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.
