Postpartum Depression & Postpartum Anxiety
Supporting you or your partner with Postpartum Depression or
Postpartum Anxiety in Calgary and online to anyone in Alberta.
Did you know that in Canada 23% of mothers who recently gave birth report feelings of postpartum depression or postpartum anxiety?
And 30% of these mothers already had these symptoms in pregnancy.
As well, 5% of those left untreated had high levels of Postpartum Depression or Postpartum Anxiety three years after giving birth.
My guess is that you have found this page because you may find that you fit into one of these groups. I am glad that you are here and hope that some of the questions you have about postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety and how to treat them will be answered below.
Postpartum Depression
Let me paint a picture of what this can look like. You feed the baby, do the laundry, make supper, pick up kids, meet up with friends, connect with your spouse.
This is what people see externally. You can do all the things, handle it all. Often this is what postpartum depression looks like.
Internally though, you are struggling. You are overwhelmed, exhausted, tired of being needed all the time.
Maybe you aren’t sleeping, crying, snapping at people, feeling intense rage, having scary thoughts about you or your baby, feeling like you are not a good enough parent.
Or perhaps you are not answering text messages, not leaving the house, avoiding social events and feeling sad and hopeless.
It could also be that you can barely remember appointments, cannot make decisions, and you feel like your brain is foggy.
You have not had a shower in days, you know you should work out but you can’t, you do not feel like yourself, and you just need a break, escape, run away and leave everyone.
Postpartum Anxiety
There can be many symptoms of postpartum depression that overlap with postpartum anxiety or you may be struggling with both.
So what are some things that you might want to look out for with postpartum anxiety?
You are constantly checking the baby monitor or worrying about baby’s health or your health.
Baby is starting to sleep well, but you are lying there awake.
You have intense rage and are often feeling tense.
Rest is something you want to prioritize, but you can’t seem to relax.
You are so worried about being a good enough mom and think maybe someone else would be a better mom for your baby.
There are thoughts you have that scare you like dropping the baby, or some harm coming to you or the baby.
The end of the day comes and you realize you have not eaten much.
You feel short of breath, have stomach issues, can feel heart palpitations, or your muscles always feel tense.
Tracking is your life - feeds, poops, pees, sleep.
You feel out of control and not like yourself.
You do not have to experience this alone. Meeting with a Psychologist who specializes in Perinatal Mental Health can allow you the space to rest, be nurtured and find a release for the internal volcano.
Therapy for Postpartum Depression and Postpartum Anxiety
Compassionate Holding
Meeting your postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety in a therapy session with empathy and compassion can have an incredible healing impact. Healing in relationship and feeling heard in a neutral and confidential space, allows you to be seen and heard and will help you to feel less alone. This can also be restorative for those parts of you that were not previously seen or supported by others you have been in relationship with or care providers in the perinatal period. Offering you compassion and teaching you to offer compassion to yourself can have powerful effect on things like shame, rage, guilt, anger, exhaustion, and the other emotions that often become triggered in the perinatal period. All of you will be welcomed with a non-judgmental and supportive approach that can encourage growth and healing. You might not recognize yourself anymore and are questioning your identity. Compassionate holding might be what you need to start healing your postpartum depression or postpartum anxiety.
Parts Work
This might sound weird to you, what is this? Well, parts work offers us a way to notice that we are made up of many different parts. These parts of us may be familiar and have been around for a while, or perhaps they are new and surprising and are showing up with our postpartum depression or postpartum anxiety. They may be things like emotional parts, people pleaser parts, numbing parts, identity parts, and more. We can utilize therapeutic techniques such as Internal Family Systems Therapy to examine these parts and how they have protected you, controlled, taken over, been dismissed, provided safety, created boundaries, and impacted who you are. We can also explore your identity and wondering who you are on the other side of postpartum. When we examine our parts outside of ourselves it allows things to become externalized that are often so internal to us. This can provide a wonderful healing container that might be what is needed to move you forward. Examining these parts and the way in which they show up in relation to your postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety may be helpful to your healing journey.
Somatic Therapy
Trauma and distress are held in our brains and bodies. Somatic Therapy is therapy that relates to the body. Postpartum Depression and Postpartum Anxiety have impacts on our nervous system that benefit from Somatic Therapy. This type of therapy might include Mindfulness that helps us to have increased non-judgemental awareness. It may also include The Polyvagal Theory which can support our vagus nerve and autonomic nervous system that are integral to our regulation. Grounding exercises may also be utilized to help us stay in the present moment. At times our bodies can employ a state of dissociation as our wise protector. Have you ever driven somewhere and do not remember all of that trip? This is actually dissociation. Utilizing grounding techniques can help us stay present when we are processing the distress involved with Postpartum Depression and Postpartum Anxiety. Grounding techniques can also be helpful to combat things like postpartum rage that are often a part of Postpartum Depression and Postpartum Anxiety.
Grief Therapy
There is so much that can be grieved in the massive transition that occurs in postpartum and can contribute to postpartum depression and anxiety. Grief therapy may be needed for pregnancy loss, not having the birth you wanted, unexpected complications, grieving who you were before and questioning your identity, grieving what you thought postpartum would be, grieving what you thought motherhood would be, and more. We will allow space for grief in the therapy room. There will be opportunity to explore loss, the memories, what is healthy grief, boundaries, and growing around the grief. It might include some somatic techniques or other creative techniques that we can also utilize. Grief therapy can involve some psychoeducation for you to know more about your grief and how it may impact your relationship with others. Postpartum involves more grief than we anticipate and properly grieving can be a part of healing postpartum depression or postpartum anxiety.
EMDR Therapy
EMDR is a therapy that was developed to address trauma, but it can also address anything that feels particularly stressful or distressing that may not be what you traditionally consider “trauma”. We can discuss if your experience of postpartum depression or anxiety would benefit from EMDR Therapy. It stands for Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing and utilizes bilateral stimulation, which means it activates both sides of our brain. When we experience trauma or distress, our amygdala (the fight, flight, freeze response system) gets activated. Those flashbacks or “sticky memories” are being triggered by this. In EMDR we work to soften these memories without having to fully go into all of the details. The fight, flight, freeze response becomes deactivated in association with the memory and can provide relief from the distress and future triggers. We can utilize eye movements to do this, hand held buzzers, or auditory sounds. EMDR has become well researched and and is an effective strategy that could support your healing through Postpartum Depression or Anxiety. Check out the video at the bottom of the Perinatal Trauma page to learn more about EMDR Therapy.
Sandtray Therapy
Sandtray therapy might seem like it’s something just for kids, but it can also be incredibly effective for adults. It is kind of like Art Therapy in that you are creating something, but what you are creating is done by choosing figurines and placing them in the sand. When we utilize something like sandtray therapy, we are accessing another part of our brain that is different than our cognitive brains. What we know from the study of neuroscience is that when we utilize our bottom, top, left, and right brains, we have more opportunity for change and healing in therapy. Sometimes things that we do not cognitively know will show up in a sandtray and we can then process it or process something that previously felt stuck. The other benefit is that it connects with our playful side that often adults will tuck away. This can encourage us to connect with our younger selves and again, maybe access healing in a different way. The somatic nature of sandtray therapy can also offer healing that our bodies need in order to move through our trauma or distress.