So what is really wrong with us anyway? We have our diagnoses of postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety or postpartum psychosis. We have our symptoms or panic, rage, despair, or intrusive thoughts. What is it all about? What’s the root cause if it all?
After dealing with my own uncomfortable experience for quite a while, there is something that I have become quite sure of.
There is almost always only one thing really wrong with a person, and it is this:
A belief that there is something wrong with them.
Sound crazy? Even maddening? Hang with me for another minute.
I know that hormones get unbalanced and do uncomfortable things in the body. I know that brains do weird things after being traumatized. I know that bad habits get picked up because of bad teaching we learn throughout life. And then our little thinking minds are there telling stories about all if it.
But no matter what our bodies and thoughts do, We (the real You and the real Me) are there watching all if it and intelligently living life.
But when we believe there is something wrong with us because of something we learned earlier in our lives (which by the way is the ONLY way we believe such a silly thing), then we start buying into the little thinking mind’s stories as reality, and the stories get deeper, darker, and more complicated the more they are bought into and lived out.
This is why Syd Banks said, “If the only thing people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the worId.”
So then how in the world do you stop believing that something is wrong with you? How do you stop fearing your experience? Believe me, our little thinking minds can have a field day with this one. They have created the illusory problem in the first place but they will work endlessly believing they they can find a way out if it - even though they will NEVER be able to do so.
The ONLY way for this belief to begin dissolving is to start noticing the amazing and miraculous way that Life lives in your body and how even in our darkest moments, intelligence is doing the best that it can see to do.
Notice how you can feel like complete shit and your child cries and your feet run to meet the need.
Notice how you haven’t slept (maybe in days) and your feet still walk to the kitchen and your hands move to prepare breakfast (no matter how basic it is).
Notice how you can have an intrusive thought about dropping your baby and simultaneously your arms hold her tightly to your body.
Notice how your thoughts might tell you that you can’t take this for another day and yet your magnificent lungs fill with breath again and again and again and your hands move to write a cry for help text to a friend or to call a suicide hotline.
Notice.
Because those things are real.
Nothing that you think is.
And as the wonderful Byron Katie says, “Arguing with reality is insane.”
Photo by Karla Hernandez on Unsplash