Post Partum Depression Emotional States
- Locked in a paradigm of safety before the baby was born. Now the infant represents anything but safe. The infant represents the unknown and they are now responsible for this life. There is a deep fear of the darkness of becoming nothing…the phrase ‘at the edge of the abyss’ came up during the information gathering. This person is trying to hold onto the way things were before the infant was born. This person wants to know and predict their world. The infant represents the unknown. The baby cannot articulate so the experience created by the new infant is not predictable. The paradigm of the world as they know it is lost.
- Their sense of beingness is shattered. People now see the baby…not them. They become the mother of _________ (old Greco-Roman-Hebrew). They disappear into the role of being only the caretaker of the infant. Parenthood has become a loss of identity.
- What they believed to be their source of happiness has gone away with the advent of parenthood. This person hears only the negative. This person actually shuns happiness, feels wounded from the act of birth instead of a sense of life flowing through. There is a sense that they should have died as a release – past life memory of death at childbirth and the release from pain and struggle left a psychic imprint of joy and bliss– that did not happen with this act of childbirth. Old program that sex was sinful and childbirth was the punishment for sex – a sense that the infant represents their sinful nature – prior beliefs of being bad / no good/ cursed.
- Holding to past ideas about how life should be or would be or needs to be. Competitive nature has been sidelined / sublimated to the task of parenthood. Lack of selflessness in the role. Ego identification has been narrowed. Struggling with the new definition- does not have an identification that supports the new role.
- Sees no end to the struggle. Feels hopeless. Regrets choices that have led to the decision of childbirth feels their life is at end. Old life has died and they do not see that they are embarking on a new life. In essence they have been born to a new life and don’t know how to define it within the context of the old. Does not believe that life will get easier / better. Feels that they are in the midst of a struggle for dominance and control of their life. Parenting skills are limited by prior parenting role models that were ignorant.
- Happiness at the birth of the baby is overshadowed by a past loss. They are afraid the loss will happen again. There was an expectation that the birth of an infant would resolve a prior unresolved grief. There was an expectation that the child’s birth would dispel a sense of loss and loneliness. This person feels very much alone and abandoned. Their needs were not being met before the baby was born but those feelings were suppressed. With additional physical duress the veil of suppression and grief has been removed. The loss felt by this person is one of the heart. This person won’t allow themselves the feeling of joy. They are afraid that the joy and happiness will be taken away from them.
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