Previa Alliance Podcast
There are few experiences as universal to human existence as pregnancy and childbirth, and yet its most difficult parts — perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs) — are still dealt with in the shadows, shrouded in stigma. The fact is 1 in 5 new and expecting birthing people will experience a PMAD, yet among those who do many are afraid to talk about it, some are not even aware they’re experiencing one, and others don’t know where to turn for help. The fact is, when someone suffers from a maternal mental health disorder it affects not only them, their babies, partners, and families - it impacts our communities.
In the Previa Alliance Podcast series, Sarah Parkhurst and Whitney Gay are giving air to a vastly untapped topic by creating a space for their guests — including survivors of PMADs and healthcare professionals in maternal mental health — to share their experiences and expertise openly. And in doing so, Sarah and Whitney make it easy to dig deep and get real about the facts of perinatal mental health, fostering discussions about the raw realities of motherhood. Not only will Previa Alliance Podcast listeners walk away from each episode with a sense of belonging, they’ll also be armed with evidence-based tools for healing, coping mechanisms, and the language to identify the signs and symptoms of PMADs — the necessary first steps in a path to treatment. The Previa Alliance Podcast series is intended for anyone considering pregnancy, currently pregnant, and postpartum as well as the families and communities who support them.
Sarah Parkhurst
Previa Alliance Podcast Co-host; Founder & CEO of Previa Alliance
A postpartum depression survivor and mom to two boys, Sarah is on a mission to destigmatize the experiences of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs), and to educate the world on the complex reality of being a mom. Sarah has been working tirelessly to bring to light the experiences of women who have not only suffered a maternal mental health crisis but who have survived it and rebuilt their lives. By empowering women to share their own experiences, by sharing expert advice and trusted resources, and by advocating for health care providers and employers to provide support for these women and their families, Sarah believes as a society we can minimize the impact of the current maternal mental health crisis, while staving off future ones.
Whitney Gay
Previa Alliance Podcast Co-host; licensed clinician and therapist
For the past ten years, Whitney has been committed to helping women heal from the trauma of a postpartum mental health crisis as well as process the grief of a miscarriage or the loss of a baby. She believes that the power of compassion paired with developing critical coping skills helps moms to heal, rebuild, and eventually thrive. In the Previa Alliance Podcast series, Whitney not only shares her professional expertise, but also her own personal experiences of motherhood and recovery from grief.
Follow us on Instagram @Previa.Alliance
Previa Alliance Podcast
Did Motherhood Cause My Mental Health Condition?
In today’s episode Sarah and Whitney are back tackling the topic of does motherhood illuminate or cause mental health conditions. From depression, anxiety, or ADHD, listen in as they discuss what we may have experienced our entire life vs what motherhood challenging factors create.
Hey guys, welcome back to Pretty Lions Podcast. This is Sarah and I'm with our favorite maternal mental health therapist, Whitney Whitney, welcome.
Speaker 2:Hey friends.
Speaker 1:So, whitney, this conversation that we're going to have today is, I think you know, maybe I've been Instagram influenced added, but like you know, the topics of does motherhood cause ADHD, anxiety, depression? Is it the cause or is the flashlight that's shining upon, underlining issues that may have been in place that we've not talked about because I've seen tons of it? Maybe you have on just kind of social media of you know, is it anxiety, is it ADHD? You know what is this whole topic and what have you seen in clients and help us just dig deep of like is motherhood causing it or have we never just maybe named it to tame it?
Speaker 2:So it can be a little bit of both, depending on what diagnosis we're looking at. So ADHD is something that we are born with, and there's a pediatrician that I'll follow on Instagram and I really appreciated the way that he broke this down. He said you know, you have some people that use Windows as their operating system. Some people use Apple. They're both operating systems, we can both get things done, but they are very different in how they operate. That is the same thing when we look at someone who is what they call neurotypical so that would not be an ADHD diagnosis versus neurodivergent, which is ADHD.
Speaker 2:So when we look at ADHD, it is something that you are born with. It is very genetic. There is so much data to back up that ADHD is genetic. So motherhood does not cause ADHD.
Speaker 2:However, and especially with women, we see that there's a lot of masking with ADHD that takes place throughout their lives, and so motherhood, I think, is where we get that clarity and we realize the sensory overload. We realize, maybe, that we don't like certain like textures, whether it's food, fabrics, things like that, or we realize, oh my God, I cannot handle all of this at once. Now, that also being said, there are times where, if you are not ADHD, and like the dog is barking and you're trying to cook supper and the kids are like, hey mom, I need this, hey mom, I need that your husband is trying to say, hey, well, what is is for dinner? Blah, blah, blah, and you're like stop, I cannot do all of this at once. Our brains can only handle so much input at once. Our brains are not meant to take in five or six things at once. It's not possible.
Speaker 2:Okay, so there's something we said that multitasking is actually bad for our brains to a certain extent, you know, and so when we look at how motherhood shines that light on ADHD, it could be that you realize, oh, my attention span is much shorter than I thought it was. And again we start to realize, like that texture, fabric-y sensory thing is just different. And then we start to see those symptoms in our kids, and sometimes our kids are what makes us think, wait a minute, I've done that before. And our kids acting a certain way is what makes us look at ourselves and we're like wait a minute, I've done that all my life. I might be ADHD and so it's one of those.
Speaker 2:You could have flown under the radar for years, especially when we look at millennials, where I mean mental health, depression, anxiety. Adhd has really just now gotten the attention and traction that it's needed, I'm going to say over the past five to eight years. So when you were growing up in the 90s and in the early 2000s guess what, unless you were a problem child. So you know, failing your classes, you had outbursts. You're throwing a desk across the room, things like that you were never looked at for anything.
Speaker 2:And so absolutely, people can fly under the radar. And then motherhood is like, hey, this dark closet that you're sitting in, boom, I'm going to turn that light on. And then we're like, oh my God, that's what's happening in my life. Yeah, to kind of rewind a little bit, can motherhood cause depression and anxiety? Yes, absolutely it can, because we look at the hormone shifts, we look at sleep deprivation, we look at any traumas that were experienced during pregnancy, labor and delivery.
Speaker 2:Or if baby had to go to the NICU, was it a preterm delivery? Is it a pregnancy, post miscarriage, things like that, where we are going to be more hypervigilant. We feel like if we're not hypervigilant, something bad will happen. That is anxiety. And then we look at I'm not good enough. So this is where depression, anxiety, kind of come together a little bit, where we feel like we're not the mom that we're supposed to be. We feel like we're falling short on things, and so that's the anxiety of you're not good enough. You're not good enough, hey, you're not meeting this really high expectation. Well, then the depression kicks in and it's like you know what? I'm not a good mom. My baby would be better if I made an adoption plan for them and things of that nature.
Speaker 2:And so yes, motherhood can create anxiety and depression that you never thought was there before.
Speaker 1:And rage. And then you know you have postpartum psychosis that is directly correlated with birth, right, and so that's something that she did nothing to cause completely hormonal imbalance, medical emergency. But it was fascinating to see you know, and I always thought, you know, do you do these questionnaires? And in Previa, and I know in your practice, we always ask about, hey, what happened before birth, what happened before you got pregnant? Did you have anxiety, did you have depression, or did your family have that? And, to your point, you may have experienced anxiety before in your life, but you may not have really realized, or it could have been manageable, or it could be like a test anxiety or a workplace anxiety, right, or I was depressed after my grandma died or my mother died, right, right, and it's like you can correlate situational. And then you have pregnancy, which we see. You know, to this date, depression during pregnancy is our most downloaded episode, right, and we are almost at a million episodes of downloads. So that is again something that knocks people off their boots instantly, absolutely Well.
Speaker 2:And again we look at that huge hormone shift and you know I don't know about other moms, but when I had just that nausea that just was constant, it was almost limiting of what I could do, and so things that I used to be able to do pre-pregnancy my nausea limited me. Well, that was discouraging. And that can lead into a depression.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think, going back to you know, the masking of ADHD. How does women, you see, typically mask it?
Speaker 2:Oh goodness. So we kind of see this in a variety of different ways. You see a lot of women who really overachieve with ADHD and so like they do a great job, especially in school. I think that's a great place to start is like they actually make A's and B's like, and they are exhausted by the end of the day.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like come, three, three, 30,. That kid is exhausted, they're irritable. There's nothing that you can really do to fix that. And you keep thinking what is wrong with my kid? Why do they have such an anger problem? But they're perfect at school. Well, it's because they feel like they're under a magnifying glass at school the whole time and that they have to make these A's and B's because if they don't, they're again this quote unquote problem child. And they're not. But they are just utilizing every last ounce of their mental and physical and emotional energy to do well at school, to maintain these social norms, to maintain these academic norms. By the time they get home, they're tapped.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They're 1000% tapped out and for a small kid they don't really understand how to put that into words.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They don't know how to tell you that they really just need some downtime to decompress, to get themselves together. You know, and that's why I'm a big fan of once your kids get home from school, if it's possible, get them a snack and let them have 30 minutes of screen time. I know there's a lot of like, controversy and conflict over screen time. 30 minutes is not going to harm your baby's brain. Yeah, because they need that downtime. They're exhausted. They have performed essentially all day for their teachers and their peers and all of this stuff. They need a chance to just veg out, just like we, as adults, need that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what about anxiety? Looking like ADHD, right, like is anxiety and high performing or how performer anxiety driven people? I think that gets kind of messy for people.
Speaker 2:It does Well. And one thing I tell a lot of clients is depression, anxiety and ADHD can be like a braid of hair. They can all three coexist. We may not know what the foundation is, okay. We may not know what our foundational problem is, but when one is good, typically all three are good. When one is bad, all three are bad.
Speaker 2:They definitely impact each other and influence each other. So anxiety in motherhood can be that hypervigilance of I have to stay on my baby, I have to do this, I have to make sure it's this. Well, when we're hypervigilant, we're actually in fight or flight. So think about that. We are hypervigilant, we're kind of keyed up With that, we're going to be more sensitive to sounds. Why wouldn't we be? Because we're paying more attention to things. So again the analogy of your cooking supper. You've got the exhaust fan on for the steam, the dog is barking. Your kids are like I'm hungry, I'm hungry, or they're fighting over something. Then your husband's like hey, what are we having for supper? And you're like too much, because I'm also having to make sure that my kids don't burn themselves on the stove or that they don't hurt each other because they're fighting over the TV show or whatever it is.
Speaker 2:And you're like I can't do all of this because, you're already keyed up, and we can throw some of that type A in the mix there too. If my kids don't get a home cooked meal and if we don't get homework done on time, then everything is just a failure.
Speaker 2:Yeah then everything is just a failure, yeah, and so when we have that kind of humming in our brain too, and then we have other things clamoring for our attention, it's just too much. And that's where we can see a little bit of that anger, irritability and rage come out, where it could be that your husband says, hey, will you get me a glass of water, which is not wrong, you know, it's really not that big of a deal, but that could be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I more times than not see myself turning down things. I like my son was watching something the other day and I was like, buddy, that should be a volume. And he's like, mom, it's 10. I can, I can. And I'm like, ooh, no, be a volume. And he's like, mom, it's 10, I can, I can. And I'm like, oh, no, you know, that's like yeah. Or I remember when they were little, those toys with those horrible sounds and flashing lights that I was just like what are we even doing?
Speaker 1:um with our lives, with this too much yeah, and I tell people this I'm like I never remember pre-baby sarah being bothered by tv too loud or getting in the car sometimes and being like my kids will want to listen to like moana or they'll want to listen to a soundtrack, and I'm just like, oh, and you know, like the volumes, and so I think that was a shock to me of my system of like what is happening now that I'm like motherhood did cause that cause. Sensory overload caused it, you know. But then you're right. Then it very much progresses to irritability, to the kid can be to rage. You can see yourself snapping more. Your patience is less. Then you do kind of almost like go in this cycle of oh my gosh, I overreacted there, I snapped at him, I did this, you know, we ruined dinner, you know, and you circle.
Speaker 2:Right, absolutely. And you know, one thing to remember too is when our brains are hypervigilant and when we are up in that fight or flight, any little thing is what's going to set the brain off, because the brain is trying to be aware of danger and those sounds can impede something that is dangerous. So part of it is like shh, I need to make sure that I can be aware of all things at all time.
Speaker 1:I mean, your brain thinks we're primal cavewomen out listening, for you know the saber-toed tigers that are going to come for our children and essentially like back to those core days. It's like I'm cooking dinner I don't need you to bring to take me to survival mode. Correct, but it automatically goes that level. And it's how do you? We just covered this before, but for any new listeners, tell us some tricks of how to get out of fight or flight.
Speaker 2:So one of my favorites is a cold pack technique, and so you get anything that is cold or wet, so it can be water bottle Coke, can. It could be frozen veggies out of the freezer. It can be a cold pack. It could be a wet paper towel. Ideally, I really want you putting it on the pulse point on your neck, just because that's going to be a little bit of a shock to the central nervous system. Bring that heart rate down, kind of chill out your brain for just a second. Or you can put it on the back of your neck that's always a really good one. Pulse points on your wrist. With that, just try to get some deep breaths, because when we get oxygen to our brain, that slows down our thought patterns.
Speaker 2:You know another thing that I saw the other day that was really good.
Speaker 2:Talked about how when we feel so frustrated, when we feel so on edge, we just need to go into the bathroom, we need to go in the next room and we need to get like a towel and just wring that towel kind of get some of that out in there. It talks about how you kind of faux scream into that towel. You wring your hands, things like that you give yourself a couple of minutes to kind of physically get some of that stress out and you say, okay, now I can go back in, like now I'm able to do those things, and with my kids. You know, when I noticed that I'm starting to get frustrated for whatever reason it is, I'll say you know what? I'm getting frustrated, I need to take some breaths. Why don't you take some breaths with me? That way I'm practicing it for my kids and they understand, like I'm not perfect but I need that decompression so that I don't lose my temper and if they take that breath with me kind of brings them down too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we have some really great episodes. You guys want to go back to the toolbox, tips, or Whitney goes into full blown therapy mode. I love to say, if she takes her therapy and she teaches us a lot of therapy techniques, that she teaches her clients, that's really good, whitney. This was a really great episode. And I think the next step for listeners if it's starting to resonate like Ooh, you know, I've seen that, I've wondered about ADHD, I've wondered about anxiety, I wonder about why I'm having this kind of snapping rage the next step for them would be to talk to someone, a professional.
Speaker 1:Finding a therapist would be, you know, amazing maternal mental health, therapist, psychology Today that's a great spot to look. You can filter to kind of what type of therapist you want. Postpartum Support International has a certification. That's great for therapists. You know, if you're pregnant, talk to your OB, postpartum OB, if you have a primary care provider. But really working with a therapist because in a short episode like this we cannot for everybody drill down to the core root causes or whatever signs and symptoms would be but if you at least start looking inward and not in seeing patterns in yourself, unlike what you said, I know my children do things and bring up things, that it's like a mirror to myself, and it's a great time to just get curious about your own thoughts and feelings.
Speaker 2:Right how you process the world around you it's.
Speaker 1:You know the self-work is hard, but being aware and often saying hey, I'm going to take that first step is usually the hardest and then after that, it gets easier.
Speaker 2:It does, and just remember, vulnerability is uncomfortable, but that doesn't make it bad.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I love that. That's a great way to end. Okay, listeners, thank you so much. We'll be back with you guys next week, see ya. Maternal mental health is as important as physical health. The Preview Alliance podcast was created for and by moms dealing with postpartum depression and all its variables, like anxiety, anger and even apathy. Hosted by CEO founder Sarah Parkhurst and licensed clinical social worker, whitney Gay, each episode focused on specific issues relevant to pregnancy and postpartum. Join us and hear how other moms have overcome mental health challenges, as well as access, tips and suggestions on dealing with your own challenges as moms. You can also browse our podcast library and listen to previous episodes at any time. Please know you're not alone on this journey. We're here to help.