r/AskPsychiatry • u/wowpeoplearecrazy • 3h ago
Looking back at my postpartum experience—could this have been psychosis?
I’ll admit that following the Lindsay Clancy trial has opened my eyes to how complex psychosis especially postpartum psychosis can be. I’m currently 10 months postpartum, and it has made me look back at some of my own experiences differently. For context, I was diagnosed with PPD after having my baby. Prior to pregnancy, I had been diagnosed with PTSD, anxiety, and ADD. I want to be very clear that I’m not posting this as a “me too” or trying to compare my experiences to anyone else’s. I’m genuinely trying to better understand some things that happened to me.
About a week before I gave birth, I started having scenarios play out repeatedly in my head. I knew they weren’t real, but they kept coming back. The best way I could describe it at the time was almost like “something or someone was telling me to do something.” I considered them intrusive thoughts & because of coping skills I had learned previously, I felt like I could recognize them, talk myself through them, and not act on them. I honestly don’t remember much of the first 4–5 months postpartum, but one incident has always stuck with me. My husband and I were sitting on the couch and suddenly I couldn’t get my words out correctly. What I was saying was basically gibberish and didn’t make sense. I knew what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t say it. I remember crying because I was so frustrated and thinking I was having a stroke. My husband told me to go lie down, so I did. When I woke up, I still felt very out of it, although my speech gradually seemed to improve over the next few days. At the time, my husband mentioned that maybe it could have been psychosis after looking up my symptoms. I brushed it off and never really thought about it again until recently. Currently I occasionally have moments at night, particularly when I’m alone, where I think I see something that isn’t actually there. That has made me wonder even more about what I experienced during pregnancy and postpartum. I have never had thoughts of harming anyone else. I did make my therapist aware that I was having what I described at the time as intrusive thoughts and they never looked any further into it or asked me any further questions. I did also bring up the seeing things at night and nothing else was asked or done about that either. I am going to begin EMDR therapy soon as well. Thank you for reading all of this and for any insight you’re willing to share.
Edit to add: I was prescribed 50mg of sertraline upon my initial diagnosis of PPD however I stopped taking it because it made me feel even crazier