Learning To Feel Again

In order to love who you are, you cannot hate the experiences that shaped you.

~ Anonymous

Anyone that has met me or seen the way my DVDs and books are categorised knows that I am a VERY organised person. So when I found out 4 years ago that I was having a little girl, off I went preparing a perfectly pink nursery with perfect little pink clothes hanging in an extremely organised wardrobe and a wall decal that read “Let her sleep, for when she wakes, she will move mountains”.

However, what appeared to be happening externally was not a reflection of what was going on internally. I suffered through Post Natal Depression with both my boys; the thought of going through it a third time was unbearable. I was told that it could get progressively worse with each child I had. The inner perfectionist in me felt that I was more than prepared having been through it twice before. I knew the signs; my husband new the signs and we knew what help was available to us, so my initial response was WE’LL BE FINE! Truth be told, I did not read the signs very well, I did not reach out as much as I should have and it got so bad I probably should have been hospitalised.

What I learnt bloody quick was you can’t entirely prepare for it – you don’t know which way those pesky hormones are going to go. The best you can do is make sure you have a solid support network of people around you because if you hit rock bottom you want the best of the best to show you which way is up.

Post Natal Depression doesn’t target the weakest people or the most selfish people, nor does it target just women (yes men can go through it too). I considered myself a strong person and I was well aware of how blessed I was – two gorgeous little boys, a beautiful healthy newborn daughter and a rock solid marriage, WHY was I so bloody unhappy?

Everyone around me tried to give their best reasons for why I was feeling this way:

• You’re sleep deprived
• You’ve got a newborn
• You’re recovering from a C-section
• You’ve got three kids
• It’s just hormones
• It’s day three – baby blues!

It went far beyond a few sleepless nights and a crying baby. Guilt set in for having a messy house, for ordering take out a couple of nights a week because I was too tired to cook, for greeting my husband at the door with a screaming baby while still in my pyjamas from the morning, for not going back to work quick enough as we struggled financially. I know I am not the only mother to feel this guilt. It is practically inbuilt, the moment your baby is born!

 It was when my son said to me through tears, ‘Mummy you’re always angry, please stop’, that the guilt turned into shame. Shame that I screamed at my baby and left her to cry in her cot, shame that I yelled at my boys for spilling milk on the lounge, shame that I threw my husband’s clothes out into the hall and told him to leave because he didn’t understand, shame for storming out of the house and getting in a car and driving while I was in no state to drive, shame that I fell short of who I wanted to be as a wife and mother.

The cracks began to appear by the hundreds and the wrong look, the wrong words, even the wrong song on the radio, would have caused me to crumble into a million pieces.

It was suggested to me that I go on medication.

Well wasn’t that just the nail in the coffin! In my mind I had now, well and truly, failed because I wasn’t strong enough to get myself out of this shitty hole I dug for myself. I was unworthy of being a mother and a wife. Hell, I was just downright not enough!

Now doesn’t that thought process ring alarm bells?

As it happened, I was on medication for three years. Not something I was initially very happy about but it helped me level out and deep down I knew it wasn’t going to be forever. The drawback was that while it was a bandaid over all the negative emotions, it was also a bandaid over all the positive ones too. Those three years for me on medication can be best summed up like a heart monitor – beeping away, peaks and troughs and then flat lining. I went from feeling so much to feeling pretty much nothing. It got to the point where I wanted to feel SOMETHING. Shit, anything would have been better than nothing at all!

So at the beginning of this year I made the momentous decision to come off my medication.  While I would never advise for, or against, medication because everyone’s situation is different, I knew it wasn’t the final answer for me.

The most important question I could have asked myself was, ‘If I had a choice to feel the way I did, would I?’ the answer – a resounding no! I may not have had a choice to feel what I did, because it is not something you can control, but I had a choice in how I was going to get through it.

This year became a lesson in learning how to feel again. I have experienced every emotion possible and sometimes I experience them all in one day. But I came to learn from my life coach not to question the emotions, just sit with them and ride them out.

So I did.

I sat with them. I talked with them. I BFF-ed them. Then in my softest, calmest voice, I gently told them to F@#% off.

I didn’t choose PND, for some reason it chose me, but I soon learned that those millions of cracks it caused were essential. They let the light in. The light that allowed me to choose to do something about it. The first step was medication, the second step was no medication, the third step was learning to feel again, the fourth step was surrounding myself with the right kind of people and the fifth step was rediscovering my inner strength and confidence to find ways to move forward.

PND was a part of me but it didn’t define me.

That wall decal on my daughter’s wall ended up being quite apt. I needed to be the one to move mountains first, so my kids could then see me doing it so, in turn, they could move their own mountains. That’s how I reclaimed the mother and wife I knew I was all along.

I am enough.

L x

If you or someone you know is suffering from PND I can’t speak highly enough about this wonderful organisation:

PANDA

Perinatal Anxiety and Depression Australia

www.panda.org.au

PANDA National Helpline – Mon to Fri – 9am – 7.30pm

1300 726 306

Don’t hesitate to seek help, it’s not a weakness, it’s a strength.