PPA Advice

Congrats on making it through this tome about my experience with postpartum anxiety. Below is the promised list of things that have helped me manage my anxiety- some days are better than others! While you won’t see therapy on this list (due to the pandemic & not making time for it in my schedule) I love therapy and certainly see how it would be beneficial during this time. I’ve had both in-person therapists and done chat therapy through Better Help, which I highly recommend if you’re open to online options!

• Sleep. As previously discussed, when sleep goes, so does everything else. I’m more short with those around me when I haven’t slept, and little things become WAY bigger deals in my mind. It’s certainly a catch-22 because with you have anxiety and racing thoughts, you can’t sleep; when you’ve haven’t slept, it makes the anxiety worse. I’ve had to implement no phone before bed and try to read every night before lights out. I also go to bed stupidly early. I’ve been listening to ASMR videos to fall asleep on and off for 10 years (it’s only recently that you can tell someone that without them getting totally creeped out. It’s not weird!!) My current favorites are WhispersRed, ASMRvelous & ElaineSMR.
• Exercise. Getting back to my barre studio of choice has been vitally important to making me feel more mentally well. 85% of the reason I show up for class is the boost to my brain. The other 15% is for the physical aspects of wanting to get toned and chase my pre-baby weight, but even that helps because when I’m more confident in how I look, I feel better.
• Tossing the scale. I recognized around three months postpartum that I was letting the scale dictate how I felt about myself, and that felt like an unhealthy mind prison I’d put myself in. Now I truly have no idea what I weigh, thus there’s not a number for me to get anxious about.
• Medication. I don’t know if I would have been slapped so hard in the face by PPA around the four month mark had I kept taking Zoloft as first prescribed at my six week appointment. I’ve tried post-baby life both ways, and right now, medication is a tool that helps me live a better life. I enjoy the experience of being a mother, a wife, an employee & myself more. I don’t feel unlike myself; I feel like a more calm version of myself.
• Talking about it. White knuckling what I was going through helped no one. Giving voice to my feelings without letting them rule my day helps me recalibrate, whether it’s writing them down or saying them aloud. Huge love to my husband for never diminishing what I’m going through. I even let my mom know I was on medication- a big deal for me!- because I wanted to be transparent with our support systems about what’s going on.
• Limit alcohol and caffeine. I know, right? Me! Telling you this! I love coffee and greatly abused it when running my business and in those first sleepless months, but there’s no doubt it heightens my anxiety. I’m down to one spoonful of caffeinated grounds in my pour over in the mornings; the rest is decaf, then no more for the rest of the day. As much as I hate that it’s true, alcohol is a depressant, and I’ve had to get honest with myself about how it’s no longer serving me. This isn’t a big announcement of lifelong sobriety, but it’s my next self-improvement hurdle to be more conscious about when I’m drinking, why I’m drinking, and if it’s just out of habit (it is.) I don’t like parenting when I’ve had alcohol, and it certainly isn’t beneficial to my brain- especially on meds!
• Gabby Bernstein. Gabby’s been my guru of choice as of late. I’ve read her book Super Attractor multiple times, and she just launched a podcast that helps me remember to take deep breaths and let go of allllll the ways I try to control everything in my life. I’ll put on a YouTube video of hers in the morning when getting ready if I’m feeling especially anxious. I mentally make a gratitude list when I wake up before grabbing my phone, I try to lean in to what feels fun vs. what I think I “should” be doing, I incorporate things I love into each day because that’s the point of life, right? (Avocado toast! Trixie Mattel videos! Long stroller walks!)

Not sure any of these are groundbreaking, but again, it’s what works for one person! Always happy to chat if you’re struggling or have suggestions of things that helped you or you have great decaf coffee suggestions.