I haven’t been writing for my blog in a while and I can’t really give you a good reason as to why I stopped. I suppose there were a few factors. One of the reasons was that I just felt too overwhelmed to get my thoughts down properly. My brain was buzzing and it is hard to write coherently when your thoughts are darting around aimlessly at top speed. I’m not sure if that was down to manic energy, anxiety feelings or a combination of the two. Needless to say, I felt that I couldn’t cope with writing even though that was probably one of the best things I could have done for myself; writing has always been therapeutic for me.
Anyway, a lot has changed. I still struggle with intense anxiety every day. However, what I am anxious about is different. Now I have a baby so a lot of my anxieties have grown around that. I also worry a lot about being alone, or being alone with my son, stuck with my own thoughts; it’s my own mind that scares me. The biggest change has been that soon after I gave birth, I developed postpartum psychosis and ended up staying, with my son, in a mother and baby psychiatric hospital for a month. That was one of the most traumatic things I have been through and I hope that by writing about it extensively, I can finally come to terms with it and move on. Maybe I can help people understand it along the way or write something that someone can relate to so they feel a little less alone.
I want to write posts relatively frequently over the next few months. I hope that it will at least provide a little insight in to postnatal mental health: an area that is not well known about.
