The only thing to fear, is fear itself

Now that I've shared my experience with Post Natal Depression, I will share with you my journey towards recovery.

The moment I was diagnosed with Post Natal Depression, I headed off on a mission to rid myself of this ghastly illness and these ghastly feelings like a woman possessed. If I heard of something which had helped another sufferer/was rumoured to help/could help/might help/possibly won't help but is worth a try, I did it. I did so many things at one time that I don't know for sure which helped the most, but I'll share all of it (or at least those things I can remember), because I believe that it was a combination of all these things which helped, and I know that doing more things than I could keep track of was preferable to doing nothing:

Meditation
I had never tried meditation before, and knew little about it. All I did know was that it is an exercise in switching off your thoughts (I've since discovered it is so much more than that), and for someone with a mind as active (read: over-active) as mine, this really seemed not only incredibly difficult, but kind of boring. I can't even sit through a full movie these days before the ADD kicks in, and my mind suddenly flicks to something else I could/should/would/might be doing, and I'm off! For this reason, I do find it more difficult to meditate than, say, someone who can sit and watch a spider spin a web on a quiet afternoon, but for this reason, I also stand to benefit more from this exercise than someone who knows how to not run their brain into overdrive.

How I fell into meditation was quite a coincidence (or not. I am a moderately spiritual person, and in this case I absolutely believe that I was strongly guided to where I needed to be during this time). My husband, bless him, decided that I deserved a pamper and bought me a voucher for a day spa for Christmas. I planned to do what I usually would with a voucher like this at my disposal (massage, body wrap, facial), but looking through the menu, I saw a package entitled "Spirit Ceremony" which consisted of Reiki and massage, followed by a guided meditation. I hmm-ed and ahh-ed over this, only being a moderately spiritual person, thinking that I could potentially gain nothing from it and walk out feeling no different and there's my voucher wasted, but I also deduced that I had experienced massage/facial/body wrap several times. I knew that it would make me feel good for the rest of the day, maybe two, but in a few days it would be a memory and there would be no surprises. Maybe by trying something new I could gain something more and really, I had nothing to lose.

The day of my package turned out to be the best day I'd had in longer than I could remember. I walked into that day spa carrying a heaviness which was so profound I'm sure it was visible, and had what felt like the weight of the world on my shoulders. I hadn't been anything resembling happy in months. Three hours later, I bounced out feeling light and happy, with a new lease on life and a new skill I still use as often as I possibly can because it's so therapeutic: the ability to meditate. 
I wasn't "cured". There were still going to be rough days ahead, but I downloaded a collection of guided meditations from iTunes, some relaxing music, joined a weekend group meditation class, and I was well on my way. I had a new way of calming myself down during my most stressed moments, which I immediately started applying... maybe five to six times out of ten, but increasing over time as I have become better at reminding myself how helpful this is for me and use it more and more. I can't give meditation enough praise - it clears my head of all the thoughts I can sometimes get bogged down in and it calms me and it helps me to remember that the simplest things in life are often the truest and most important. With meditation, I gain clarity and perspective.

Talking 
This one was not too hard for me, to a point. I like to talk (surprise, much?) I gain great peace through talking things through and I know that to talk about thoughts is to get them out of your head (which really is the worst place to keep them, when they are negative). Therefore I probably found talking to people more easy than some, but in the early days there was so much I didn't say because of shame, and actually, because it was also really hard for me to even work out for myself what I was feeling, much less express it to another person.

I tested the waters by sort of telling my husband sort of how I was feeling in a sort of indirect kind of way. That went well, so I told a bit more. And then a friend, I told a bit more, and my sister, a bit more. But for the most part, I carried a heavy burden on my own and tried to work out in my own head where I was at, what I was feeling and whether my thoughts/feelings were "normal". This is difficult because doing this you don't tend to gain a lot of perspective, you're bouncing off your own worst critic, and it takes up a lot of energy which you don't really have a lot of when you become a new mother. But in hindsight I was profoundly confused, and I was also proud. I wanted to do this job and do it well, and I didn't want everyone to know how badly I was struggling. 

When I finally got tired of putting energy I didn't have into putting on a facade, allowed myself to be vulnerable and stopped pretending that I was coping as well as I badly wanted to be coping, I opened up to the people in my life and suddenly a weight was lifted from my shoulders. My family  and friends were more supportive and understanding than I could have ever given them credit for. What a surprise it was to realise that I didn't have to now go about proving to everyone that just because I was suffering Post Natal Depression this didn't mean I was a "basket case", they already knew it! They knew me and what I was capable of. They had more faith in me than I realised and, as I also discovered, more than I had in myself.

Opening up to other mums was difficult because I internally pitted myself against them and never felt that I measured up. But once I did, it turned out to be particularly helpful because I actually found that they were able to relate to at least parts of my battle (and those they didn't seem to relate to they certainly didn't seem to judge me on), and would in turn tell me about a time when........ *insert mental image of super-mum having lost all composure, sitting on her front porch, head thrown back, howling up at the sky*.....no way! Suddenly I realised that quite a lot of the time, I had been grappling with guilt over feelings and thoughts which were actually quite normal. Upon opening up, I gained a better perspective and more faith that I could tackle this. I also finally felt free of this secret! I am an honest person to a fault. I can't lie to save myself. I am frustratingly transparent, even when I don't want to be. It caused me significant stress (on top of my existing stress) to not be honest about how I was feeling, and once I finally opened up, the relief was immense and there was no stopping me. As well as talking to those closest to me I spoke to my GP, I spoke to my Maternal Child & Health nurse, and a damn good counsellor...


Counselling
Finding a counsellor who works for you is like finding a hairdresser who works for you. It can take time and some searching, and you may end up with an orange mushroom head so many times that you vow never to visit a salon again, but when you find one who fits - oh, does it make the search worthwhile! My counsellor is excellent for me. She identifies with what I go through, she helps me make sense of confusing thoughts in my head, and best of all, she helps me see my strengths, has taught me to accept myself as I am and with her help I certainly like myself a lot more than I did, even before I was suffering PND. My thoughts are so much easier to sort through with her guidance, and my problem-solving skills (which I have realised are quite good when my head isn't clouded by fog) are exercised far more often than the problem-dwelling part of me (which we all have) which tends to forget that there is a way out. 

I never felt pressured to talk about anything I was not ready to, but I knew that the more I put in, the more I'd get out. I was in the drivers seat and she was my navigator. Initially I talked to her about my biggest fears which came with being a mother. My relationships with people in my life and communication breakdowns. My faults which I struggled to forgive myself for. My darkest thoughts. Everything which was too scary to say to anyone else. No judgement, no criticism. Nowadays I still see her once a month or so, just to check-in. We now talk about the fact that I'll be going back to work soon and how I feel about it. The small victories I have from day-to-day in beating the anxiety demons. The facebook friend that I un-friended because their attitude toward life stunk, and "does this mean I'm being intolerant?" I can see that soon I won't be needing to go to her at all. But I know I can always go back if any time in the future I feel like I need a tune-up and that's a comforting thought.

Education
Learning what goes on neurologically during moments of anxiety was an enormous help for me. I read. I talked to professionals. I gained perspective and knowledge of exactly what happens in my brain when the fight/flight response is triggered in my head. With gaining this knowledge, I stopped fearing the fear. I was able to remind myself during moments of panic, fear, anxiety, that the shortness of breath, rapid heartbeat, drop in cognitive thinking, was uncomfortable (to say the least), was unpleasant, but not actually harmful and nothing bad could come of it. I realised that to fear it was to make it stronger, and more frequently occurring. I reasoned that I could "freak out" and try and hide from it (but it would find me anyway), or I could challenge myself to see how I would deal better with it "next time". Once I accepted this and stopped trying to escape it, it subsided. I'm not an expert on the human brain and I may not know exactly how it all works, but my understanding of my neurological responses has helped me remove myself emotionally and I will put more information in my own words and how I understand it to be another time. 

Everything else
As I said in the beginning, I was relentless in searching for a "cure" for what I was going through. I wanted to "get happy", and once we had a title and a diagnosis for what was stopping me, I was determined to kick it in the backside good and proper and don't-let-the-door-hit-your-arse-on-the-way-out. Where I found the energy I'll never know, but I ran myself ragged trying everything which I thought could possibly help; I eventually threw the baby rule book out the window and found a way to feed/settle/care for my baby in a way that worked for me. As simply as I may put it, this was actually one of the toughest challenges for me because, of course, I believed I had no idea how to do the mum job "right" and someone else out there surely knew better than I did, but bit-by-bit I managed to switch off the external voices, find my own way and found a way to believing that I would not do my baby wrong. With this, I gained some confidence in myself as a mother - finally!

I decided to put my baby into day-care one day a week to give myself a break. I followed a good healthy diet with vitamin-rich foods and an eating regime reported to help bring my white blood cells back up (I lost a lot of blood in the birth - another trigger for PND). I stayed away from alcohol and caffeine. I took flaxseed oil (said to re-balance hormones), I took St John's Wort (used as a natural remedy for anxiety) I walked my baby every morning and tried to make sure I got exercise & sunshine daily. I socialised; mothers group, rhyme-time at the library, and when nobody else was around and nothing was on, and I needed to get out of the house, I took my baby and I found a nice little restaurant to eat lunch. 

I had heard about acupuncture, and decided to try it, and actually I believe that this was one of the main things which helped me with my insomnia, one symptom above all which felt completely out of my control. I can't say this was the cure for sure, but the insomnia hung around for weeks, even months after the anxiety attack, and the fact is that after my second acupuncture session, I went to bed and slept solid through the whole night. But I don't know 100% if this can be attributed to the acupuncture, or the final (and most difficult) step of all:

Acceptance 
At around the same time I had acupuncture, I reached a point where my patience was wearing thin. I was doing everything within my power to sort this out, I was proactive, I was working harder at this than I'd ever worked at anything in my life. I'd exercised more patience than I'd ever exercised before, but It had been months! And yes, I was feeling better in a lot of ways, but I was still missing the love. Still missing the lightning bolt, and goddamn it, still not able to sleep! My baby was sleeping, my husband was sleeping, but I wasn't sleeping, and I was exhausted. I love my sleep with a passion which can be only matched with my passion for a creamy, soft, French double cream brie, and I was sure that if I could just get a good nights sleep then surely I would start to feel better. I rang my counsellor in the hope that we could nut it out and find a cure for my insomnia, and wasn't prepared for the advice I received; Slow down! Accept it.

This was incredibly difficult for me to get my head around because, well, I really, really "needed" sleep! And I felt like crap. And I was miserable. And I viewed accepting any of this as resigning myself to it. Why should I, how do I accept this, without allowing it to "win"? My counsellor helped me to see that I was doing everything in my power to improve my health, and all the work I was doing was indeed making a big difference, but there were some things which were simply out of my control. And with these things, there was nothing to do but let it be and give it time. And not the amount of time I felt it should take, but as much time as it decided to take, because it wasn't going to obey my wishes, no matter how badly I wanted it to. 
This was hard. Really hard. I had to learn to "dance in the storm" and let go. Let go of the desperate need to sleep for more than three hours at a time. Let go of the idea of the "lightning bolt". Let go of the need to control the things which I was never going to be able to control. Have I mentioned that by nature I am a control-freak? Plus I wanted happiness more than anything, more than I'd ever wanted it before. It felt impossible.

But, once I finally learned to accept that there were just some things I wasn't going to change, I found that I did indeed feel gradually happier. And it spilled over into other parts of my life. I discovered that, just like that, I stopped working myself up over nights when my baby was unsettled with a head cold/teething/mystery ailment and " I really, just very badly want him to sleep through tonight" (because if I wanted it desperately enough, maybe it would happen? Afraid not) and instead, I somehow managed to take each unsettled moment as it came, knowing that I couldn't fight or change it, managing to just getting up and doing what had to be done because I wasn't going to wish it away, and complaining about it sure didn't make it more fun. Of course I knew all this before, and had often tried telling myself this in the past, to no avail, but somehow once I managed to exercise acceptance, it became easier to put it into practice. 

Even now, when I'm in situations of extreme stress, like a few weeks ago, for example, when I witnessed a man being assaulted in the street, I have become very good at recognising the anxiety which is triggered, calming myself and handling the things that are within my control, but on the flip side, while I recognised my old friend insomnia when it returned for a few nights, I acknowledged it, pushed through the fatigue, accepted that it would go away once it ran its course and went about my business without putting any energy (which was better conserved for use in functioning as a mother) into trying to change it. And within a few nights, I slept again.

Of course I'm still a work in progress, and the truth as I've come to realise it, is that I will be for as long as I'm here. I'm not perfect, no-one is. I have faults. I still have bad days, and when I do this doesn't mean that I am a statistic of PND, it means that I am human. 

For example, only yesterday my baby decided that naps were not for him, just for a day. I was handling it beautifully through the first nap-time. Persevered for as long as I was comfortable with until I gracefully accepted that, no, there will be no nap this morning. I got him out of bed, re-adjusted my day and carried on. The afternoon nap-time, however, was a process which began with many re-settling attempts, much deep-breathing (so much I nearly passed out), counting, soft tones, repeating very rational mantras to myself, and ended with my husband walking in the house to find me sitting on the couch, pulling at my hair and telling him I was about to seriously lose my shit (along with possibly some more colourful language). I let him take over and deal with Crying Baby while I checked out of reality for a while and lay on the couch, just waiting for the frustration to subside. What do you know, I'm not a robot. This is motherhood. It was a bad moment, but didn't become a bad day. And the way I see it, I had a great win in the morning rather than a loss in the afternoon. But, just quietly, thank goodness today is a day-care day (Yes, I said it. it's ok).

Today, I vow to try and do better than yesterday. Tomorrow, I vow to try and do better than today. Some days I may succeed, some days I may find myself pacing the house, counting to ten, again, again, again, a-fricking-gain, and wondering whether the people in the white coats will just pull up already and take me somewhere far quieter.
Happiness is not a destination, it is a journey. 
In yours, I wish you guidance and strength.

Follow me on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SheWoreATechnicolourRibbon