What I want to tell you today might be a little shocking for you. One of the number one things that prevent people from recovering from a postpartum depression, anxiety, or psychosis is the label postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, or postpartum psychosis. I can't count how many people fearfully report on postpartum forums that they think they might have “it.”
Have you ever stopped to think about what “it” is? What is postpartum depression? We talk about it as if it were the flu.
Well postpartum depression is not like the flu. It isn't anything concrete at all. It cannot be measured. It is a label that we have assigned to people who have an uncomfortable experience and become fearful of and focused on that experience. That is all.
But what about trauma and hormones and nutrition and genetics, you might ask? Here’s the thing. Everyone has wonky hormones after giving birth, but not everyone has postpartum anxiety or depression. There are mothers who live off of fast food who don’t have a postpartum mood disorder. There are people who have unbelievable trauma during childbirth or from before who don’t have a postpartum mood disorder.
My friends, I truly believe that it comes down to a misunderstanding of who we really are and how the human experience of thought and feeling are designed. That is why male postpartum depression or anxiety and postpartum depression or anxiety in adoptive parents are 100% a thing.
But you know what? That is incredibly good news because it means that you don’t have to frantically run around trying to find a treatment for an invisible disease (postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, or postpartum psychosis). You don't have a disease that needs a cure. You, like me, just formed an innocent misunderstanding at some point during life about who you are and how thoughts and feelings work. So instead of finding a "fix," you just need to start looking toward the truth of the love and peace and resilience of your true nature and the beauty of the human design. We'll talk more about this in next week's posts.
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