[Warning: some pieces of this post might be triggers for some people. Good idea not to read if that might be the case for you.]
The vocabulary associated with postpartum depression is vast. There are so many facets to this illness I never knew about, even after I accepted this as what I was dealing with and started to learn more.
As I came across many of these issues I thought, “That doesn’t apply to me.”
Anxiety
When I was a teenager, our house was broken into. Whoever it was came in through the garage and, as I remember it, only rummaged around the lower floor. Took a few things they came across and some stuff, including a small amount of cash, from my brother’s bedroom.
It freaked me out.
My room at the time was on the top floor of our house, and my bed was positioned under a window. Lying on my pillow, I could look straight up and see the window behind my curtains. Each night for months (years?) I lay there for a long time before falling asleep, breath held, staring at that window expecting someone to climb through it. (One night my cat came in the window on the other side of my room. Between the time I saw the curtains move and the moment her padded feet hit the floor, I think I just about overdosed from panic-induced adrenaline.)
A couple of months ago, when talking about medication because what I was on wasn’t working, my counsellor warned that one of the other options is typically associated with an increase in anxiety.
“That’s fine. Anxiety is not a problem for me,” I said.
The lightbulb hadn’t come on yet.
Intrusive thoughts
We moved into our current house eight years ago. As soon as you walk in the door there’s a staircase leading to the upper floor. More nights than I can count I’ve lain in bed, paralyzed with fear that someone would come up the stairs and kill us. I can picture it – a dark shape, illuminated by the street lights from outside, walking quietly up the stairs. In my head I can actually picture this happening.
These thoughts got worse after Connor was born because his room is the first you come to at the top of the stairs. Anyone coming up the stairs would get to him before us. When he first started sleeping with us at night, I breathed more easily knowing he was at least somewhere I could see him.
I recently read a post at The Lorix Chronicles about intrusive thoughts. I sat in front of my computer in stunned silence.
Oh.
OCD
I’m not a neat freak by anyone’s standards, but I like to putter. It calms me. When the house is filled with noisy, bouncy toddler and my brain is filled with, “I can’t do this. It’s too much. I’m not cut out for this. It’s never going to get better,” I vacuum. Methodically, back and forth, the vacuum forming faint lines in the carpet.
I don’t know if this can actually be categorized as OCD. It’s not an obsession that’s relieved by a compulsion – something repetitive and, to a degree, uncontrollable. But it is about control. The stuff I can’t control takes over my brain and I fight back by tackling something I can control, even if that something is crumbs.
Depression
I’ve never struggled with depression.
Except… Oh wait. There was that time in the last semester of my first year of university when I spent a lot of time in bed. A LOT. I stayed there and didn’t want to get up, though I didn’t think much of it at the time.
Then when I was in my 20s, I got sick of feeling sad and hopeless all the time and started logging things. What I ate, exercise, weather – you name it, I put it into a carefully crafted spreadsheet, and it was all mapped against my mood. Eventually the sum of the things that made me feel better – getting enough exercise, sunlight, eating well – led me to feel better overall.
Until I sought help for PPD I’d never been diagnosed with depression. Never even had a conversation with a doctor about it. I always hated that label. Oddly, though, I remember being asked to fill out a self-identification form for a previous job. “Are you a visible minority?” No. “Are you Aboriginal?” No. “Do you have a disability?” A very small voice in my head piped up. “Does depression count?” I knew it was there, though I was never willing to admit it. (I checked no.)
The light bulb about anxiety and OCD-like tendencies switched on a couple of weeks ago in the middle of a meltdown. I told my husband it’s dawned on me that I’ve been dealing with this stuff almost as long as I can remember.
His response: “No shit.”
He’s always considered me sort of OCD, apparently. Well. How do you like that? I wish someone had told me.
I’ve recently started to acknowledge my past episodes of depression in conversations with doctors and counsellors, but it wasn’t until I talked about it with the psychiatrist a couple of weeks ago that I really began to accept this as a part of who I am.
The realization about intrusive thoughts was a lightning bolt that just hit me last weekend.
My counsellor and I spent most of my session this week talking about all this and she gave me some resources to deal with it. Only a few days later, I can now catch these thoughts. “Why are you thinking that? Do you think that’s true?” The answers aren’t right yet: “I don’t know. No, I guess not, not really. But what if… And maybe it is true. And I’m just not good at… I CAN’T TAKE THE CRUMBS ANYMORE!” It’s a work in progress.
One thing that helps is that I’ve named these things now. I’ve allowed themselves to attach them to me. No, better – I’ve attached them to myself.
I don’t know what it means, exactly, but it feels like a step in the right direction.
