The Progesterone/Dopamine Vortex
You aren't the emotional Uterus of your environment.
*If this article makes you curious, I wrote a previous article about Serotonin and Estrogen a few posts back.
The human body is a fascinating vessel that contains chemicals and substances which affect our every move, thought and desire. We are affected by them as much as they are within us, and the terrain we share is really interesting to pull apart to zoom in.
The Eldest Daughter/Mother/People pleaser archetype rolled into a neat perfectionist package has an especially interesting effect on hormones and chemicals within the body. One causes the other and the other responds, and eventually they become one, in which event it can be hard to differentiate the two.
For me, and my clients, most of which are eldest daughter turned people pleaser/empath turned mother- the archetypes truly take on a mind of their own especially when they cause hormonal and chemical imbalances.
This isn’t simply “eat better, exercise and sleep” for the cure or to help improve symptoms. At this level, it is identity level imbalance.
Knowing this, we can move forward precisely into a protocol that keeps archetypal energies in mind.
The habits and patterns embedded into the psyche aren’t fixed with calming down, meditating, cortisol flushes and finding “you” time. It is much deeper, which we will dive into in this article.
Being someone who makes others’ lives their identity isn’t about kindness. It’s about early responsibility merging with failure to attune emotionally to the self. This replaces safety long term, and it actually doesn’t recognize safety ever, causing severe imbalance in the psyche, body and spirit.
If you feel hyper aware and attuned to others moods, responsibility for harmonizing the room/family/environment/workspace, the need to self-suppress to avoid conflict, equate worth with usefulness, live with chronic anticipatory anxiety, and can’t rest without feeling guilty… neurologically you have created a deeply ingrained management strategy for everyone else around you, except yourself, and this is not a personality flaw that you can fix because it isn’t a flaw. It is a protection mechanism that will only release once you feel safe and trust yourself.
This is why Women who relate to this as much as they try can’t make self-improvement their identity. The roots are still exactly as they were before.
Neuro-chemically, progesterone and dopamine work synergistically to make one of the cleanest explanations for why the eldest/empath/mother feels so entrenched and exhausted at a level that cant be touched by surface level insights or recommendations.
Dopamine learns how to get safety. In childhood, dopamine wires itself to whatever reliably produced relief or approval.
