This is Why You Are Experiencing Postpartum Anxiety and Intrusive Thoughts

Three simple insights for new moms

Imagine this: you’re confused and scared. You’re living in your head, endlessly looping on the same scary thoughts. You didn’t think that it would be like this – when you were envisioning yourself as a mom, you saw yourself as being mentally and emotionally present with your child.

And you are sometimes. But the other times – a lot of the time – you feel trapped in your mind, at the mercy of whatever scary direction your mind wants to take you. Everything around you looks scary. Your mind is associating everything you see with that scary thing your mind just won’t shut up about.

its hard to talk to other people about it, because… what if they think you’re crazy? what if they don’t get it? what if they think you actually want or desire the things your mind keeps showing you vivid mental images of? You’re working so hard to reassure yourself that these repetitive thoughts are just anxiety, but that little voice in your mind nags you with “but what if it’s not”….

You feel plagued by fear, isolated, and ask yourself again and again why this is all happening. Everything you’re doing to try to get rid of these fear-thoughts seems to backfire. you’ve never felt so concerned about your mental health before. You’re so worried that you’ll never feel normal again or have your life back. Everyone is telling you (or you’re reading online) that you have postpartum depression, or some other perinatal mood or anxiety disorder. You’re starting to feel hopeless and you don’t know what to do.

You probably don’t have to imagine this scenario, because if you’re reading this, you likely know what I’m talking about. When you’re struggling with intense anxiety and fearful thoughts that you don’t understand, it’s easy to feel like your life is being consumed by fear. As a result, you feel completely disconnected from yourself – almost like you can’t recognize yourself in the mirror. You keep asking yourself why you’re experiencing this. I want to share something with you: Intrusive thoughts tend to feel like they come out of nowhere, but they actually do not.

Here are three things that I want you to know about why you’re experiencing postpartum intrusive thoughts and anxiety

High levels of anxiety and intrusive thoughts tend to pop up around the time of major transitions or life events. Intrusive thoughts are associated with high levels of stress. Guess what you experience a lot of when you have a baby? stress. This is especially true when you are making the transition from maiden to mother. When you have your first child, your world gets turned upside down – all of your relationships need to be renegotiated, especially the one you have with yourself. All of this rapid change can surface feelings of anxiety and grief. Your psyche is growing a whole new part – the “mother” part – and this process can feel like its rocking your world. Because it is!

Intrusive thoughts are signals. Contrary to what your mind is saying, you actually don’t need to figure out all of the imaginative content that your mind is coming up with.That surface level content is irrelevant. The thoughts themselves serve as signals, alerting you to your incredibly full “emotional bucket” that you’ve probably been suppressing. It makes sense – everything has been unfolding so fast since you had your baby, and it’s hard to process everything at this pace. So do you really need to figure out those intrusive thoughts about if you’re secretly a psychopath? Nope! Fear thoughts = the emotion of fear in the body. Additionally, intrusive thoughts serve as a powerful reminder that you are not your mind, and that it’s time to disidentify with it. “You” and your mind are not the same thing. Later on in their healing journeys when reflecting on their initial struggle with intrusive thoughts and anxiety, clients will often state that it showed them where and how they weren’t living in a way that was in alignment with their values.

Intrusive thoughts are alerting you to limiting & false beliefs. A struggle with intrusive and unwanted thoughts shows you inadvertently what you’ve been believing about what’s acceptable to experience. For example, the distress experienced by the uncertainty surrounding an unwanted thought reveals something about your beliefs about uncertainty (i.e. the false belief that uncertainty is dangerous). Or here’s another example – the false belief that the presence of anxiety means that there’s something wrong, or that something bad is actually happening. Countless times, I have heard clients share that they would have never addressed their mind’s limiting beliefs if it hadn’t been for their experience with intrusive thoughts and anxiety pushing them to do so. Becoming a mother, especially the postpartum period, is all about releasing – it’s natural that beliefs that no longer serve you, or that will not support your new life will find a way to come up to be addressed, healed, and revised.

Long story short – intrusive thoughts don’t mean what your mind is telling you they mean. And they are happening because they are an invitation to heal your relationship with emotion, your mind, and to reorganize your life around your true values.

If you’re struggling with postpartum intrusive thoughts and anxiety, please know that there are professionals that understand what you’re going through and who can support you. If you’re a resident of South Carolina and interested in becoming a client, you can contact me by requesting a consultation below.

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