Jacqui Parkin on Finding Your Purpose

I didn’t set out to find a purpose

If anything, it came from a point where things had stopped working in a way I couldn’t ignore. I remember being off work, sitting at home, and not really knowing what to do with the time.I’d been so used to being “on” all the time and then suddenly none of that was there. Or at least, it was, but I couldn’t engage with it in the same way. I’d open my laptop and just sit there. I’d scroll emails then close them again. Even small things like making food or going for a walk felt impossible. What stayed with me most from that time wasn’t just the exhaustion, it was how little sense it made.

I thought I was doing things properly

Working hard, being reliable, taking responsibility; those were things I’d always been good at. Even as a child, I was aware of what was going on around me, trying to make things easier for other people. At the time, it didn’t feel like a pattern, it was just who I was but it carried through into work. I was the one people could depend on. The one who figured things out. And I liked that becauseI felt useful. But there was another side to it. I didn’t rest easily, even when there was time to rest. There was always something I could or should be doing. And if I wasn’t, it didn’t sit well. It looked like being highly capable from the outside but it didn’t feel like a choice.

When I burned out, that didn’t make things clearer straight away

If anything, burnout was more confusing, because I’d done everything I thought I was supposed to do. I’d managed things better, tried boundaries but none of that seemed to touch whatever was driving it. That’s the part that took time to understand. I couldn’t rationalise or “manage” my way out of it. I tried to apply the same approach I’d used everywhere else – be more organised, more intentional, but it kept slipping. I’d set a boundary and then override it. The problem was that I couldn’t really explain why. That was probably the first time I properly questioned it. Not the situation but my response to it.

What started to become clearer

It was slow. More like noticing things in pieces.The way I automatically took on responsibility, even when it wasn’t asked for. The way I felt uncomfortable not being needed. The way my sense of worth seemed tied to what I was doing for other people. And when I looked back, it wasn’t new. It had just worked well enough for long enough that I hadn’t questioned it. Until it stopped working.

The connection to the work I do now

When I started working again, I kept seeing something familiar. Women who were very capable, often successful, reliable and the person everyone goes to. And they’d say things like: “I know I need to say no.”,“I know I need to rest.” I saw this through a new lens, as something that makes sense once you look underneath it.

What I realised

The problem wasn’t that women didn’t know what to do, it was that their behaviour was driven by underlying patterns around responsibility, around being needed, around feeling like we had to hold things together to be enough. Those patterns don’t respond to surface-level change. You can know all the right things. You can try all the strategies. But if that underlying driver is still there, you tend to end up back in the same place.

The origins of purpose

That’s where my purpose came from. Not from deciding to help a certain group of people but from recognising something I’d lived through, and then seeing it clearly in other people. Realising how long it had taken me to understand it. Years of trying to fix the wrong thing. Recognising I could reduce the time it took for others.
It feels quite simple when I say it now I help women understand why they can’t stop. Why they keep overgiving, why rest feels difficult and why they feel responsible for everything and everyone. Most women know that something is off, and they have often tried so many things to address what they see as the problem. My work tackles this at the root – in a way that actually explains it. Because once that makes sense, things start to shift in a way that holds. So, I didn’t find purpose in a big ‘aha’ moment. It was more that I stopped overlooking something that mattered and then built my work around that.

I’m curious

What do you notice about yourself in the moments when you’re about to take on something you don’t really have capacity for?

By Jacqui Parkin 

About the author

Jacqui Parkin is a therapeutic coach and psychotherapist who works with high-functioning women who feel overwhelmed, over-responsible, and stuck in patterns they can’t seem to shift. Her work focuses on helping clients understand the deeper drivers behind their behaviour so they can create change that actually lasts.
www.linkedin.com/in/jacqui-parkin-therapeuticcoach
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