🧬🧠 The Mentally Ill Parent 🧠🧬

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Motherhood did not step into my life gently. 🌀

It broke the door open. ✦

It arrived while my nervous system was already living in high-alert mode — already trained to scan, to brace, to prepare for loss before joy had time to settle. It asked me to protect another human being with a body that had learned survival long before it learned safety. 🧠

I loved my children immediately. ✦

And my nervous system did not believe the world was suddenly safe just because love was present. 🌀

Here is what was happening inside me: 🧬

When a person grows up inside prolonged stress, trauma, neglect, instability, or fear, the brain does not wire for rest first — it wires for protection. The amygdala (the brain’s alarm center) becomes overactive. The stress system stays turned on. Cortisol and adrenaline circulate more often than they should. The body learns to expect threat. 🧠

This is not personality. 🌀

This is physiology. 🧬

Studies show that chronic early stress reshapes the nervous system — increasing hypervigilance, emotional reactivity, fatigue, dissociation, and difficulty regulating emotion well into adulthood. The brain literally builds itself around danger first, and peace second. 🧠

So when I flinch at noise, 🌀

when my mind blanks, 🧠

when my chest tightens, 🌀

when I dissociate while tying shoes or pouring juice —

this is not weakness. 🧬

It is a nervous system that learned to survive early and is still learning how to rest. 🧠

Research also shows that a large percentage of parents live with diagnosable anxiety, depression, PTSD, bipolar disorder, or trauma-related conditions — and that many remain undiagnosed, untreated, or unsupported. Parents with trauma histories are significantly more likely to experience emotional exhaustion, sensory overwhelm, and guilt — not because they love less, but because their nervous systems are working harder to stay regulated. 🧬

So yes — some days I parent through fog. 🌀

Some days I regulate myself out loud. 🧠

Some days my patience is built one breath at a time. 🌀

Some days my body is protecting me from ghosts my children will never see. 🧬

And still, I show up. 🧠

Presence does not look polished when your nervous system is healing. 🌀

Sometimes it looks like gripping the counter until the shaking stops. 🧠

Sometimes it looks like stepping away instead of reacting. 🌀

Sometimes it looks like repair. 🧬

I carry questions no parenting book prepared me for: 🧠

How do you raise children inside a nervous system wired for danger? 🌀

How do you teach calm while your body is still learning it? 🧠

How do you offer safety while building it from the inside out? 🧬

Neuroscience says this: 🧠

The brain remains plastic throughout life. New neural pathways can form. The alarm can quiet. The body can learn rest. The cycle can change. 🧬

That means what I am doing matters — even on my hardest days. 🧠

I am not parenting perfectly. 🌀

I am parenting neurobiologically bravely. 🧬

I am building safety into my children’s nervous systems while rebuilding my own. 🧠

And that — shaking, breathing, learning, repairing — is the bravest inheritance I could possibly give them. 🧬

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