# High Cortisol Symptoms in Women Over 40 | The Story Behind the Cortisol Coach

An episode of [Cortisol Coach](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1890924538), 10 Apr 2026, 18 min.

Audio: https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/wuy4pngjb8zd387s/Cortisol_Coach_Episode_18c8qy-s6ch33-Optimized.mp3

It all began when she was 37 years old, exhausted, gaining weight, losing her hair, and had seen more doctors than she could count. She had been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, anxiety, panic attacks, and put on medication for every single one. But not one doctor, specialist, or OBGYN ever said the four words that would have changed everything: Let’s test your hormones. This is Episode 1 of the Cortisol Coach Podcast, and this is where it all begins. In this episode, host Christine Marie shares the raw, unfiltered story behind @cortisol_coach. Eight years of searching for answers. A growing list of misdiagnoses. Surgery. A hysterectomy. Rock bottom. And the quiet morning moment that changed everything. If you are dealing with high cortisol symptoms in women over 40, this episode is going to connect the dots in a way nothing else has. The exhaustion that does not go away. The weight gain that will not budge. The anxiety, brain fog, emotional overwhelm, and feeling like your body is working against you. This is not random. And it is not in your head. For so many women, high cortisol and hormone imbalance are the missing piece. Chronic stress keeps your body stuck in fight or flight, impacting your energy, metabolism, mood, sleep, and even your sense of identity. If you are exhausted no matter how much you sleep, gaining weight you cannot explain, and wondering why nothing is working, this episode was made for you. You are not crazy. Your symptoms are real. And healing is possible. Christine also gives you a first look at what is coming on this show, including conversations with leading doctors, specialists, and coaches in hormone health, nervous system healing, mental health, spiritual health, and whole body restoration. Every guest and every episode is designed to help you understand what is actually happening in your body so you can finally move forward with clarity. Because physical healing leads to clarity. Clarity leads to identity. Identity leads to calling. And calling leads to Kingdom impact. Your healing starts here. WHAT YOU WILL HEAR IN THIS EPISODE The symptoms that ruled Christine’s life for 8 years, including brain fog, exhaustion, weight gain, migraines, fibromyalgia, zero libido, and rage What it felt like to be made to feel dismissed and misunderstood while searching for answers How chronic stress, high cortisol, and fight or flight disrupted her hormones, energy, and daily life The moment she hit rock bottom and what she cried out to God The turning point that changed everything What is coming on this show and why it exists CONNECT WITH CHRISTINE Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cortisol_coach IF THIS EPISODE RESONATED WITH YOU This show grows because of women like you. If this episode helped you feel seen, gave you language for what you have been experiencing, or reminded you that healing is possible, here is how you can help: Leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It takes less than a minute and helps more women find answers. Follow the Cortisol Coach Podcast so you never miss an episode. Share this episode with one woman in your life who is exhausted, overwhelmed, and still searching for answers. You might be the reason everything changes for her. For the products that changed her life: http://cortisolcoach.itschristinemarie.com

## Chapters

- 0:17 Welcome to the Cortisol Coach Podcast
- 1:01 The Woman I Used to Be
- 4:28 The Medical Journey
- 7:07 Understanding Hormonal Imbalances
- 10:54 The Turning Point
- 13:17 The Process of Healing
- 14:43 Bridging the Gap
- 15:34 A New Path Forward

## Transcript

[0:03] Welcome to the Cortisol Coach Podcast. If you're exhausted, gaining weight,
[0:08] losing your hair, your anxiety is through the roof, or the depression and emotional
[0:12] overwhelm have completely consumed your life, or maybe you're not showing up
[0:16] as the wife and mom you want to be.
[0:18] You've spent years never feeling
[0:20] good enough, taking care of everyone else while you quietly fell apart.
[0:24] And your body has been keeping score of every single bit of it.
[0:28] The chronic stress, hormonal shifts, perimenopause, menopause,
[0:32] whatever season you're in, cortisol is making all of it worse.
[0:35] And until you heal the root, nothing changes. But this show here is about to change that.
[0:41] I'm your host, Christine Marie, Holy Spirit-led Biblical Mindset Coach,
[0:45] and I have helped thousands of women heal their hormones and cortisol levels.
[0:49] Every week, I bring you leading experts, doctors, and coaches who will help
[0:54] you heal your body, mind, emotions, and your spirit so that you can step into
[0:58] every kingdom purpose that God has planned for your life.
[1:01] So go grab your cup of coffee and let's jump in.
[1:05] Out of everything you could be doing right now, the laundry,
[1:08] emails, scrolling social media, you chose this, and I don't think that's an accident.
[1:14] I'm Christy Marie, and this is the first episode of the Cortisol Coach podcast.
[1:19] But before I tell you what this show is about, I need to tell you something first.
[1:23] I need to tell you about the woman that I used to be, because she is the reason
[1:27] this podcast exists, and she might be the reason you pressed play today. She was 35 years old.
[1:34] She had two adoptive daughters, her two boys, an incredible husband,
[1:38] and a faith that she was desperately trying to hold on to.
[1:42] But honestly, she was completely falling apart, and not in any way that was
[1:47] obvious to the outside world, because
[1:49] from the outside, She looked like somebody who had it all together.
[1:53] She loved going to church. She had fostered 77 children. Yes, I said 77.
[1:59] She had served on the governor's task force for foster care reform.
[2:03] She had been the state foster parent president, mentor.
[2:06] She ran a nonprofit. She was doing all of the things.
[2:10] But inside, inside her body, her body was keeping score of every single thing
[2:15] that she had never dealt with.
[2:17] The first thing I noticed was the brain fog.
[2:20] It was so bad that I genuinely started to wonder if something was wrong with my mind or my brain.
[2:28] And my kids used to call me Dory, you know, like that fish who can't remember anything.
[2:32] And then we'd all laugh. But honestly, it made me feel pretty sad because I
[2:36] knew, I knew that I couldn't remember things and I knew something was wrong.
[2:42] Every day I overslept my alarm. My kids were late to school and then I would
[2:46] drive them there gripping the steering wheel, panicked, stressed out,
[2:51] feeling so shameful, feeling honestly like I was the worst mom alive.
[2:55] Then I'd drop them off and then I'd go home and then I'd go back to bed because
[3:00] yes, I was that exhausted.
[3:01] I could never sleep enough to overcome how tired I was.
[3:05] No amount of rest ever made it better.
[3:07] And then there was the weight. I was gaining weight. I barely had an appetite.
[3:12] I wasn't hungry during the day.
[3:14] But the moment that the stress hit, I was starving. And I was having all of
[3:19] the cravings. And I loved sugar cookies and cupcakes.
[3:23] And I definitely made two to three stops at
[3:26] my local coffee shop for a very high
[3:29] sugar mocha make it iced every day
[3:33] whatever would make me feel something other than what
[3:36] i was feeling and that coffee shop drive-thru was definitely
[3:39] a dopamine hit i was diagnosed with fibromyalgia because i had joint pain so
[3:44] bad that it was affecting everything in my life i had migraines yes migraines
[3:49] every single day i was put on migraine medication and then something that is
[3:54] even a little bit uncomfortable to talk about is I had zero libido.
[3:57] Like I had no interest at all in having sex with my husband.
[4:02] And yes, we are going to go there because I didn't know why.
[4:05] And the shame of that, that carried a whole other kind of weight.
[4:09] And the anger. I remember feeling like I was going to explode out of my own skin.
[4:14] I felt overstimulated, overwhelmed, angry, frustrated.
[4:18] Like everything was so loud all the time. And yet, I was constantly reaching
[4:23] for caffeine, coffee, or anything that would help me just survive the next two hours.
[4:29] And that was my life for years. And I had no idea that all of this was connected.
[4:35] Because between the ages of 35 and 43, I saw more doctors than I can count.
[4:41] I saw my regular doctors, specialists, OBGYNs, naturopaths.
[4:46] I even saw Chinese medicine doctors. I was given a list of diagnoses,
[4:50] and they just seemed to keep growing.
[4:52] Fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, adrenal fatigue, anxiety disorder, panic attacks.
[4:57] And if I would have kept going to doctors, they probably would have kept growing.
[5:02] I was put on medication for anxiety, medication for panic attacks,
[5:06] medication for migraines, medication for fibromyalgia, and every single symptom had a prescription.
[5:11] But nobody, not one single person in eight years ever said to me,
[5:17] let's test your hormones.
[5:18] Let's look at what's happening with your cortisol levels. Not one.
[5:23] I started growing fibroids in my mid-30s.
[5:26] And some of them were so large, I could literally feel them through my stomach.
[5:31] My body was telling me something was majorly wrong hormonally,
[5:35] and yet no one addressed this.
[5:37] At 37, I went to the ER with severe left abdominal pain.
[5:41] They did an ultrasound and found something growing in my left ovary.
[5:44] They sent me home, scheduled a follow-up for 30 days later.
[5:47] 30 days later, I went in, and whatever was growing had doubled in size.
[5:52] I remember seeing the doctor's face, and she said, we need to schedule you for surgery right away.
[5:57] I didn't imagine right away meant within a week, but it did,
[6:01] and they removed one ovary, and when she called me to tell me what they had
[6:05] found was actually precancerous cells.
[6:08] I remember sitting with that, precancerous cells, in my body.
[6:12] She told me I didn't have anything to worry about because they were all encapsulated,
[6:16] but they had been growing. while I had been going doctor to doctor to doctor,
[6:21] telling them something was wrong.
[6:23] And then in 2021, I finally consented to having the hysterectomy that they had
[6:28] been telling me for years and years and years that I needed.
[6:31] What they didn't know until they did the hysterectomy was that I also had severe endometriosis.
[6:36] There were more fibroids than they had previously counted.
[6:40] And yet, I thought once I had this hysterectomy, all of my health struggles would go away.
[6:46] I thought this was the beginning of a new future, but it wasn't.
[6:50] And I want to pause here for just a second to tell you something that I believe
[6:54] with every single thing inside of me.
[6:55] The medical system is not evil.
[6:58] The doctors I saw were not bad people. But there's a massive gap in what women
[7:03] are being told about their bodies, and especially women in their 30s and 40s.
[7:08] Especially women who are high-functioning and quietly disintegrating on the
[7:14] inside, women just like I was.
[7:17] And that gap could have cost me everything. I remember one appointment I will never forget.
[7:23] Where I sat across from the doctor. I was telling her all of my symptoms.
[7:27] I kind of wondered if I was a hypochondriac myself, but I'd been seeing her
[7:31] for years. I trusted her.
[7:33] She was the one who had put me on anxiety medication originally.
[7:35] She had put me on the panic attack medication, the migraine medication.
[7:39] And here I come in again with more symptoms, more questions,
[7:42] more, please help me because something is wrong.
[7:45] And she looked at me and she said, I think I should send you to a psychiatrist.
[7:50] I cannot tell you how terrible I felt that day walking out of her office because
[7:56] I felt like what she was actually telling me was, I think the problem might actually be you.
[8:01] Because honestly, I did feel like I had too many symptoms. I felt so overwhelmed.
[8:07] I drove home that day and cried. And honestly, I felt like I was never going to find an answer.
[8:13] Because after years and years of fighting to be heard, the one person that I
[8:18] trusted the most wanted to send me to a psychiatrist.
[8:21] I felt overwhelmed. I felt like I was the only person out there experiencing anything like this.
[8:29] But now when I look back, I can very easily put the pieces together. I was the oldest child.
[8:35] I carried a lot of trauma from my childhood that I chalked up as just normal. I never addressed it.
[8:42] And when you carry unhealed wounds and you don't heal them, you think that by
[8:47] doing more, by being more, by serving more, and maybe that's where the 77 foster
[8:52] kids, maybe that's where that began.
[8:54] Yes, it was an act of love, but it was also me as a woman trying to find significance
[9:00] within myself in a world that was never going to heal wounds that I needed to heal unhealed.
[9:08] On my own. Being on the governor's task force, being the state foster parent
[9:11] president, all of it was amazing and incredible and meaningful.
[9:15] And all of it, honestly, fueled a body that was already running on chronic stress,
[9:20] cortisol, and a nervous system that had never once been allowed to calm down,
[9:26] find peace, and get off high alert.
[9:29] I, looking back now, know I was living in fight or flight.
[9:34] Not occasionally, but honestly, constantly. And I was managing it.
[9:38] Well, honestly, let's be real.
[9:40] I was trying to manage it with wine at night. And I know where that started.
[9:44] That started by looking on social media. And at the time, a social drink between
[9:49] friends or coming home and having a glass of wine was so normal.
[9:54] So I began believing that was normal too.
[9:57] And gosh, it felt good to kind of numb my emotions.
[10:01] But then we added on the sugar cookies and the cupcakes and then we added on
[10:05] the several mochas every day and even more busyness so that I could ignore the
[10:12] feelings that were trying to come up.
[10:14] I remember one day sitting in all of it.
[10:17] The exhaustion, the weight I couldn't lose, the body I didn't recognize,
[10:20] the marriage I desperately wanted to be fully engaged in, and kids who deserved
[10:26] so much more of me than I had to give.
[10:29] And I had a thought, and I'm going to be really brutally honest with you here
[10:33] because that's what this podcast is for.
[10:35] If this was the best God had for me, I had to ask myself if I even wanted it
[10:41] because this didn't feel good at all.
[10:45] And friends, that was my rock bottom.
[10:48] I didn't have the strength to pretend any more that I was okay.
[10:54] And that was the turning point for me. When I started looking for answers on
[11:00] my own, I began researching hormones, cortisol.
[11:04] The science of chronic stress, the science of chronic stress,
[11:07] and what it does to the female body.
[11:10] And then I started pursuing certifications. I became a certified biblical mindset coach.
[11:16] I earned one of my certifications under a practicing neurosurgeon and one under
[11:21] a master neuroscience coach.
[11:23] In all of this studying of the brain, the science of fight or flight,
[11:28] cortisol, dopamine, the gut microbiome, all of the pieces finally started coming together.
[11:34] I started going back to these doctors, but this time I went back differently.
[11:38] I walked in asking for specific tests that I wanted run.
[11:42] I did the research, and I had a hypothesis, and I started gathering the data
[11:48] that no one else offered to give me. And then I began searching for the right
[11:54] supplements for my body.
[11:55] Supplements that would specifically support hormones and my cortisol levels.
[12:00] And I remember day two of taking them.
[12:03] I sat down to read my Bible, and this was something I had been trying to do for years.
[12:08] Just five minutes. I was told, just start with five minutes.
[12:12] Because I carried so much guilt and shame that as a woman who loved the Lord,
[12:16] Why could I not sit down and read the Bible for just five minutes before the day started?
[12:22] Because every single time I started to read it, my mind would spiral.
[12:25] I would start thinking of all the to-do lists, my anxiety, my ADHD would take over.
[12:31] I would hear every noise. And then I felt, again, like such a failure.
[12:35] I would just close the Bible and I would go start my day.
[12:39] But that morning was actually different for the first time because I read the Bible for five minutes.
[12:45] And when I realized it had been five minutes and I had read the Bible,
[12:50] I think that was the first time that I felt hope.
[12:53] I truly felt like, wow, maybe, maybe the best God had for me was ahead.
[13:00] And over the next few months, the anxiety did not feel so crushing.
[13:04] The noises in my mind, the emotional overwhelm, it got a little bit quieter.
[13:09] And every day got a little bit easier. And so I thought, okay,
[13:13] this might be what healing feels like.
[13:17] But healing is absolutely not what you might see on social media.
[13:21] It's not a highlight reel.
[13:22] I know everybody likes to share the best moments, but for me, it was tiny glimpses.
[13:28] It was tiny moments of when I could sit and have a eye-to-eye,
[13:32] fully connected conversation with my kids or my husband.
[13:36] It was those glimpses that gave me hope, and that turned into cutting out foods
[13:42] that were inflaming my body.
[13:43] I did a food sensitivity test and discovered that cane sugar was actually what
[13:48] was driving my joint pain for years.
[13:50] I didn't actually have fibromyalgia. I had a food sensitivity to cane sugar
[13:55] that looked like the symptoms of fibromyalgia.
[13:58] I stopped drinking wine every night to numb what I was not dealing with emotionally.
[14:04] And then over time, I started walking.
[14:06] And discovered that 20 minutes outside can do things for me mentally that no
[14:11] medication can fix. And then I started sharing.
[14:15] I went on Instagram, and I started talking about what I had been through.
[14:20] I started talking about cortisol.
[14:22] Before it was a trendy topic, I started talking about what chronic stress does
[14:26] to women's bodies, about the symptoms that ruled my life for eight years,
[14:31] and the shift that happened. And then messages started coming in.
[14:35] And actually, I've received thousands upon thousands upon thousands of messages
[14:40] from women who have said, that's me.
[14:43] You're describing me. And here all along...
[14:46] I thought I was the only one. If you're believing you're the only one too, you're not.
[14:52] And this podcast exists because of that gap. The gap between what women are
[14:56] experiencing in their bodies, what they're being told, what they're not being
[15:00] told, and by the people who are supposed to be helping them.
[15:03] And there are some amazing doctors out there, some amazing naturopaths and experts
[15:09] and hormone specialists.
[15:10] But let's be honest, sometimes it's really hard to find them.
[15:14] But I believe that God led me through eight years of searching and suffering
[15:19] and through surgery and a hysterectomy and my rock bottom for this moment.
[15:25] To stand here and tell you that your symptoms are real, you are not crazy,
[15:30] and you do not have to walk the road that I walked to find answers.
[15:34] Every episode of this podcast, I'm going to bring you experts,
[15:38] the absolute best doctors, coaches, researchers, and women who have walked this
[15:43] road to help you understand every dimension of your health after 40.
[15:49] And it doesn't just end with cortisol. We are talking about your physical health,
[15:54] your mental health, your spiritual health, and how healing is possible.
[15:58] Because here's what I know to be true. Physical healing leads to clarity.
[16:02] Clarity leads to identity.
[16:04] Your identity leads to your calling, and your calling friend leads to massive kingdom impact.
[16:11] The enemy? Oh, the enemy. He knows that too.
[16:14] And I genuinely believe that the chronic stress, the hormonal chaos,
[16:19] and that exhaustion, that is keeping so many women from their purpose.
[16:23] And this isn't just a medical problem. It is spiritual warfare.
[16:27] And we are fighting back.
[16:29] So if you listen to this whole episode, I want you to know something.
[16:33] I see you. Maybe you only recognized one symptom that I described.
[16:37] Maybe you recognized all of them. Or maybe you're in the middle of your own
[16:41] eight years, still looking for the answer, still being told the problem is your
[16:45] anxiety or your mindset or your age.
[16:47] But I want you to know that the answer exists.
[16:50] Healing is possible, and you
[16:52] are not designed to white-knuckle your way through the rest of your life.
[16:56] I want you to come back next week because I have an amazing guest,
[16:59] and we're going to go even deeper.
[17:02] And if something in today's episode resonated with you, I want you to share
[17:06] this. Send it to another woman in your life who is exhausted,
[17:09] can't explain why, and is feeling overwhelmed.
[17:13] Because this might just be the one thing that changes everything.
[17:20] Friend, I am so thankful that you are here today. I pray this episode blessed you big time.
[17:24] And if it did, would you do me a favor and leave me a review on Apple Podcasts?
[17:28] It helps more women just like you find this show, and it may be the very reason
[17:32] that somebody else gets the answers that they need. I would also love to connect
[17:36] with you personally on Instagram. You can find me by searching cortisol underscore coach.
[17:40] That's where I show up every single day and send me a DM. I would love to connect
[17:44] with you. I'll see you next time.

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