Can Parenthood Improve Mental Health?

Before I became a mother, I was absolutely terrified to take the plunge. Despite always knowing I wanted a family, I had spent years (decades) working on my mental health, building my practice, and negotiating married life. Risking everything for the unknown (what if I regretted having kids? They don't come with a return policy!) just didn't feel safe. 

I worried the loss of sleep would destroy me and my sanity. I worried it would impact my marriage and friendships. I thought I would never be maternal enough to be a good mother, since I wasn't the type to ever coo at babies, hated baby dolls growing up, and quite frankly, much preferred puppies to babies anyways... 

Two children later I'm here to tell you that having my children was, aside from years of therapy, the best thing I've ever done for my mental health. 

How could this be? Especially when all we read is research citing the negative effects of children on marital satisfaction, physical well-being and of course, sleep? 

The thing is, having children, especially young rambunctious ones like mine, IS exhausting. It absolutely will push you to the ends of your tolerance, mentally, physically, spiritually and relationally. It will test your relationship and it will sink you down to the depths of an exhaustion so bleak you'll wonder if the bags under your eyes will ever recover (don't ask me if mine have yet...) 

AND 

It will show you a strength and resilience you never knew existed. Because now I know I can do this incredibly hard thing. I know I can handle the loss of my selfhood, even though I've cried many times for the sharp-minded, put-together version of me that's nowhere to be seen when I look in the mirror. I have survived the climb I had always been so terrified of. I may be bruised and battered, softer than I used to be, but I'm still standing. 

And it is BECAUSE of these difficulties that my mental health is the best its ever been. You read that right! Having children and surviving the challenge was a massive exposure, a leap into the no-turning-back unknown, and I have survived it. And so can you, if having a family is important to you. 

I'm not here to say having children is easy- it is most certainly the hardest thing (after overcoming OCD) that I have ever endeavored. I also parent from a place of relative privilege, and do not worry about supporting my family's basic needs.

But it is the intensity of this challenge that has shown me that I have a strength and capacity my anxiety disorder never allowed me to acknowledge. 

Because good recovery from anxiety disorders is not about the eradication of symptoms or of difficulty, rather, it is about the expansion of our tolerance. Recovery happens when we step into self-trust and embrace the belief that we have what it takes to face life's challenge, that we can choose to cope with pain, and that this choice is preferable to a life spent avoiding it (as if we could, anyways). 

I will never tell my clients to have children, that is a profoundly personal decision. And I will never guarantee that having children will improve your mental health, because in the day-to-day shuffle of parenting, I'm sure things will look bleak. But I will promise that taking on life's biggest challenges is a spiritual path, and like all steep climbs, affords magnificent views.

Both those we look out at, and also the great expanses within us.