Some of you will be familiar with this information, but some of you will not. This is because so much information on the causes of postnatal depression, seems to be focused on the events going on in your life being the culprit; the labour, the crying baby, the trouble with breastfeeding, lack of support, lost identity, lack of sleep, possibly a combination of all of the above - the list just keeps going on.
However, I don't believe any of these things are the actual 'cause' of postnatal depression.
Why do I say this? Because if they were the cause, then everybody who came into contact with these 'events' would experience postnatal depression. But they don't, do they?
So if it's not the events that are the cause, what is it?
The answer is BELIEFS. Everyone believes different things and interprets situations differently.
We all know that mother that seems to stay calm and unphased by the chaos that motherhood can bring. What makes her so different? Do you think she is just better at motherhood than you?
Absolutely not! The only difference between this mother and yourself is simply how she thinks about motherhood and the events going on in her life. That's it.
As children (primarily between the age of zero to seven) we are taught the kind of mindset we often keep throughout our adult lives. We learnt this mindset off the people that we are around and the information we are exposed to during this time.
There is a very physical growth of neural connections forming physical pathways in the brain that become our habitual thinking during this age group and as we take this thinking into our lives, we interpret events with this same habitual thinking. You see life through a lens of this thinking, like you are wearing glasses.
If you've learnt to continually see how everything is wrong, how you are missing out, have learnt to blame, judge, criticise (either yourself or others), get angry, feel guilty or generally view yourself as being stupid, useless or a failure, then this is generally what you will find throughout your life and through the various events that occur in your life. These are the glasses you keep wearing.
Sure the reality is that events certainly trigger the beliefs that create postnatal depression, however events do not create postnatal depression. The beliefs are already there in your brain, quite literally.
I always say that you don't have depression, you do postnatal depression. You 'have' a cold, you 'have' diabetes, you don't 'have' depression. You 'do' depression because of the way you habitually view life and this can be changed.
In fact this is why I set up the Be the Change Program to begin with. I have been where you are right now, thinking that it was my whingeing 16 month old and my crying 6 month old and all the demands that were placed on me causing my stress, but I have learnt a different way to look at things and I now feel differently. The demands are still there, but the mindset has shifted.
By joining my 4 week program I will teach you how to change this mindset, just like I did so you no longer have to 'do' postnatal depression. Because there reality is that you will always have ups and downs that occur in your life.
Stress in not caused by events, it is caused by how you perceive these events.
Have a great evening/day everyone.
Jackie
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