We Complied. They Won't.

We Complied. They Won't.

Last week, a new group of mums arrived into The Leadership Method.

I noticed a theme that runs throughout many of our group sessions.

Control.

The need for it. The terror of losing it. The exhaustion of maintaining it.

And I sat there thinking,  I know this feeling so well.

Not because I'm a control freak. I'm really not. Most of us aren't.

But because at some point, a very long time ago, control started to feel like safety.

The generation that raised us

Many of us grew up in homes where emotions weren't really welcome.

Don't cry. Don't be so sensitive. Be good. Work hard.

There wasn't much language for feelings. No one modelled how to sit with discomfort. No one said  it's okay to show vulnerability.

So we learned to override ourselves. To toe the line. To hold it together.

Control and compliance felt safe. And for a while, they were. It was adaptive. It kept us okay in homes and schools and systems that didn't have space for big feelings.

We became high-functioning. Capable. Competent.

We swallowed our emotions and got on with it.

Fast forward to now

Our children are being raised differently in a very different world.

They have emotional language. They're encouraged to express what they feel. Mental health is talked about. Neurodivergence is named rather than punished.

They are not being trained to override themselves the way we were.

And it is wonderful.

But it is completely flooring us.

Because when they fall apart,  when they rage, refuse, dysregulate, shut down,  something happens in our bodies that has nothing to do with logic.

Our stress response fires.

Heart pounding. Breath shortening. Cortisol rising. Urgency flooding in.

Our nervous system doesn't register my child is struggling.

It registers threat.

And when the brain senses threat, it reaches for the thing that has always made it feel safe.

Control.

So we tighten the reins. Clamp down on the behaviour. Chase the school attendance. Police the screens, the food, the friendships, the attitude.

Not because it works. But because doing something quiets the alarm for a moment.

Perceived control soothes our stress response. 

What it's really about

Underneath the control isn't a desire for power.

It's fear. Shame. Love. Responsibility. Identity.

It's a generation of women who learned to cope by holding everything together and who feel profoundly exposed when they can't.

Their chaos doesn't just stress us out.

It touches the part of us that was never allowed to be chaotic.

The problem isn't that they're rebelling.

It's that we complied.

We survived by performing. By fitting in. By keeping the lid on.

They are not wired to do that. And we don't want them to be.

We don't want to raise children who abandon themselves to keep the peace. Who smile when they're really drowning. Who override their own needs to make everyone else happy.

That's what happened to us.

We can't teach emotional regulation if we never learned it ourselves.

We can't ask them to tolerate feelings we still avoid.

We have to go first.

Not perfectly. Not with it all figured out.

Just, first.

That's what The Leadership Method is. 

It's the place where you learn what was never taught to you.

So you can give your children something we never had.