Postpartum Identity Crisis? Here’s How Postpartum Anxiety Therapy Can Help
Having a baby can feel like being dropped into a foreign country without a map. Everything is new - from the way your body feels, to how you spend your time, to how you and your partner communicate, and what occupies your thoughts. You're expected to instinctively know how to care for a newborn with no clear set of rules to follow, and your own needs and identity feel like an afterthought. This emotional upheaval often includes postpartum anxiety (thanks to stress, sleep deprivation and hormones), and an intense shift in how you see yourself.
When you’re dealing with postpartum anxiety, your mind can feel totally foreign to you. You're trying to be present, but intrusive worries keep hijacking your attention. The lack of sleep isn’t allowing you to see things clearly, the hormones are making you feel like everything is a catastrophe, and the sense of panic you feel when your baby cries makes your body go into fight-or-flight. One moment you're watching your baby sleep peacefully, the next your chest tightens with fear over what might go wrong.
At the same time, you may find yourself questioning your place in the world. "Who am I now?" is a question many new moms wrestle with. Even for moms who are recovering from the birth of their second, third or fourth child - postpartum anxiety can take hold, and your identity can come into question. Maybe the intense love you feel for your older child makes you feel like you are abandoning them by caring for a second. Maybe you worry that you’ve disrupted the balance in your family by having another child, and that things will never be the same. These fears can feel very real when you are in the grips of postpartum anxiety, and it can be hard to imagine that the panic, dread or regret will ever end.
Therapy can be a lifeline to moms going through a postpartum identity crisis - working with a trained postpartum therapist can help you build tools to manage your body’s anxiety response, cope with intrusive and catastrophic thinking, and make sense of your new role. In this post, we’ll explore how identity and role adjustments contribute to postpartum anxiety, common ways in which moms are impacted by postpartum identity shifts, and how postpartum anxiety therapy can help you feel like yourself again.
Understanding Postpartum Anxiety - Signs and Symptoms
Let’s start by talking about exactly what postpartum anxiety is. Postpartum anxiety is incredibly common, yet often misunderstood. Unlike the "baby blues" (changes in your mood or anxiety that often improve within 2 weeks after giving birth), postpartum anxiety lingers for much longer and can interfere with your daily functioning. Some moms don’t experience postpartum anxiety right away, and it can be several months before the sleep deprivation and hormonal changes accumulate to really impact you. Sometimes changes like returning to work, a partner returning to work or other life stressors can trigger the onset of postpartum anxiety.
Here are some signs of postpartum anxiety that are important to watch out for:
Racing, intrusive or obsessive thoughts, especially about your baby’s safety or worst-case scenario outcomes
Constant worry that feels uncontrollable
Trouble sleeping, even when your baby is sleeping
Feelings of dread, or the overwhelming feeling that something bad is going to happen
Irritability, agitation or lashing out at your partner
Physical symptoms like a racing heart, nausea, dizziness, or chest tightness
Feeling the pressure to manage it all on your own, or that you will be judged for asking for help
Struggling or avoiding to leave the house, worrying that something bad will happen or you won't’ be able to manage your baby on your own
Wanting to control everything about your baby’s care, and struggling to let others (even your partner) take charge
Trouble focusing
Panic attacks
Some moms describe it as feeling like there's always something urgent to do, and being unable to relax. You may find yourself checking on your baby constantly, avoiding certain places or people for fear something will go wrong, or feeling a tight knot of worry in your stomach from the moment you wake up.
These reactions are not signs of failure - they’re your brain’s attempt to stay in control and protect you after a major life upheaval. But you don’t have to stay stuck in this fight-or-flight state of crisis. Postpartum anxiety therapy provides you the tools to calm your nervous system, find peace in your mind and trust yourself as a parent.
Making Sense of Your Identity in Motherhood
“I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
“I feel like I’ve disappeared.”
“I miss who I used to be before I was a mom.”
“Am I a bad mom for wanting time away from my baby?”
“My partner still gets to be themselves, but I don’t.”
“I feel guilty for not feeling totally fulfilled by motherhood.”
“What’s wrong with me, why don’t I feel more grateful?”
In the years leading up to having a baby, many women’s sense of identity comes from their hobbies, values, friendships, careers and passions. As we move through adolescence into adulthood, many of us evolve from trying on different “hats” to feeling more confident in who we are and what matters to us. Becoming a mother can totally upend that sense of confidence and certainty in your identity that you have worked so hard to achieve throughout early adulthood - a full on postpartum identity crisis.
Thoughts like the ones listed above are completely normal, but can still feel jarring when we are holding ourselves to the standards of a culture that idealizes motherhood and tends to provide a one-dimensional expectation of mothering as pure bliss. In reality, you may be grieving the loss of your pre-parent life and freedoms, even as you are falling deeply in love with your new baby. The self-sacrifice and demands of early motherhood can leave you feeling like many of the pre-baby parts of yourself have been totally erased.
It is normal to feel both ways at once - you can hold love for your baby, gratitude for the opportunity to become a parent and grief for your old self all at the same time. Postpartum therapy helps you to make sense of these complicated feelings, and rebuild a sense of identity that bridges who you were with who you are becoming as a parent.
5 Causes of the Postpartum Identity Crisis
A changing identity is one of the unavoidable parts of the postpartum transition to motherhood. For many moms, this change in identity can bring up a lot of anxiety - but there are ways in which moms can find fulfillment from their new identities as well. Let’s look at some common causes of the postpartum identity crisis that many new moms experience:
New Caregiver Role
Before becoming a mom, you probably made most of your decisions in life pretty independently - choices about how you would spend your time and money, career choices, and what relationships you chose to put energy into. Many new moms struggle with the loss of autonomy postpartum, as all of a sudden so many of their choices revolve around caring for someone else. Your time no longer feels like your own - things like feeding and nap schedules, bedtime routines and general childcare can feel like they take priority over showers and social plans. You may find yourself feeling pressure to choose jobs not based on how fulfilling they are but how flexible the schedule is, how close to a daycare they are or if they provide the option to work from home. You and your partner may be constantly negotiating time for yourselves with trading off with childcare, and each feeling like you’re getting the short end of the stick. Your daily rhythm inevitably shifts from self-focused to baby-focused, which can leave you feeling like you’ve totally disappeared into your role as a caretaker.
Disconnection to Professional Role (Temporarily or Longer-Term)
For many women, their professional life is a huge part of their identity - work can provide a strong sense of structure, value and achievement in life. With work on the back burner, whether it be temporarily or longer-term, new moms may struggle to find that same sense of accomplishment and confidence, especially as they are struggling to understand the ins and outs of a totally new, foreign role. Women who are used to feeling confident and self-assured in their careers may all of a sudden find themselves feeling insecure or overwhelmed with their new responsibilities in motherhood. They may struggle with “mom guilt” - feeling guilty for being away from their baby when they are at work, and at the same time guilty for not being as fully dedicated to work as they were before having a child. New moms may struggle to make sense of new, existential concerns - feeling as if their pre-baby careers no longer feel as fulfilling now that they have become a parent. While moms are staying home with their children, they may also struggle to have boundaries in their new role and miss the structure of punching in and out at a traditional 9-5.
Changing Bodies
Throughout pregnancy and childbirth, our bodies show us the incredible feats that they are capable of. We watch our bodies change and grow, stretch and sag,push and pull, all for the purpose of creating new life. After childbirth our bodies are forever changed - they don’t just revert to their pre-pregnancy selves, despite the societal pressures that seem to expect them to. Our bodies continue to heal and serve new purposes (like feeding, nursing and comforting). Some of the changes may be temporary or permanent: stretch marks, loose skin, breast changes, weight gain and scarring. Some women grieve for their pre-pregnancy bodies, while others marvel at all their body has accomplished. It is ok to make space for both sets of feelings. Women’s relationship to their sexuality can also change postpartum - hormonal changes, physical recovery, postpartum anxiety or depression and fatigue can all impact sexual functioning and desire. Some women may feel “touched out” after caring for their infant’s needs all day, or struggle to connect to feeling sexual in their new body.
Shifting Social Relationships
Becoming a mother can impact not only your relationship to yourself, but your relationship to significant others in your life as well. Motherhood can provide opportunities to strengthen bonds, create new challenges or shift dynamics in unexpected ways. In your relationship with your partner, parenthood can provide opportunities to grow closer together as a co-parent team, while also creating more conflict, tension or distance as you navigate new responsibilities and make space for a new person in your family. Sleep deprivation, division of labor and less time for intimacy can all put a strain on your relationship. Relationships with friends may also shift as the time you have to put into these relationships decreases. You may find yourself focusing more energy on the friendships that you find most rewarding and supportive in this phase of life, while letting less fulfilling relationships fade into the background. Shifting relationship patterns can also emerge in the postpartum period with family and in-laws - feeling gratitude and emotional closeness with supportive and involved family members, or distant and resentful of family members who are intrusive, disrespectful of boundaries or self-involved.
New Priorities and Values
Having a baby can shift your entire framework for what brings you meaning in life. During the postpartum period and beyond, becoming a mother begins to shift your priorities and values in many ways. Time becomes more sacred. You begin thinking longer term to plan for your child’s future, not just your own. You may feel pulled between wanting to make sacrifices for your child while also preserving your own wellbeing. Your definition of success may shift, and you may find you are more focused on finding fulfillment internally with your family than external achievement. Every woman experiences these shifts differently as they adjust to motherhood.
Postpartum Anxiety in Your New Role
Postpartum anxiety can connect directly to (and be heightened by) all of these confusing shifts in your identity. Pressure to be perfect as a mom may lead to obsessive checking, overthinking and second-guessing every decision, or struggling with crippling guilt. Our connection to our identities and values grounds us, and coping with postpartum hormonal changes, new responsibilities and sleep deprivation while making such major identity shifts can leave us feeling very untethered. The ways that you used to cope in your pre-baby life (throwing yourself into work, having a fun night out with friends or planning a relaxing vacation) may no longer be available. All of these changes can leave new moms feeling anxious, overwhelmed and unsure of where to turn for support.
How Postpartum Therapy Can Help You Find Your Identity After Becoming a Mom
This is where postpartum therapy comes in. Postpartum therapy can be an invaluable tool in helping overwhelmed moms coping with postpartum anxiety, identity changes and more feel grounded and whole again. Let’s look at some ways that therapy can help you find your identity in this new chapter of life and feel less anxious and overwhelmed:
Postpartum therapy can help you put a name to your experience
So many women who are struggling postpartum wonder “what’s wrong with me?” “Why can’t I just get it together like everyone else?” Working with a trained postpartum therapist who can educate you about the normal ways our brains and bodies respond to becoming mothers can help you to feel less “crazy” and less alone.
Postpartum therapy will give you tools to feel more in control of your anxiety
Working with a therapist who is trained in postpartum anxiety therapy will help give you cognitive, mindfulness and somatic (body-based relaxation) tools to help you take your anxiety out of the driver’s seat and feel more like yourself again.
Postpartum therapy will give you space to explore your identity and values
Adjusting to motherhood brings up so many conflicting feelings about our identity, values and even existential concerns. Some of these feelings may bring up shame or guilt, or the pain of feeling like a “bad mom”. Working with a postpartum therapist gives you a safe space to explore all of these feelings and values, learn to allow them to exist without judgment and work through your postpartum identity crisis to create a new identity that makes sense of where you are right now.
Postpartum therapy will help you go easier on yourself
New moms can be our own harshest critics - even if everyone around us is telling us we’re doing a great job, we can still be plagued by self-doubt and negative thinking patterns, especially for women who are used to holding themselves to standards of perfection in other areas of life. Postpartum therapy can help you learn tools to meet yourself where you are right now, hold compassion for all the challenges you have faced and celebrate your wins, no matter how small.
Postpartum therapy will give you communication tools to navigate relationship changes
Navigating relationships that are impacted by becoming a parent can be one of the most challenging parts of adapting to motherhood. Working together with a trained postpartum therapist can help you learn tools to effectively communicate with your partner and other loved ones, set boundaries and learn to collaborate and compromise so that everyone can feel heard. You and your partner are on the same team, and therapy can help give you the tools to work together instead of against each other.
When to Seek Postpartum Anxiety Therapy
It can be hard to know when things are “bad enough” to start therapy. Instead of thinking of therapy as a solution to “fix” your problems, it can be helpful to think of therapy as a tool that can help support you before things get to the “crisis” stage. That’s not to say therapy isn’t important when you are in a crisis, but it’s also incredibly helpful proactively. If you start to notice any of the following signs of postpartum anxiety, it may be time to reach out for support:
Struggling to control your worries, rumination or negative thoughts
Feeling irritable, agitated or on edge often
Feelings of dread, or a fear that something “bad” will happen
Struggling to fall or stay asleep, even when your baby is sleeping (especially from to racing thoughts)
Experiencing a postpartum identity crisis - feeling disconnected from yourself or unsure how to bridge the gap between your competing identities
Physical symptoms such as muscle aches, headaches, shortness of breath, stomach problems or racing heart with no clear cause
Feeling overwhelmed or inadequate as a mom, or like an imposter
Panic attacks or frequent crying
Taking the First Step Towards Postpartum Counseling
You deserve to feel supported, seen, and empowered in your motherhood journey. Postpartum therapy helps you build that bridge back to yourself - not by undoing the changes that come with motherhood, but by integrating them in a way that feels whole.
If you're a mom in Denver, Boulder, Greenwood Village or throughout Colorado experiencing postpartum anxiety, struggling with a postpartum identity crisis or simply feeling in over your head - I see you, and I invite you to get in touch. I would love to answer any questions you may have about how therapy can help support you in this very special season of life. You are not alone, and help is on the way when you’re ready.
Other Services at Root to Rise Therapy:
Other mental health services at Root to Rise Therapy include Therapy for Anxiety, Therapy for Perfectionism, Therapy for People-Pleasing, Cultural Identity Counseling, ADHD Therapy, Counseling for Moms and Postpartum Counseling. I see clients located inColorado, New York and New Jersey. Contact me to learn more about how I can help you overcome anxiety and reclaim your life!
