How To Overcome Postpartum And Perinatal Feelings Of Sadness
Everyone experiences feelings of sadness. In most cases, these feelings persist for only hours or days. Up to one-fifth of the world’s population, however, experience major depression, which causes depression that lasts for weeks, months, or longer. These emotions cause the person to develop difficulties performance in career, family, or social interactions, which can become severe.
Females who experience signs of depression after becoming pregnant may be diagnosed with perinatal depression. This condition can begin any time after pregnancy begins, or any time thereafter, until the infant is one year old. Usually, however, women who develop this problem after childbirth are diagnosed with postpartum depression.
Perinatal depression or postpartum depression results from numerous factors. These factors may be physical. For example, mothers with a personal or familial history of clinical depression or other mental health problems are very likely to experience perinatal depression or postpartum depression. Furthermore, alterations in hormone levels after childbirth, like drops in estrogen and progesterone amounts, can precipitate depression. After childbirth, thyroid problems may result in symptoms of depression such as exhaustion, irritability, and despair.
Often, mental depression is a result of psychological factors. Mothers may feel fatigued and stressed in learning to cope with the needs of the new baby. These feelings are further increased by a lack of support from family, friends, or significant other. Money problems can also assist in causing postpartum depression.
Perinatal depression and postpartum depression can have grave consequences for both the woman and her new child. Anxiety and depression can prevent a woman from bonding fully with her infant or being capable of meeting her baby’s physical and emotional requirements. This can worsen the mother’s feelings of insignificance, self-blame, and self-doubt.
The baby is also harmed by the new mother’s issues. Failure to connect with his or her mother can cause the baby to develop trust problems in personal relationships throughout life. In addition, infants who do not get their physical or emotional requirements met may fail to grow and develop normally. This condition, known as “failure to thrive,” can be very serious or even fatal to the baby.
Perinatal depression or postpartum depression can damage the entire family. The spouse or significant other can feel neglected or unable to decrease these depression symptoms. This may severely damage the relationship. Other children in the family may experience similar emotions, and develop academic or peer problems as well.
Depression harms the whole family. Therefore, mothers who develop perinatal depression or postpartum depression need to get depression treatment as quickly as possible. Several techniques are available, like talk therapy and drug therapy. Medicines, however, may be risky for nursing babies, and sometimes have erratic outcomes due to the wide hormone variations a woman experiences during these tumultuous months. Moreover, traditional counseling therapies can be lengthy and expensive.
Two techniques for dealing with depression that do not require medicines and can rapidly yield dramatically effective outcomes are hypnosis and Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP. Traditional Hypnotherapy is most effective for persons who are effortlessly hypnotized or able to accept suggestions without feeling a need to analyze or understand them. Ericksonian hypnosis is very useful for individuals who often overanalyze. These approaches allow clients to unwind and get rid of tension.
For people who are more critical or analytical thinkers, NLP is often more effective. Using this technique, trained practitioners give clients depression help by teaching them to reprogram their thought processes. This technique can, quite literally, help a person think past the depressive condition and overcome it.
Individuals can overcome depression by mastering NLP techniques like anchoring. They are coached to remember times when they felt happy and controlled their situations. Remembering the event renews these emotions. People are taught to put two fingers together while experiencing these feelings. The subconscious mind associates the touch of the two fingers with the emotions. Therefore, the finger touch becomes an “anchor.”
Then, when the client begins to become stressed, he or she triggers the anchor by touching these identical two fingers together again. This elicits emotions of self-control and generates empowerment.
Through another approach called the Flash, clients discover how to reason away negative feelings. They teach their subconscious minds to automatically substitute positive thoughts for negative ones. As negative thoughts develop, the mind automatically substitutes them for positive thoughts. After developing this strategy, clients find it nearly impossible to conjure up negative thoughts!
Summary: Perinatal depression and postpartum depression can have disastrous results for a woman and her new infant. The remainder of the family may also be profoundly affected by these conditions. Because of the possible gravity of the consequences of this illness, females with depression need to get treatment as soon as symptoms begin. Two very effective approaches that do not require medicine or enormous expenditures of time and financial resources are hypnosis and NLP.
Alan B. Densky, CH specializes in stress and depression related symptoms as an NGH certified hypnotist. He has helped thousands of clients since 1978. He offers CDs for hypnosis therapy for depression. Visit his Neuro-VISION hypnotherapy site for the hypnosis article repository, or watch his free video hypnosis collection.
- Alan B. Densky, CH
