Postnatal Anxiety: Why You Feel On Edge (and 4 strategies to help).
You’re adjusting to being a new mum
If you’re reading this you’re likely to be sleep deprived. Your body is recovering from birth, whatever that looked like for you. You’re getting to grips with what your baby needs from you, feeling like there really should be a manual for this. You might get through the day and think ‘I haven’t done anything today’. How can such a tiny human demand so much of your time and energy?! You’re overwhelmed, hanging by a thread, and finding it hard to cope at times?
It’s perfectly valid and reasonable for you to feel this way and I felt it too in the weeks and months after birth. You’re adjusting to life as a parent. And your changing hormone levels are also likely to be impacting you. It doesn’t mean you’re not coping.
The overwhelm is our brain and body’s natural way of responding to stress. When the demands being placed on us feel like they outweigh the resources we believe we have to cope we feel anxious.
How anxiety shows up in new motherhood
Some of the things you might notice are:
Racing thoughts
Constant worry (e.g. about your baby’s safety, or that you might ‘mess up’ or be ‘found out’)
Physical tension
Irritability
Difficulty relaxing.
Finding it hard to make decisions or seeking all the possible information about something before making a decision
Seeking lots of reassurance
Avoiding certain situations that feel too overwhelming or trigger the anxiety
Checking (so you make sure you do things ‘just right’
Ruminating (Replaying every moment or decision e.g. ‘did i do that right?’ or ‘what will that other mum have thought of me’)
Scanning for dangers
Sound familiar? You’re not alone. Let me try to explain what anxiety is...
Anxiety is an emotional response to a real or perceived threat.
When we sense a threat, whether real or perceived, our brain signals our nervous system to activate. The alarm system in our brains (called the Amygdala) fires up, and s message is sent to our adrenal glands that there’s danger. Our body then responds by releasing adrenaline. This adrenaline rushing round our body leads to a whole host of physiological symptoms that we know to be anxiety or stress (e.g. heart racing, shaking, quick shallow breathing etc).
None of this is your fault. It’s the way that we as human beings have evolved with a mechanism in our bodies to keep us safe.
The symptoms we experience in our bodies are what can be called our ‘flight or flight’ response: they’re the same responses in our body that our ancestors would have experienced when they were cave men if there was immediate danger (e.g. a wild animal). Their senses would detect a threat, and then their nervous system would respond so that they’d be able to fight it (anger) or run away (anxiety).
When we become mums, our brains don’t suddenly upgrade to a “modern motherhood” version. We still run on the same ancient wiring designed to keep us safe from danger. These days, the threats look very different (a crying baby, endless to-do lists, the pressure to be perfect) and yet our nervous system reacts in exactly the same way. It doesn’t know the difference between a tiger in the wild and a sense that we’re failing or being judged. Often the threat can be related to risk of rejection from a group. The result is that many new mums live in a constant state of alert, with bodies that feel stuck in “threat” mode, even when the danger isn’t physical at all. Often we sit with the adrenaline rather than doing the fighting or running away that this physiological response was designed for.
Our brains can be tricky and it’s not your fault
Not only do we have this very primitive mechanism in our nervous systems to respond to threat, as humans we have also developed brains that enable us to hold in mind the past and the future as well as the present moment.
If you imagine a zebra who gets chased by a lion in the wild, the zebra senses the threat and runs. The lion then chases the zebra. But imagine that zebra manages to escape the lion, and then finds a patch of grass and has something to eat, or finds a place to rest. To the best of our knowledge, that zebra focusses on what it’s doing then and there, in that moment: it doesn’t sit there rumination on the past thinking, “that was close! I could have died! What if I hadn’t run so quickly? What if I’d tripped over?” or worrying about the future “What would happen if a lion finds me again?” or “Where would I run to next time?”.
As human being our brains have evolved so that we have capacity for this type of thinking. We can think about and evaluate past experience and we can think about and plan for the future. Professor Paul Gilbert calls this our ‘Tricky Brain’ (Gilbert, 2010).
It’s important to also recognised the changes that can occur in a mother’s nervous system and brains during pregnancy. Research has shown that there are a number of physiological and neurological changes that occur in our nervous systems and our brains during pregnancy and in the postnatal period that contribute to a heightened sensitivity to danger and threat. These changes make sense from an evolutionary perspective: it’s likely they have evolved in order for us as mothers to keep ourselves and our babies safe.
What can I do to help?
Helping an anxious mind isn’t about trying to switch it off, but learning to relate to it differently. Your anxious thoughts are your brain’s way of trying to protect you. It’s not your fault; it’s how we have biologically evolved.
Try to meet that anxious part of you with warmth, understanding compassion rather than criticism.
Acknowledge why it’s there and the function it plays.
Remind yourself that this is a protective mechanism in our nervous system to respond to threat, and that it can even more pronounced around the transition to parenthood.
Notice and observe the thoughts rather than struggling with them.
Be curious about your thoughts. Just because you have a thought doesn’t main you have to entertain it or engage with it. Try instead to observe the thought for what is is: a thought. Not fact. Just words or images.
Do something with the adrenaline
When our nervous systems respond to threat, sometimes we need to indicate to our brains that we are not being chased by a bear! By this I mean doing anything that ‘completes the stress cycle’ and tells our brains that the danger is over. This might be something like going for a run or shaking all the limbs of your body (imitating the physical response of ‘fight/flight’, and therefore using the adrenaline for an intended purpose.
Amelia and Emily Nagoski describe this beautifully in their book and here’s a little clip on youtube of Emily Nagoski talking about completing the stress cycle.
Signal to your nervous system that you’re safe
Deliberately slow down your breathing to activate the soothing part of your nervous system.
In therapy we can help you learn to activate and strengthen the part of your mind that is associated with soothing through imagery exercises.
I’ve recorded Paul Gilbert’s soothing rhythm breathing exercise here as a starting point:
References:
Gilbert, P (2009) The Compassionate Mind (Compassion Focussed Therapy)
Nagoski, E. & Nagoski, A. (2020)
Pearson, Lightman & Evans (2010)
Pritschet, L et al. (2024)
I’m Dr Hannah Levy. As a Clinical Psychologist specialising in parental wellbeing, I have dedicated my career to helping parents navigate their own emotional wellbeing through parenthood, offering support to adjust, cope and manage the bumps along the way.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, anxious or in need of understanding support, I’m here to help.
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