On Diagnosing Motherhood
A note before you read: Postnatal depression and postnatal anxiety are real, significant, and deserving of proper support. This piece isn't here to question that — or to minimise the experience of anyone who has received, or is seeking, a diagnosis.
What it does explore is the space in between: the women who arrive in therapy convinced something is clinically wrong with them, and who discover that what they're actually navigating is the weight of new motherhood itself - the hormonal crash, the identity shift, the gap between expectation and reality. And that that is equally deserving of support, practical, emotional and therapeutic.
As a psychotherapist in the maternal mental health space, I can’t help but notice the sheer volume of new mothers who come to me, having self-diagnosed with post-natal depression and post-natal anxiety. They enter therapy almost “confessing” their struggles with motherhood, after coming to the only logical conclusion - that they must have a mental health issue. The reality is that the majority of these women do not have a diagnosable mental health condition; what they are trying to diagnose, is in fact, Motherhood.
Motherhood can bring the highest of highs, but let’s be real, it can for some, at times, also bring the lowest of lows.
The perfect image of motherhood that we are often sold in the media, particularly on social media, can be so far from the reality of it, that women start to question their own reality:
“Why can’t I cope when everyone else can?” and “What’s wrong with me?” are questions I hear often, as mothers try to make sense of the disconnect between their expectations, and their lived experience of motherhood, leading to feelings of guilt and shame.
At the same time let’s not forget the lack of sleep new mums experience. Sleep deprivation is used as a torture method for a reason – it reduces one’s ability to cope, find resilience and overcome life’s everyday stressors.
It also makes it much harder to regulate our emotions, which when paired with the hormonal changes that take place after pregnancy, can have a significant impact on our mental health.
"it is absolutely normal to not feel yourself, feel overwhelmed and question your mental health after having a baby"
We often hear the term ‘baby blues’, which is said to be a common, temporary period of sadness following birth, lasting around 2 weeks. In my experience this is reductionistic.
At this time, the wonderful mixture of hormones that have been releasing feel good chemicals into our body’s throughout pregnancy, such as estrogen and progesterone, drop almost immediately, and this can be experienced as a withdrawal. In fact, these hormones can take up to 6 months to resolve, with some research suggesting this period could even be up to two years.
As if this isn’t enough already, we haven’t even factored in the changes to a woman’s identity when becoming a mother for the first time, how this affects her sense of self, her body, her friendships and her relationship with her partner.
And what about her experience during pregnancy and childbirth?
Many of the women I see had traumatic journeys to become mothers and/or traumatic births, and their nervous systems are stuck in a highly sensitised state.
They report feeling on edge, hypervigilant to their baby’s cries, difficultly sleeping despite exhaustion. These are all signs that your body is in fight or flight mode, interoception in a constant state of assessing for danger and ready for mobilisation.
Therapy honours this automatic and unconscious process, designed by mother nature to keep us and our baby safe, by gently letting the brain know it’s ok now to switch this off.
What I want new mothers to know, especially anyone with whom this resonates, is that it is absolutely normal to not feel yourself, feel overwhelmed and question your mental health after having a baby. This doesn’t necessarily mean anything is wrong, it’s just that the journey of motherhood can feel too much at times.
You’re ok, you just need your experience normalised, your feelings validated and to feel heard and seen.
About the author: Hannah is an integrative counsellor and psychotherapist at Mothering Minds.