Pain to Purpose

Last week I wrote about the pattern we see with so many of the mums we work with. Women who have built entire lives around what other loved ones needed them to be. From parents, to partners, to children. Often not knowing their own needs. Often not identifying any actual purpose of their own.

Laura and I have been lucky enough, in the last few years, to really identify our purpose. To help mums who have been in our exact situation. To literally turn our pain into purpose. What we didn't realise in doing so was the profound effect this had on our own stress responses. And we see this reflected every single day in the mums we work with.

Purpose was not something I had ever really considered much before. My purpose in life was to be well educated and be a good mum. I thought that would fulfil me. I am entirely grateful for my beautiful family. But for many women, including myself,  that wasn't enough.

So what actually happens, biologically, when we find it?

When you pursue something genuinely meaningful your brain releases dopamine. Dopamine drives motivation, goal-directed behaviour, the physical feeling of things mattering. It fires when you make progress toward something that is authentically yours. It reinforces the behaviour. It tells your brain: more of this.

Purpose has also been directly linked to a reduction in cortisol, the primary stress hormone. Research suggests a greater sense of purpose consistently predicted lower stress reactivity. Another study found people with a strong sense of purpose recover to normal cortisol levels faster after a stressor, rather than staying stuck. When you are living in a stressful household that resilience can be huge.

Purpose has also been linked to longevity. Purposeful individuals consistently outlive their counterparts, even after controlling for every other marker of psychological wellbeing. Studies have found women with a strong sense of purpose reduced their all-cause mortality risk by 34%. Not diet. Not supplements. Meaning.

It is entirely possible to find your purpose in raising your children.

But the danger can arise for some mums when those two things cross  when their child becomes their purpose. Because dopamine fires in response to your progress toward your goal. A dysregulated child is not a goal you can progress toward. It is a moving target, outside your control. Organising your internal chemistry around their emotional state doesn't produce the reward signal your brain is looking for. It produces the opposite. Chronic uncertainty. Chronic depletion. And it keeps the dopamine flat.

It keeps the child locked too. A child who has become someone's entire purpose can feel debilitated. They become aware that they are the centre of their mother's world and that is not a safe place to be. The weight of being someone's everything keeps them unable to create their own identity. The developmental task of childhood, and especially adolescence, is individuation, building a self that is distinctly theirs. But when a parent's purpose is fused with the child, that separation feels dangerous to both of them. The child senses, often without words, that becoming themselves would somehow abandon or devastate their mother. So they don't.  They stay stuck. For sensitive and neurodivergent children they feel this acutely. They read the emotions. They know. They feel the weight of being someone's everything.

These are the fascinating conversations we end up having inside the Leadership Method coaching editions. A group of mums who support each other, discover and find out volumes about themselves they had never seen before. It is so much more than a parenting course!

Come and join us we are now enrolling for June. Click below for more details.