The Spoonie Mummy

Trigger warning – mental health, post-partum, anxiety, stress, intrusive thoughts, harm thoughts

Welcome to the second Mental Health Monday post and thank you for all the feedback from last week! I decided to write this post a few weeks ago following a conversation with a friend. She told me about some of the thoughts she had experienced as a new mum of falling down the stairs when holding the baby. This had recently come up for her again after being asked to hold a friend’s baby.

I immediately identified these as intrusive thoughts, and she seemed to experience relief when sharing them, even though it is now years later, as she realised they were really common. I then listened to one of my favourite podcasts, MotherKind and Zoe did an episode on this exact topic – so then I really had to write about it as I wanted to share this and help people understand what they are and how common they are.

What is an Intrusive Thought?

I think a good place to start is defining what these kinds of thoughts are.

Intrusive thoughts are unwanted thoughts, impulses or mental images that often cause significant anxiety, stress and impairment within an individual’s ability to function. These thoughts may surround the fear of committing an act one consider to be harmful, violent, immoral, sexually inappropriate, or sacrilegious.

peaceofmind.com

Four out of five people will experience intrusive thoughts at some time or another. They are particularly common in new parents with 91% reporting experiencing them.

They are often in two different forms –

• Accidental – these thoughts are the most common and an example would be worrying that you will drop your baby while carrying them downstairs
• Harm thoughts – these are less common but may involve a thought about screaming at, or hitting your child

Intrusive thoughts are not talked about and so many people feel that there must be something wrong with them when they have them, yet almost all of us will experience them at some point in our lives. In the current Instagram driven world of perfection we are fed on a regular basis, these types of thoughts can make us feel like we are going mad and that we must be horrible people and terrible parents.

The feelings of distress caused by these thoughts is one reason they stick around. Most thoughts enter our heads and leave again just as quickly, without us even noticing. The fact that intrusive thoughts cause this distress and leave us feeling guilty and shameful, indicates that they do not indicate a risk of you harming your baby or acting on these thoughts.

Obviously, post-partum psychosis is a serious mental illness and is classed as a medical emergency. You can find out more about that on the Tommy’s website

So, What Can We Do About Them?

Hopefully the fact I have written this post and you can see that intrusive thoughts are extremely common will have already helped ease your mind a little. The reason intrusive thoughts can upset us so much is because they often lock on to the things we love the most Knowing this will help you understand why these thoughts are attaching themselves to certain things in your life,

Leave your front door and your back door open.

Allow your thoughts to come and go.

Just don’t serve them tea.

Shunryu Suzuki

The way to tackle intrusive thoughts is to treat them like any other thought we have. By not fearing them, you are not giving them the power to make you feel the guilt and shame that they bring. Accept the thought, acknowledge them and then let them go. Don’t overthink them, don’t try and figure out what it means because this is just giving the thought more attention than it needs. By understanding that they will come up and cause us to feel uncomfortable, but they will pass, is really important.

One way of coping when experiencing intrusive thoughts is to use avoidance. This again is giving the thought the power. You are feeling guilty for something you haven’t even done. Every time you change your routine or behaviour, the thought will come up again. This will not stop the thoughts, but rather it will keep the cycle going.

Talking to someone may also help. As in my situation, my friend just got so much relief from being able to open up to me and realise she was not the only person having these thoughts and she was not going crazy. Intrusive thoughts can lead to OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), Depression and Anxiety and if you feel your intrusive thoughts are getting on top of you, speaking to your GP or another healthcare professional (perhaps a health visitor if you are a new parent) may be beneficial. They may be able to suggest a suitable talking therapy or medication to help.

Some of these topics I could write about all day and still only be skimming the surface of, but I hope that Mental Health Monday is really helping some of you. I have a huge range of topics to talk about but if any of you have any ideas about what you would like to see me cover, please pop them in the comments below or email me at thespooniemummy@hotmail,.com. Wishing you all another safe week in lockdown,