6/17/13

The black hole of Obsessive thinking

It’s exhausting - thinking about something over and over again - and over again.  And my obsessive thoughts have never been pleasant thoughts.  (It seems wholly unfair - why couldn’t I think obsessively about a good hair day, or how pretty the green leaves look against the blue sky?)  My obsessive thoughts do not inspire joy.  They are usually dark and full of what ifs.  What if I get carjacked?  What if develop a life threatening illness and have to stop working and lose my job and my house?  And these thoughts whirl in my head around and around like the wheel in the hamster cage.  

The worst of it happened right after I had my first child.  Most of us have heard of post-partum depression, but I was blindsided by post-partum anxiety.  Not long after my sweet little son was born, I started having dreadful thoughts about all of the terrible things that could happen to this vulnerable little life.  I was powerless in the grip of these thoughts.  It felt like there was a TV in my head that was turned 24 hours a day to the anxiety channel, featuring shows that illustrated all that could happen to a helpless infant.  And it wasn’t a small 9 inch black and white tv - it was a big honking 80 inch flat screen in HD.  

My brain didn’t have a choice - it had to be tuned to the anxiety channel.  For brief periods of time I could switch it over to a different channel - the comedy channel when I saw something humorous and could muster up a brief laugh; the cooking channel when I needed to conjure up a nice bland dinner that wouldn’t cause the baby to drink spicy breast milk.  I had to stay away from any news sources whatsoever.  It seems that talk shows were riddled with stories of potential hazards to babies and toddlers.  I recall one day when I turned on a famous talk show that featured tragic stories of babies that were killed by common household objects.  I turned to a different talk show that  featured stories about children who had been kidnapped and never recovered.  Those night time feedings were the worst times for me.  I had a video at the ready to pop in the moment I woke to my son’s cries of hunger.  A funny video - thank YOU Steve Martin!

The sadness for me in looking back on this time is that the anxiety- those damn obsessive thoughts - robbed me of soaking in those precious moments with my baby.  I did my best because - wow - I loved that baby more than anyone told me I would. But  it’s difficult to be in the moment when you’re locked in an endless loop of useless thoughts.  Inconveniently, my brain was set up with picture and picture. As much as I would try to focus on that baby, or something sweet and funny he had done, there was that anxiety channel running it's endless loop on the same screen.  

It was torturous - so much so that I recall with great sadness the one afternoon I sprawled out on my bed and stared up at the ceiling, and I felt locked in to my own head. I thought there was only one way out, and that was to quiet my brain forever. I considered the thought, but looked over at my sleeping baby in his cradle near the bed, and knew that I could never abandon him. So I pushed the thought to the back of my brain - in the file designated 'for further consideration if desperately needed" 

and I pushed on.  

And then one day the volume was softer, and the 80 inch high def had turned into a 9 inch with the rotary dial.  It became easier to switch channels.  And slowly my brain became quiet.  Rest became easier.  I started to realize that dangers lurked around my precious baby, but he had a protective family, a watchful mother, and family and friends who valued his little life and supported his growth.  

I believe it was about the time I started sleeping through the night and weaning him on to the bottle.

I had to think long and hard about whether I could put myself through this again - about whether there would be a second child in our family. I armed myself with information about post-partum depression and anxiety. I ignored the doctor's insistence that what I had experienced was "normal". I wonder how often women are given a pat on the back and sent away with the words, "don't worry so much....you're quite normal", even when they go home and sprawl on their beds and consider suicide as an antedote to all his "normalcy".

I did work up the courage for a second baby, and I'm so glad I did. The second post partum experience was not nearly the darkness of the first one.

To this day, the obsessive thoughts will rev up during periods of my life. Now I'm able to step back and say..."hmmm.....who turned the anxiety channel back on, and why?" It's a barometer of my overall level of stress - a signal that I need to address or change something in my life. And it's no longer a trap.