Postpartum Intrusive Thoughts: Why They Happen and How to Cope

Why do intrusive thoughts occur postpartum?

Intrusive thoughts are more common in stressful situations. One theory is that these thoughts actually alert you to possible dangers in your environment as a way to keep your baby safe! The stressful realities of early parenthood, involving increased responsibility for taking care of a new, helpless human and the fear of messing it up (i.e., harming your baby), make parents particularly susceptible to these scary thoughts. 

 

Once you experience an intrusive thought, you may assign meaning to the thought, and in this case, the meaning tends to be something along the lines of “Oh my gosh, I am a horrible person who is not fit to be a parent!”. Thinking of yourself as a terrible parent may lead to feelings of shame, fear, sadness, or guilt. To try to alleviate these feelings and protect your baby, you might end up trying to avoid the original intrusive thought, avoid the situation in which the thought occurs, and/or become overprotective of your baby in that situation. Unfortunately, these understandable behaviors often only increase the likelihood that the intrusive thought will continue to occur because they confirm that the intrusive thought was real and important! 

 

The diagram below walks through an example of this negative cycle. 

 

 

Finally, intrusive thoughts can be a symptom of other emotional struggles that are common postpartum, such as postpartum anxiety or depression. Moreover, those who experienced anxiety or depression prior to becoming a parent, may also be at increased risk for these thoughts. 

 

What can I do to decrease the frequency of my intrusive thoughts? 

For many parents, intrusive thoughts tend to peak in frequency during the first few weeks of your baby’s life, and decrease over time as your baby grows. However, for many parents, the intrusive thoughts continue long past those first few weeks. Like the diagram above suggests, often trying not to think about harming your baby leads to the opposite - it becomes all you can think about!  Additionally, it is very common for parents to have never told anyone about these thoughts. Hiding the thoughts can give them more weight and power over you. Sharing the thoughts with a trusted support person can help decrease their intensity. Instead of avoiding the thoughts, it can be helpful to approach the thoughts with the help of a trained professional. 

 

At Prospera, our experienced mental health coaches use Cognitive and Behavioral Therapy (CBT) techniques to help you develop skills to cope with these thoughts more effectively so they do not derail your time with your new baby. For example, you will learn to view the intrusive thought as separate from who you are, how you act, and what your values are - we call this thought distancing. We cannot control what thoughts pop into our head, but we can learn to control what we do with the thought once it is bouncing around in there.

 

Given that intrusive thoughts are more common when we are stressed, working to build healthy routines for exercise, sleep, and nutrition now that you have a new baby is also incredibly important. Getting support for daily tasks from a partner, family member, or friend can make these new routines possible, as can problem solving and goal setting with a mental health coach or therapist.