Understanding postpartum Intrusive Thoughts About Baby & OCD cycles
What Are Postpartum Intrusive Thoughts?
Lets say you have put your baby down for the night and now you find yourself sitting on the couch for what may be the first time all week. You’re likely depleted, exhausted and have little left to give. You may be spent, but then you hear that horrible intrusive thought jolt its way in and say ‘baby may not be breathing!” So, of course that freaks you out and you’re going to immediately check and watch for your sweet baby to show signs of breathing on the monitor. Totally fair. Now lets say things look alight, yet you check again almost immediately. It might come to be that you have checked on your baby several times in the past few minutest and yet you don’t feel any more comforted by your sleeping baby even after the tenth check. In fact, you probably are more anxious than before. This is one of the examples of intrusive thoughts followed by compulsive cycles that commonly can happen postpartum. There is the importance of checking on that monitor that’s understandable and useful, but then there is the type of checking that is based off of urgency and a scratch that you just cannot itch.
Intrusive thoughts are absolutely not your fault. They pop up and given how scary they can feel you react as though you MUST check or else something horrible will happen. But the hard reality is, the more you check the more anxious you likely will become. As important as some of these scary intrusive thoughts feel, it is not your invitation to act on them or ‘do’ anything to fix them.
Where postpartum can bring up intrusive thoughts and compulsive cycles
Intrusive thoughts can be exacerbated by postpartum because there are so many new stressors and vulnerabilities. Having your baby at home can awaken fears that may have been dormant for years, new difficulties can come up, old wounds may be brought to the surface. The amount of change and stress takes up so much capacity to sift through and process all of these on your own is so hard.
There unfortunately is also a huge amount of shame for moms which increases the amount of pressure moms often feel to do everything ‘right’. This pressure and fear can lead to isolating and not sharing your thoughts and feelings. Not working through these thoughts often make them worse because they are then internalized as something real you should be hiding from others. When in fact, they are absolutely not real. They feel real, yes. They evoke deeply real feelings, yes. However the content of them is not rooted in fact. Isolation and keeping things in during postpartum often exacerbates difficult thoughts and feelings.
You are also sleep deprived, a huge vulnerability for thoughts and compulsive cycles to sneak in there too. When sleep is off we are off. We don’t have the same tolerance and ability as when we’re rested. Reprioritization and creative solutions are a big, important part of postpartum therapy work too.
There are so many changes during postpartum, every second of your day looks and feel different. You feel different, your relationships are all different and the list goes on. Its probably the most dynamic period and when you’re this vulnerable you may not be able to work through and process the same way as you did before having a baby. This can be hard to give yourself permission to allow for. Exploring these difficulties can help reflect and work through intrusive thoughts.
Common intrusive thoughts
There are often very common thoughts around either something harmful happening to your baby (ie: “my baby is going to choke on that!”) There are also the scary thoughts that you will do something bad or harmful to your baby, (ie: “Im going to drop my baby when I carry them”). I always tell people to take solace in their fear of these thoughts because that means you are a loving parent who is working overtime in your mind to make sure nothing happens to your baby. Instead of beating yourself up for experiencing these thoughts which unfortunately is usually what people do, we see your intrusive thoughts as coming form your core fears. Your thoughts are telling you the worst case possible situation in attempt to convince you that you need to prevent that from happening. So, the way we can reconceptualize these intrusive thoughts is to recognize how they are trying to protect us and our baby, even though they get quite misconstrued along the way.
The intrusive thought cycles, “Why does it keep popping into my head!?”
There are things that intrusive thoughts are likely making you both avoid and engage in. Ask yourself, what are my thoughts making me do or not do more of? Anything out of the ordinary? Anything excessively? If you feel things coming to mind, these could be compulsive behaviors. In therapy I try to really give space and understanding to your behaviors that are aligned, but really start to think about which behaviors are trying to make you less anxious but do the opposite. The tricky things is that every time you engage in a behavior or compulsion to try to feel better and stop an intrusive thought, you validate it and treat it like its something to protect against. This means that it is going to come back. During work in therapy to decrease this cycle, we will reflect on these behaviors, looking at what they try to do and how we can shift out of them. With the goal here being that the more you pull out of these cycles and allow the fears to exist without reaction, the less the thought and related feelings will pop up and distress you.
Intrusive thoughts vs. intent to act
There is a huge difference between intrusive thoughts that are scary and intent to act. Intrusive thoughts are not things you want to do. They are totally misaligned with you and your values. They are different from wanting to harm a baby, yourself or feel like you’re losing touch with reality. If someone is experiencing commands, hallucinations, thoughts they feel compelled to act on they should seek emergency support immediately.
How Therapy in Chicagoland Can Help with Postpartum OCD and Intrusive Thoughts
In working with postpartum intrusive thoughts and ocd, I will use a lot of exploration tools to find out what is driving some of these cycles, these thoughts and your core fears. I use ERP and depending on how things go I also do a lot of bodily awareness work to really get you more comfortable with felt senses in your body as we process through. There are some who really respond well to a more structured ERP framework, and after time we may try to implement a mix of a few different interventions to best cover all bases.
If you find yourself upset or beating yourself up for thoughts you’re having or if you’re feeling fearful of intrusive thoughts popping into your mind you’re absolutely not alone. I often refer the book Good Moms Have Scary Thoughts to help validate at the beginning of therapy. I also encourage telling your partner, friends, whoever feels supportive to take the shame out of the thoughts as well. Therapy can be truly transformative and so helpful during postpartum at any stage but particularly with ocd tendencies and intrusive thoughts. If any of this resonates and you’re in Chicago or the sate of Illinois, please feel free to reach out to find out more.
