensions are generally pretty siloed off from each other, and you’re in this bridge between them.
I’m curious how you would conceptualize all of that. Then I want to talk to you about the practical side of how you conceptualize this and how this translates into the methodology of how you deal with the mental-emotional issues.
Sonya: That’s such a great question because we do compartmentalize everything. To try to see it as a whole, I think, for many people can feel confusing. Actually, my sister’s a psychologist. I love just understanding the why human behavior. I was listening to Michael Pollan the other day. He was talking about his previous book on psychedelics and how he had a conversation with a psychiatrist around the different ADHD to OCD to borderline personality disorder to all the different things, and the one psychedelic he was talking about, how it’s supporting all of that and why it can support all of these different manifestations of mental health. The psychiatrist said, “Well, what makes you think they’re different manifestations of the same thing?” When I look at it in that way, if you just look at human behavior, how the brain works, how the body works, and how interconnected all of it is, it’s like, for me, it’s a no-brainer of how could we separate the two in order to work on the brain, on the mindset, the emotions? It’s like, how can we let go of the body when all of that impacts the body every single day and vice versa?
That’s where I come from, just being able to see that whole picture of what you think is going to change how your cells are responding, which is going to change how your hormones are communicating, which is going to change your behavior and your habits, which will then either reinforce that belief that you have, or it’s going to maybe challenge that belief, which is often scary for a lot of people. For me, I don’t think you can actually separate the two.
My hope is, over the years, that the teaching in both areas become more interconnected, where we start to understand that connection, especially around mental health, because it’s going up rather than us– Even though we understand more, we have more information, we have so many tools, it seems to me that it’s getting worse in the world today, or seemingly is what I’m noticing. My hope is that we can start bridging those gaps, because what I’ve found over the years, and my own journey with depression too, is that when I’m grounded in my body, when I work on my body first, it translates to my mind, like yoga.
It’s like you train the body to train the mind. When I do that, it’s like all of a sudden, the depressive thoughts have changed. All of a sudden, my mindset has shifted. All of a sudden, what I thought was reality isn’t reality anymore. I do think it’s so important to understand the connections, because the chemistry that’s going on in my brain is going to impact my thoughts and how I feel on that mental, emotional level. I don’t know if I actually answered your question or not.
Ari: No, you did. There’s one other part of it, which is, I think, all of the focus on the mental health and the emotional side of it is– we can find research saying, “Oh, there’s a link between XYZ emotional state and XYZ health problem, but it’s only meaningful to the extent that you have a practical methodology that actually alters the mental health emotional side of it, so that you can alter that outcome that you’re trying to affect.
Sonya: Absolutely.
Practical Healing: Nervous System Tools, EMDR, and Somatic Therapy
Ari: Within that, I’m curious what the practical methods, the paradigm that you take to understanding that, and what methodology you use with your patients to try to address the mind side of things.
Sonya: The first thing I do do is look at the body first and do tethat wasting to show– Especially when I’m working with hormones, if I start to show the woman that, “Okay, here, your progesterone’s low, and therefore, your GABA is probably going to be low, and therefore, the anxiety is going to be there,” just to help her create that connection of like, “Oh, okay, there’s something biologically going on in my body.” To help her understand that, “Okay, well, progesterone’s low because most women are stuck in that fight or flight or the overthink or the worrying or the ruminating.”
The first thing I do is give her tools for her nervous system. It’s like, “How do we, in this moment, right now, give you some tools so that you can become more responsive than reactive in your every single day?” It’s about the present moment first. It’s like, “How do we get you feeling better right now?” Then you have the energy to actually dive into the underlying stories and the mental-emotional work that we need to do. That’s where I’ll get help from others, too. Whether it’s somatic therapy.
I do teach a lot of yoga, breath work, and I’ll give meditations. I’ll do visualizations. I’ll do that work, but then I also understand that person might need EMDR or IFS. Just other systems that will support them alongside of the physical work and this other nervous system work that I’m doing to help, again, that whole person. Then we start to see patterns being disrupted. We start to see different choices being made, different habits that she’s creating in her everyday.
A lot of it ends up being, let’s say, habits around food, habits around the rituals that you have every day that feed your nervous system, understanding what depletes your nervous system first as well, and how do we say no to that. It’s multifaceted, but the first thing I do really is to show her the connection and then, “Okay, what’s one tangible thing we can do in our everyday that doesn’t feel like it’s another to-do list, but something I can bring in to help me feel calm, to help me feel a bit more joy in my day.”
Ari: You mentioned that in some cases, you might opt for one thing over another. You gave the example of saying, “Maybe this patient needs EMDR.” I’m curious, do you have a framework or a template for if the patient is more of this trait or more of that trait, you prioritize a given type of approach over another?
Sonya: EMDR, I found the patients where they just can’t access the capacity to even face the story or to understand it, I find that is really helpful for them. Somatic therapy, I found really helpful for those who are just so disconnected from their body where they can’t even make the link that the emotion that they’re feeling is being settled into their body. I have a good friend who’s in that realm too, so I will often call her and ask, “Okay, well, here’s patient XYZ, this is what’s going on, what do you think would be the best avenue?” Then I get them to go on their little journey to interview different practitioners of what feels right for them in that moment.
Ari: Got it. Let’s get back to the hormonal side of things. Talk to me about that landscape. What is going on hormonally for the patients that you’re working with, I’m assuming pre and post-menopausal women, and what does that hormonal landscape look like? How does it affect their lives?
Sonya: It’s anything from unexplained infertility to anxiety, to low libido, to no energy, to insomnia, to all the itchy ears, all the weird things that come up, to weight gain, that she might be doing the same things that she did five years ago, eating the same, exercising the same, but her body is just changing and not responding. Then those typical ones for pre-menopausal might be hot flashes, night sweats. She usually doesn’t come to me until she’s hit that point of, “Something’s really wrong, I don’t feel like myself.”
I find a lot of women will just push through a lot of times, especially the chronic fatigue that she’s feeling, or the insomnia, or brush it off to, “Oh, I’m just under stress. I’m a new mom, or it must be whatever, work-related.” It often isn’t until either someone she cares about points out that she doesn’t seem like herself anymore because she’s overreacting. I had one woman just last week who’s like, “My son said to me, ‘I don’t understand, I don’t know which mom I’m going to get every day.'”
That’s what brought her to me because she finally was like, “Okay, something needs to change,” or it’s someone that she’s got so much fatigue where she’s now taking stress leave from work and isn’t able to do what she needs to do, or it’s a woman that’s bleeding really heavily and not knowing why, or her cycles are irregular. It ranges in many different types of symptoms, but often the foundation is very much the same.
The first hour that I sit with her is just understanding where she is right now in her story, what her body is trying to tell us, and then taking her through some testing or just subjective work to see, “Okay, well, here’s the links between your story and how you’re feeling and your hormones. This is the hormone that we need to support, whether it’s down-regulating your cortisol or up-regulating your hormones like estrogen and testosterone.” Then we start supporting those with herbs or nutrition or lifestyle, or maybe even bioidentical hormones to get her feeling better to, again, do that other deeper work after.
Why Hormones Are the Effect, Not the Root Cause
Ari: That was going to be my next area that I wanted to focus on, which is what are you actually doing to address the hormonal difficulty? To what degree do bioidentical hormones come into play, other supplement herbal approaches, and then the mental health side of things, and the different approaches you’re using to address mental and emotional health?
Sonya: With the physical and the hormones, the first thing I get women to understand is that the hormones are not the cause, they’re the effect. We want to go up a level and understand, “Okay, what’s telling my hormones to communicate this way? Is it the nervous system?” If it’s the nervous system, I’m going to put her on some nervines to help support her. Those are herbs that will help just address that reactivity in her nerves. Is it due to, I was talking about the liver before, or gut difficulties?
If her gut’s not working well, then she’s not detoxifying those extra estrogens that we talked about before. Then we’re going to work on that. We look at all the systems to see, “Okay, what’s telling your hormones to behave this way, and how do we support those systems?” First, I always start with the foundation. “Okay, what are you eating?” Simple tools on that side of things, and then what are we doing for movement?
All the really basic things first, and then adding in, “Okay, do we need to do a detox? Do we need to support your liver? Do we need to change how your microbiome is behaving? Do I need to give you black cohosh to support your estrogen or vitex berry to support your progesterone, to help you ovulate better?” Then it’s really dependent on which hormones are needing extra help. Then bioidentical hormones, I think, can be lifesaving for some women and for some women not.
I’ve had women that thrive on progesterone, and then I’ve had a woman go into psychosis on progesterone because her OB-GYN doubled her dose of what I gave. I think it’s very nuanced when it comes to working with hormones, but I do think bioidentical hormones can play a huge role in just getting you feeling better, but you have to do the lifestyle work in conjunction with that to get the actual healing work done.
Generational Trauma: Are You Carrying Your Mother's Stress?
Ari: What’s another aspect of this story that you feel we haven’t talked enough about in this conversation we’ve had thus far?
Sonya: I would say the generational part.
Ari: The culture a person comes from, and that?
Sonya: Yes.
Ari: I think of your story and coming from Indian culture and all this stuff that was imposed on you from the time you were a child. Is that what you’re getting at?
Sonya: Yes, that and even just what your mother was carrying when she was pregnant with you, because that informs your initial years in terms of your hormones and how you’re going to grow, and just the reality that you’re being born into. There are several studies that show if mom is stressed, then the preteen is going to have more anxiety. If mom has really low cortisol, then the child’s ability to just regulate their nervous system isn’t as efficient as it would be of somebody else that had a different gestation period.
There’s even generational stuff where they’re looking at Holocaust studies and showing that infants born have adrenal insufficiency, so their ability to adapt to stress isn’t as optimal as it could be. I think just looking at that landscape around, “Okay, I might be carrying a story that’s actually not even mine to carry,” is really important.
That usually comes after doing a lot of the inner work and knowing, having that discernment of like, “Okay, what am I reacting to in this moment is actually mine, or is it something that’s been conditioned in me or imprinted inside of me that I am now reacting to, or seeing the world through a specific lens that’s not even mine, or having a narrator in my mind that’s actually not my voice.”
Helping, I think, women understand that has been really helpful for me in my practice, where they see, “Okay, I’m playing out a pattern that I learned from mom, or I saw behavior of grandma, or whatever it might be that I’ve now taken on as an identity.”
Ari: If somebody is connecting with what you’re describing there, what do you recommend as first steps to start to address that?
Sonya: This is where I think focusing on the present can be really, really helpful, and seeing that, “Okay, that story may have informed me, but not to be victimized by it, but to be like, ‘What’s the wisdom that I carry from that,’ and working on that present moment reaction that I’m having in my body, so asking those questions like, ‘Who has been my narrator until this point? What am I reacting to that doesn’t even feel like is my own?'”
When we start to ask these questions, we become more curious about the moments, and we become more curious about what we’re reacting to. Then that’s where I think the EMDR and these other support can be really helpful to just uncover those old patterns.
The Truth About Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT)
Ari: As far as the hormonal side of things, I’m curious what are your thoughts? I know you’ve spoken a bit about it so far, but I’m curious about bioidentical hormones or hormone replacement therapy, I should say, more broadly. Do you have any strong thoughts, pro, against, anything like that, as far as hormone replacement therapy for women going through menopause?
Sonya: I’m very neutral about it. When I first started studying it in 2012, we were studying under an OB-GYN, I was a little bit against. I had this mindset of like, “Well, we’re supposed to age. We’re supposed to lose our hormones. This is what nature’s meant to do.” Then I started to realize is we’re going into these seasons very depleted than we did before, and because of that depletion, we are suffering more.
If I can use physiological dosing, really low dosing, to help a woman just feel like herself again so she can make those better habits, those better choices, it’s been almost like a miracle. Some women come in, and they’re like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe I was feeling like that before. I didn’t even know what good could feel like. I didn’t know what a solid eight hours of sleep could feel like.” When you give that back to a woman, she’s just able to have that energy to heal other parts of her.
I have found over the years, some women will come in and just want to do the hormones and nothing else. I see over time, they hit plateaus. They’re in that cycle back again. The women that are doing both sides of the story, the hormones plus the lifestyle and plus uncovering the emotional stuff, they thrive with really low, minimal doses of those hormones, and sometimes even can take breaks from them just to understand, “Okay, how my body’s going to react.” They may go back on it, may not.
I think it’s very nuanced and very individual. I don’t think across the board, everyone thrives on hormones and high doses of hormones. I think you really have to look at the individual.
The Biggest Myths in Women's Health & The Danger of Social Media Trends
Ari: What would you say are the biggest myths in this area of women’s hormonal health, or areas, beliefs, ideas, approaches that are out there that are pet peeves of yours, things that really rub you the wrong way that you think is the wrong way to think about or approach this?
Sonya: That every woman can be on the same dose, the same kind of hormone. I’ve had women that have been on this journey with me for the last six, seven, eight years, and were doing really well, but then heard something on a podcast or social media, switched out her hormones by herself, and then came back and was like, “I’m so sorry. I did this thing, and I switched up my hormones, and I don’t feel good.” I really think discernment is really important for women when we’re hearing so much now around hormones.
I don’t think everyone can use them. I don’t think that everyone can use the same type. I also don’t think that you don’t need to test. I think testing is actually really important. Just like we can’t separate mental health from the physical health, we can’t separate hormonal health from the rest of the body, from her gut health, from her immune system, from her emotions. We have to do all that work for those hormones to actually do their job well. The pet peeve right now is a lot of people hearing, “Use this patch, this dose, every day. End of story,” and then trying that, and it’s not working, and it’s creating more frustration and confusion.
Ari Sonya, is there anything else that you think is important for listeners to hear that we haven’t got to yet in this discussion?
Sonya: I think the big thing really is understanding whatever you’re feeling is that you’re not alone in it. I think often when we’re going through a journey, especially when we don’t feel like ourselves, and we’re feeling reactive, or we’re feeling the body’s betraying us, it’s like most people are going through what you are, maybe, just manifesting in a different way, and that it’s okay to ask for help. It’s a journey, and to just really, I think, stay curious with the season of life that you’re in, so you can understand yourself more deeply. I feel like we’ve covered all the rest, but I would say that would be the last piece.
Final Thoughts & Where to Find Dr. Sonya Jensen
Ari: Great. Is there anything you want to let listeners know about where to find you, how to get in touch with you, your work more broadly, and the services and products that you offer?
Sonya: Yes, absolutely. I have a new book coming out called Heal Your Hormones, Reclaim Yourself. If you’re curious about the connection between mental health, emotional health, and the hormones, you can go to healyourhormonesbook.com. You can find me on Instagram at Dr. Sonya Jensen. My website is drSonyajensen.com.
Ari: Beautiful. Sonya, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really enjoyed it, and thank you for sharing your wisdom with my audience.
Sonya: Thank you for having me.
Show Notes
00:00 – Intro: Meet Dr. Sonya Jensen & The HER Method
01:57 – Dr. Jensen’s Story: Cultural Pressure & Recovering from Trauma
06:42 – Finding Healing: From Naturopathic School to Southeast Asia
10:07 – The Mind-Body Connection: How Unexpressed Emotions Wreck Hormones
12:22 – The Shocking Link Between Fibroids and Childhood Abuse
13:37 – What Causes Fibroids? Estrogen Dominance & Cortisol Steal Explained
15:57 – How Hormonal Imbalances Destroy Relationships & Communication
18:12 – Bridging the Gap Between Psychotherapy and Physical Medicine
21:37 – Practical Healing: Nervous System Tools, EMDR, and Somatic Therapy
25:47 – Why Hormones Are the Effect, Not the Root Cause
29:12 – Generational Trauma: Are You Carrying Your Mother’s Stress?
32:37 – The Truth About Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT)
35:57 – The Biggest Myths in Women’s Health & The Danger of Social Media Trends
38:17 – Final Thoughts & Where to Find Dr. Sonya Jensen
Links
Website: drsonyajensen.com
Instagram: @DrSonyaJensen
Book: Heal Your Hormones, Reclaim Yourself (healyourhormonesbook.com)
Recommended Podcasts
