"I'm going out of my mind!"...And where to go next.

The intensity of postpartum leaves most of us feeling like we're "going out of our minds," with surging hormones, lack of sleep, lack of support, low energy, and, in some instances, diagnosed perinatal mood disorders. But what if "going out of your mind" is an opportunity in disguise? I know, I know—in our Western culture, feeling crazy would never be regarded as even a remotely helpful thing.

But what if it could be? What if there could be purpose to the madness?

In many tribal cultures, when some individuals begin to show signs of being out of their mind they enter the training fields of shaman, guru, wise woman, healer, visionary, and seer (watch this TedTalk with Phil Borges: Psychosis or Spiritual Awakening). Ancient cultures understood that spiritual awakening doesn't occur in our minds. In stepping OUT of our mind we are freed up, able to move into our bodies, and therefore our emotions. Once there, the healing work begins—clearing out space for greater clarity and insight. We may begin to see more than one reality, or reality from a different perspective, and with mentoring, guidance and integration can not only help ourselves expand and grow but can help others do so, as well.

Unfortunately, in our modern culture, rather then pulling these individuals into the center of the community and showering them with support, education, mentoring, and guidance we too often push them to the outskirts, isolate them, sedate them, and wonder why they aren't integrating back into society.

Good things happen when we merge ancient and modern, East and West. I believe there is a way to learn from our global ancestors while also incorporating medicine, diagnostic processes, and treatment plans.

My Background

My spiritual awakening came hand in hand with mental health challenges. I was raised by a verbally and emotionally abusive father. My teenage years were defined by self-loathing, poor body image, and the suppression of my emotions and sexuality. I exhibited overwhelming symptoms of sexual abuse and experienced terrifying panic attacks. On multiple occasions, in different social settings—a birthday party, a sleepover, hanging out with friends—I felt as if I were being sucked into a dark void. My heart would race, and my breath would catch, like a heavy anvil pressed on my chest pulling me deeper and deeper down.

Then there was that voice in my head that whispered: Nobody wants you here. You could disappear and no one would notice.

Upon the birth of my first child, at age 23, my mental health hit rock bottom. I felt as infantile and helpless as the baby in my arms. They shouldn't leave me alone with her—I can't be trusted. I don't know what I'm doing. How am I supposed to care for her? Who is going to care for me? How am I supposed to help her grow up into a well-adjusted, secure, confident adult, when I don't know how to be one myself? And that all too familiar voice was back, reminding me that I didn't deserve a spot on this planet, that some other woman would be a much better mother to my daughter than me. I was lost in an abyss—triggered to all my past trauma—sobbing, raging, and hiding from the world.

Years later, I came to a profound realization: my postpartum experience, however harrowing and confusing, had changed me, and as far as I could tell it was for the better. How did that make sense? I didn't fully understand how but I felt lighter, freer, and more in my body than I had ever been before. It was as if all the messiness and falling to pieces was a real-life chrysalis. Caterpillars, after all, turn into a mushy-stew before their elements recombine into a winged creature of flight.

The Yellow Wallpaper

A chilling exploration into postpartum mental health is the short story The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, written in the 19th century, and it's both haunting and inspiring.

Believed to be semi-autobiographical, it tells the story of a newly postpartum mother whose been prescribed "The Rest Cure," forced into months of solitude, separated from her baby, and has become a prisoner of sorts in an old neglected mansion. She is confined to the old nursery upstairs, with bars over the window and walls plastered with peeling yellow wallpaper that grows progressively more animated and ghoulish as her confinement continues. In time, the wallpaper takes on characteristics of a woman trapped in the wall.

What a profound representation of the postpartum mother's psyche; the woman she described as trying to escape is a reflection of herself seeking to escape, from the room, her isolation, her life, her pain, and her patriarchal culture. Paradoxically, the wallpaper phantom, acting as a mirror, was the only one actually helping her. The phantom woman sat with her, listened to her, watched over her. In the end, it showed her exactly what she needed—to be cared for, witnessed, and to be set free. Those symptoms were her advocate, and her way back to sanity (if only those closest to her, including the professionals, had understood that). The answers were inside of her. The mania waved its hands in the air, animating itself in the wallpaper patterns to get her attention. To invite integration. To help her heal.

Your body knows what it needs. The prescription is inside of you. So often, those voices in our head are telling us exactly what we need to heal. By way of example, consider some of these negative thoughts and the "root awareness" they reveal:

"You don't deserve to be her mother." —> I have deep feelings of unworthiness

"Your baby would be better off without you." —> I feel wildly under-qualified for motherhood

"If I just shake him hard enough maybe he'll stop crying!" —> I'm over the edge of my limit

My dark thought? The voice that told me over and over again that no one would notice if I disappeared? It revealed the root awareness of my own lack of self-love. It's not that the voice or thought was "right"—that I was unloveable—but that I had come to believe it was right. It was a distortion that had grown so big and so disproportionate that it spilled out of my mind in order for me to see it so that I could do something about it. Dark, scary, bad, awful thoughts exist, and though they're deeply unpleasant to look at they demand acknowledgement. They won't be ignored.

What's more is the root awareness can then be transformed into an action plan:

I have deep feelings of unworthiness —> I'm going to reach out to someone I love and admire and ask them what it is they love about me.

I feel wildly under-qualified for motherhood —> I'm going to reach out to other mothers that are a few steps of ahead of me on this path and ask them for guidance and support.

I'm over the edge of my limit —> I am asking for reinforcements right now. I need help/sleep/a break and I'm willing to ask for it.

Thankfully, that overpowering voice got my attention, just like the wallpaper got the attention of our tormented heroine. Instead of ignoring it, wishing it would go away, or pretending it didn't exist, I let myself listen to it and begin to remedy the root awareness (which is different from acting on it, especially if the voice or thought involves self-harm or harm to others). Instead of shaming myself for feeling those feelings, I made space for those feelings to exist, like a visitor in Rumi's "Guest House."

Our psyche doesn't give up easily, you see, and it finds a way to restore wholeness, going to extreme lengths to do so, even going outside of our mind to flag us down. If it wasn't getting our attention on the inside, maybe we'll start to listen to it on the outside. We can begin to respond to our dark thoughts in the same way (as Thich Nhat Hanh teaches) that we respond to an infant's cry—we don't push the baby away, but pull it to our breast, calm it, pacify it, and seek to meet its needs. In time, that little hurt baby starts to grow up and integrate back.

When we learn to listen to our symptoms, when we ask it, "What's your message for me?" that we begin to heal, that we move out of victimhood and into empowerment. That's the opportunity, of mental illness—it's showing us what's preventing us from waking up.

A Love Story

Once there were two lovers, so entwined, so intimate, so unified, that there was no distinction between them. They were one in body, mind, and soul. But when Brahman, the great Hindu GOD, uttered the word "Ohm," it's vibration spread throughout all time and space and caused these lovers to separate, becoming two distinct beings: Shiva (the masculine aspect) and Kundalini Shakti (the feminine aspect).

These two lovers did not forget the bliss of non-duality, however, and craved it in the depths of their soul. They ached to be reunited with their mate to experience wholeness once again. Kundalini Shakti came to reside in the sacrum, at the root chakra, at the base of the spine, while Shiva came to reside in the crown at the top of the head. They were separated by an entire universe, it seemed, on either end of the backbone galaxy.

But Kundalini Shakti would not be kept from her lover. As soon as she was awakened, she eagerly set out in search of Shiva, traveling up the spine until joining with him in spiritual ecstasy.

Does this story feel familiar? It's the universal story, like Adam & Eve, Yin & Yang, the Hero Twins, or Mother Earth & Father Time. It's the story of duality.

This Hindu creation myth is my favorite lens through which to view PPD and PPA. Childbirth is the greatest manifestation of kundalini energy, of feminine creation, and it arouses this energy out of slumber. For some, this can feel intensely blissful. For most, however, it can feel overwhelming, threatening, vulnerable, unsettling, even terrifying—particularly if you weren't prepared for it. In fact, many of the well-documented symptoms of kundalini awakening are remarkably similar to symptoms of childbirth, such as mood swings, anxiety, depression, or mania. Kundalini Shakti's persona, described as fierce, fiery, temperamental, and powerful means she doesn't let anything stop her from reaching her goal. And in this story, unity with Shiva is her goal.

So, what if you're someone like me who had lived a whole lifetime of suppressing emotional trauma? Well, all of that "stuff" got stored somewhere in between my root and crown chakras, absorbed into my cells, barricading the pathway that Kundalini Shakti would need to travel. Upon giving birth, Kundalini Shakti woke up, and in order to find her way to my crown she pushed that junk up into my face, forcing me to SEE and DEAL with it.

This was revelatory! Instead of feeling victimized by my postpartum depression or confused by my surfacing past trauma, I was able to view it through an entirely different lens. Shakti woke up. She came like an uncontrollable wild fire, burning and purging acres of suppressed “stuff” from my soul. The flames burned violently and I could hold nothing back: childhood traumas, suppressed grief and rage, profound insecurities, and intense feelings of loneliness and isolation. But eventually, the fires that had burned so fiercely died down and a sense of supreme lightness replaced it. Wildfires are ferocious, but they clear away the dead, rotting debris and make way for a whole new forest of growth.

If you’ve ever seen a wildfire burning, hot and out of control, what always fills the sky overhead? Thick, black smoke. And it often takes a great deal of time for the skies to clear even after the fires have died away. Those black plumes of smoke are what you see hanging over so many postpartum women, as their forest fire burns and purges their “old” self in order to make way for the “new.”

It didn't understand it then, but going up in smoke was the biggest opportunity for healing I'd ever been given. I didn't need to be saved from the experience of "going out of my mind," but I certainly needed context and support. I needed to know that my symptoms were a byproduct of my spiritual maturation.

Puberty for Mothers

When my mother started her period she thought she was dying. No one had ever told her to expect blood to come out of her vagina, so when it did she assumed the worst. Fast forward to my menarche—I had attended a puberty class for girls at my school where I was given a little hygeine kit and told what to expect. When my period arrived I wasn't necessarily excited but I knew it was normal. Recently, my only daughter experienced her menarche. I did my best as her mother to not only teach her the anatomy of her body but to treat her experience as a rite of passage into womanhood. We had a special date night where we watched the new Disney movie, "Turning Red," ate sushi, talked in the sauna, learned about moon cycles, and talked about hidden seasons in the hormonal cycle. She received a gift package not only with her period supplies but also emotional support and comfort items, like an herbal yoni steam blend, a belly salve for cramps, tea, bath bombs, organic dark chocolate, and a calendar for period tracking. Look how far we've come in only three generations of parenting! Look how my daughter's sexual puberty contrasted to my mother's and each generation has added more layers of context and support.

Entering motherhood is a pubescence of its own kind, what Dana Raphael calls matresence I like to call spiritual puberty. If no one has prepared you for spiritual puberty, you may very well think you're dying, losing yourself, and going out of your mind. What if there were classes, mentors, guides, community supporters, and educators who helped you understand spiritual puberty before it happened and were there to support you while it was happening? How different would your matresence be? Context is power. And finding purpose in the madness—acknowledging that this massive upheaval in your life is part of your maturation—changes the experience entirely.

Conclusion

When we see postpartum loved ones standing at the precipice ready to jump, we must get them to a safe place through whatever interventions are necessary: therapy, medication, community support, nourishment, and more. Better yet, let's provide these things pre-emptively so that no one finds their way to a precipace in the first place. As a culture, let's change the way we show up for postpartum humans by providing a stable chrysalis and affirming that they have a safe place in which to come undone. Let's normalize the "messy goo" phase of maternal metamorphosis, so that when they do jump, they fly.

Going out of our minds can potentially get us into our bodies, then into our emotions, and with support, eventually into integration and healing.

bhavabirth.com