The Help

Sitting on the couch with the psychologist across from me, re-telling my birthing story again with tears streaming down my face, I began to wonder if I would ever get over what had happened. Every time I went there I was asked to tell my story. I get it now that she was trying to de-sensitize the experience for me. It just wasn’t working and definitely wasn’t helping. I was caught in a spin cycle, just like that of a washing machine – going round and round, faster and faster. I had no exit strategy, no way of getting out or escaping the feelings that engulfed me whenever I was taken back to that life-changing experience.

Whenever I thought about it, it would dredge up feelings of failure, helplessness, hopelessness, being out of control, not being perfect, not being good enough. These feelings made my heart feel heavy, my chest tight and then the sadness would set in, like a tonne of bricks weighing on my shoulders.  I felt trapped. I loved my baby. I hated what had happened when she was brought into the world. I just couldn’t move on from that.

I realise now I had no control over what happened with the way she arrived into the world. I had a choice though as to how I responded and the meaning I gave the event. Back then I didn’t realise. I was naïve, ignorant and uneducated.

The psychologist t told me one day she didn’t believe I had post-natal depression. It never sat well with me any way. She had another label for me, post –traumatic stress disorder. On one hand  it was a relief, on the other I was still entrapped by a  “label” of what I was going through.

Once I accepted it was post-traumatic stress, I was able to move on a little. Our sessions then took on a different focus, and began delving into my relationship with my partner. He couldn’t understand why I could just snap out of it, why I couldn’t get over it, why I couldn’t just enjoy being a mother and being home all day with our beautiful girl. We started to argue. Constantly. Whenever we were together, we’d end up arguing. Me out of pure frustration of not being able to communicate what was happening and him out of pure frustration that he came home to a helpless mess.

Part of me was jealous of the fact that he got to go out into the big wide world every day and talk to real people who didn’t pee or poo on him, who didn’t vomit between his breasts just as he was about to head out the door. I was envious that he didn’t have to worry about when baby last ate, how much she ate, when she was going to sleep, how he was going to soothe her cry. I longed to be connected with the real world again.

As I discussed my relationship with the psychologist, the struggles we were having, the issues with communication, me feeling like my actions were controlled by him, she began to wonder if he had narcissistic personality disorder. Another label pulled from the endless pot of labels that seemed to come from the health professionals. She’d never even met him. I must have told a great story about him though for him be to sporting his very own label. I’ve never told him about that.  He probably would have forbid me from going back to her.

For the longest time I believed that how I felt was in direct proportion to how my partner was treating me or how I perceived him to be treating me. I thought my happiness was hinged on him being in a good mood or a bad mood. Flicking back through my memories and other previous relationships, it was a strategy that I had always run. I had no idea that I was in control of my feelings or that I actually chose how I wanted to feel.

Being happy for me was always tied to being in a relationship with a guy where I felt worthy and wanted. I had to be in a relationship to experience happiness. When I realised this much later on and realised how much control and choice I actually had when it came to mastering my emotions and being in charge of my own life, it was like discovering Pandora’s Box had been hidden under my bed for the past 30 years.

I couldn’t believe it! Who’d have known that I had the innate ability to make myself happy or sad or good or bad or elated or dreaded or ecstatic or depressed? That I could choose the meanings that I assigned to events in my life. Who knew that I had the power and the ability to move beyond circumstances and that my happiness in life was directly in proportion to how I felt about myself. Its been the discovery of this power that has led me on a journey of learning more about human behaviour, what makes us tick, how we choose our beliefs, how we communicate with the rest of the world and has ignited a passion from within to help others discover their Pandora’s Box and open up a world of endless possibilities for themselves.