I am 56 years old, married, and until six years ago I was the HR manager at a multinational company. Now I work as an aromatherapist and naturopath. I have two adult children. I meditate and do yoga every day and I eat healthy. I believe in medicine, but I also think much of the power of nature. I believe that even physical symptoms have psychological roots.

I spent almost 30 years in the HR profession. I’ve always wanted to do this, and I climbed the career ladder with humility. I started as an intern while at university, then I became a junior, a senior, a team lead, a group head, and six years ago I left one of the Big Four companies as a manager. I enjoyed my job from the beginning, and I always saw the development opportunities. Even after many years I still saw areas where I could improve, so I pushed forward, driven by curiosity and a sense of vocation.

Around the age of 45 I noticed symptoms akin to those of burnout, which didn’t really surprise me since I always gave a hundred percent both at work and in my private life. My job was also my hobby. I wasn’t driven by the chance of promotion, especially since there was nowhere else to climb on the ladder as an employee, but by problem solving and the team that I was leading.

My motivation at work dropped almost overnight. As if the fire inside me had died, I didn’t want to change the world anymore. I felt a constant exhaustion that I couldn’t recover from, I needed more sleep than usual, and I only did the bare minimum at work. My husband was away a lot at the time because he often traveled for work, mostly overseas, and at times he spent weeks there. Because of the time difference and our engagements, we weren’t active participants in each other’s everyday lives, but I still knew that I could count on him even on the other side of the world. Even so, I didn’t like to burden him with my problems because he had his own challenges, which must have been even harder in a foreign country. Our kids were at university, they’d become independent and didn’t need me anymore. I spent a lot of time alone, which clearly wasn’t motivating for me, but I did it to identify and solve the emotional problems I was facing as soon as possible.

I’ve always been open to alternative medical solutions. The knowledge and application of nature’s treasures has filled me with awe since my adolescence. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I was in trouble. I wanted to discover the root of my problems, which I suspected were psychological. I’d never hit rock bottom, so I had no readily available coping strategies. But I did have several well-known tried-and-true tactics which had worked well in other difficult periods in my life. Since I didn’t have to take care of others, I had to focus on myself and direct my attention inward instead of running away or distracting myself. I consciously increased the number of yoga classes, started a serious meditation practice, and returned to psychotherapy.

It took me five years to admit to myself that the HR profession wasn’t making me happy anymore. I’d reached everything an employee could. The next step would have been to start my own business, but I didn’t want to do that because I felt that I would be chaining myself to my work forever while I was increasingly craving to withdraw from it. In the end, I left behind my HR career and started something completely new: aromatherapy and naturopathy.

I was actually experimenting on myself. I was interested in how I could manage the symptoms stemming from the changes in my body and mind through natural means. I was 52 when menopause began. The previously experienced symptoms became stronger, they affected me more intensely even though I thought I’d been through the worst in the preceding five years. In hindsight, with what I know now, I think that even at 45 most of my symptoms were caused by menopause, not burnout, although this topic didn’t really concern me at the time.

My own experiences and all the research gave me amazing opportunities. As a certified naturopath there are several methods at my disposal to ease my symptoms, and I can also build these into my treatment routines for others. The treatment of menopause through natural means is our common cause. When I started to communicate about this specialization, more and more women came to see me with symptoms such as mine. I didn’t need any advertisement; women gave my contact information to each other. Some even ended up on a waitlist because so many of them wanted to see me. My patients’ personal stories confirmed that there are no two menopausal periods that are the same. It affects everyone differently, so we all need different solutions.

I don’t believe in pharmacological treatment, but I accept it if somebody comes to the conclusion that that’s what they need. I believe that everything can be solved through natural means, and this is what I strive to do. I would like to help women who think the same way. I consider it important to talk more about these so-called alternative treatment options too besides the medical solutions in an easy-to-understand way. Everyone concerned should be able to decide at their own discretion and based on their beliefs and possibilities which treatment they would like to receive.