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Hello Therapy: Mental Health Tips For Personal Growth
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Hello Therapy: Mental Health Tips For Personal Growth
#56: Navigating the NICU Journey -Trauma, Healing and Support with Dr Frankie Harrison
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What happens when the anticipated joys of parenthood take an unexpected turn into the high-stakes world of the neonatal intensive care unit?
I am joined by Dr Frankie Harrison, a clinical psychologist, who shares her personal and professional journey through the NICU experience. We discuss the profound emotional and psychological challenges that parents face when their newborns are admitted to the NICU. We touch on the raw emotions of anxiety, PTSD, and grief that often accompany this journey, underscoring the need for increased awareness and support systems for families both during their time in the NICU and as they transition home.
Highlights include:
0:09 Navigating the NICU Experience
4:13 Understanding the Impact of NICU
12:52 Coping With Lost Firsts in NICU
20:49 Navigating NICU Challenges and Beyond
This week's guest
Dr. Frankie Harrison is a clinical psychologist, NICU parent, and the co-founder of Miracle Moon and The NICU Space. Her work combines professional expertise with personal experience, supporting parents through the emotional impact of neonatal care and birth trauma. Frankie is passionate about creating spaces where parents feel seen and supported, which led to the creation of The NICU Space an online community offering resources, connection, and tailored support for NICU parents. Visit Frankie's website at miraclemoon.co.uk, or explore The NICU Space at miraclemoon.co.uk/nicu-space
Follow Frankie:
@miraclemoonuk
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The Hello Therapy podcast and the information provided by Dr Liz White (DClinPsy, CPsychol, AFBPsS, CSci, HCPC reg.), is solely intended for informational and educational purposes and does not constitute personalised advice. Please reach out to your GP or a mental health professional if you need support.
Welcome to Hello Therapy, a podcast to help you take charge of your mental health through evidence-based psychological tips and tools straight from the therapy room, so that you can live life better. Imagine finding yourself in a world you never expected, surrounded by beeping machines, unable to hold your newborn and overwhelmed with uncertainty about what comes next. This is the reality for parents whose baby requires neonatal care. Today, I'm joined by Dr Frankie Harrison, a clinical psychologist and mum who has experienced firsthand the complexities of neonatal intensive care. Together we explore the emotional challenges of the NICU journey, its impact on mental health, on parenting, and the often overlooked experiences of non-birthing partners. With both professional expertise and personal insight, frankie offers an invaluable perspective on navigating the NICU experience and its lasting effects on family life. So let's dive in.
Speaker 1Hi, frankie, thank you so much for joining me on the Hello Therapy podcast. Thank you for having me. I'm really happy to be here. I'm really excited about our chat today because I'm going to be talking about NICU and parenting and neonatal care and basically a topic that I haven't had much to do with in my professional career. So it's going to be so interesting to get your insights. But do you want to tell our listeners who you are and what you do. First of all, yeah sure.
Speaker 2so I'm Frankie, I'm a clinical psychologist and I'm a parent who's been through neonatal care, which is what I support other people with now. So I qualified in 2017 and originally specialized in working with older adults in the NHS and the third sector, but then things kind of changed for me. So I became pregnant in 2019 and my baby was delivered by emergency section at 31 weeks so two months early and then I just found myself in this world of neonatal care. I knew nothing about it. It felt completely terrifying. It felt like I had no knowledge, no understanding of what was going on. I felt really out of control and that experience it feels like it kind of changed the path of where I was going, both personally and professionally.
Speaker 2Really, um, I met another person called Georgie, another mum. We met online. We met on Instagram, um, during the pandemic, um, and we decided that, being mums ourselves, having gone through the experience and me being clinical psychologist, her being a graphic designer, having all the techie bits and the design stuff that we could create something together. So we started a page called Miracle Moon on Instagram and it's just kind of grown from there. Originally, it wasn't set out to be a business or anything, it was just a page where we were just kind of validating the ways that some people might be feeling, and it's just grown and grown from there and now we want to provide information that is real, that's validating, that's trauma-informed, that's educating, to kind of help people understand the experience of neonatal care yeah, and that's what I love about your social media it is so validating for someone going through it.
Speaker 1So, um, I'm also really interested in that you did you work with older adults, because I worked with older adults for 13 years in my in the NHS, so yeah, I loved it.
Speaker 2It was hard work though, um, because there was it was a lot for, not not a lot back. It was really really difficult, but it was my absolute first kind of passion working with older adults.
Understanding the Impact of NICU
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, yeah so can you set the theme for us? So what, what is NICU and why is it important to talk about it?
Speaker 2so NICU is neonatal intensive care unit. That's what it stands for. It is quite often a place that no one expects to be. The majority of the people who are there are not expecting to be there either having a premature baby unexpectedly, or having a full term and sick baby and not realizing that you're going to need it.
Speaker 2Some people have some advanced warning, but the majority don't expect to be there yeah one in seven babies need neonatal care, um, and 80 percent of parents struggle with their mental health after neonatal experiences. So for me I like those numbers. When I first heard them shocked me with how many. So if you think about your standard antenatal class, that's maybe like one to two within a class, yeah Right. But yeah, it's not spoken about. It's not spoken about in kind of antenatal education or in any kind of way.
Speaker 2I also don't think people realize that NICU means intensive care. So if you were to say, say, you know, a parent or a family member was in intensive care, the majority of people would be like, oh my goodness, that's awful. Like I understand the gravity of that. But when you say NICU or neonatal intensive care, for some reason it's just kind of I don't know, maybe it's because they're little babies, I don't know what it is, but people don't really understand the gravity of what that actually means. Yeah, um, but we need to be talking about it because people kind of go into it and they have so many of these feelings and these thoughts and for so many people they feel so alone in it and I think that's why we're seeing so many people struggling with their mental health afterwards, because they're just not getting the support, the validation, the understanding that they need yeah, and you said so, 80 80 percent of parents have mental health challenges, which you know makes sense.
Speaker 1Um, can you talk us through sort of what some of those challenges might be, the kind of things that you see or have seen in your practice?
Speaker 2yeah. So I mean all perinatal mental health issues for mum and for dad are more common in parents with with NICU experiences, you know, by a much bigger percent kind of. So I see kind of all of the you know what you would normally see in a perinatal mental health service, I guess. But I guess the thing about the NICU experience is it feels like it's this kind of perfect concoction for this mental health struggle afterwards. So you're immediately separated from your baby. There is potentially risk to your life, to your baby's life. It can feel really out of control and uncertain and unsafe. But then, equally, the NICU gives you routine and this kind of odd sense of safety, even though you don't feel safe. At the same time, there's threat all around you medical intervention, monitors, beeps and alarms that are meant to keep you hypervigilant. You're being told what to do, when to do it. There are other babies around you that might be sick or maybe even dying around you, and then you have to leave and you have to go home and then that's all gone, but your baby is still vulnerable or sick. But there's no monitors, there's no more support, there's no more routine, there's no more kind of safety in that aspect. So what we then see people understanding, experiencing afterwards, I feel like is really understandable. So you'll see people who are doing that kind of anxiety bit where they're reaching for control or certainty in some kind of way, like, of course they're doing that, they're doing the checking, the monitoring, the reassurance seeking. Of course they're doing that. You know there, monitoring, the reassurance seeking, of course they're doing that. You know, there's this hypervigilance that's continuing to be there because their baby is no longer being monitored. So it's this kind of like preoccupation with their health, that anxiety around their health, which we see a huge amount.
Speaker 2I see a huge amount of people with PTSD. So research again, it's between 40 to 70% of parents experience PTSD after neonatal care Huge, absolutely huge numbers. And I actually I think it might be in those higher numbers because a lot of people come to me from a GP who's told them it isn't PTSD and actually, through doing the assessment and talking to them, I'm like, okay, it is PTSD, you know. But I think that there's a lack of education around what PTSD actually is.
Speaker 2Um, we have a lot of people who come in with a huge sense of guilt and self-blame and I think that often comes from people having so much uncertainty. I don't know why my baby came early, I don't know why they were born sick, and people often land on that feeling of like it might have been something that I did, did I cause this in some kind of way, because that uncertainty feels really intolerable. We have a lot of people who experience a huge amount of grief, either because they have lost a baby or because they've lost the experiences that they thought they would have. Because they've lost the experiences that they thought they would have. But I guess the the most common thing that I guess people maybe wouldn't realize and this is why I think a lot of parents get missed in perinatal mental health services is because there is often a delayed onset.
Speaker 2So parents will kind of go home and they're still in that survival mode, yeah, and they've maybe had their baby alive for weeks, for months. And then they go in that survival mode, yeah, and they've maybe had their baby alive for weeks, for months, and then they go into that survival mode. They keep doing that kind of functional freeze, keep going, keep moving, keep doing, and it isn't until normally around that kind of 9 to 12 month mark where you're thinking of returning to work, starting child care, your baby's birthday, all those kind of things that that is when a lot of people suddenly go. What is it that I've been through? We might kind of see that delayed onset, ptsd, getting flashbacks around that time of the birthday and a lot of perinatal mental health services kind of stop at one for in terms of support. So I think that NICU parents often get missed.
Speaker 1And is there any liaison that happens? So once parents move out of NICU and take baby home, is there? Obviously there's midwives, but is there any kind of transition there in terms of mental health?
Speaker 2support, yeah, or any very rarely. I mean physical for the baby yeah, so the baby might continue to have um kind of physical health issues or appointments and stuff like that. Often the focus is on the baby, but in terms of the family that is surrounding the baby, there is often very little. There is a lot more that is going into support on the units and a lot of units now have a psychologist. That wasn't the case when I had my baby at all. So over the past few years there are more psychologists on the unit, which is great, but there is such limited funding for the afterwards. So in an ideal world it would be that parents were followed up and supported with that kind of discharge support for that first, however long after kind of parents at home, but that's very rare at the moment because you, you have a membership, don't you with Miracle Moon, like people can can pay to be part of a community, which I think is great.
Speaker 2Well, I guess we just wanted to fill in that gap, and that was from a kind of personal experience as well as a professional, like I just wanted to talk to other people who got it. I wanted to have other people who were to go. Yeah, I have that thought too, or I've got that feeling too. But we wanted to take it one step further than just being a community and we wanted to kind of go.
Speaker 2Actually, this is a group of people who need a very specific kind of support, so we wanted to do things like information and resources around things like health anxiety that is specific to kind of neonatal care or PTSD. So we've got a whole bunch of resources within there. We've also got a bunch of specialists who all specialize within neonatal care OTs, physios, lactation consultants who are there. So it's a membership that can be used whilst you're in neonatal care, but it also is supposed to be there to hold your hand months, years down the line. And we've got people in there who have got five plus year olds, who still want that support and they're still getting lots of value.
Coping With Lost Firsts in NICU
Speaker 2It sounds like yeah, yeah exactly, and it's just making it so that it's available to as many people as we possibly can do, which is what we're trying to do in the moment.
Speaker 1Yeah, and you talk on your instagram a lot about loss and grief and a post that caught my eye you were talking about like too many firsts are taken away from from parents. Can you say a bit more about that?
Speaker 2yeah. So it's that that feeling of the experience of being in neonatal care kind of taking away those first moments in so many capacities. So, for example, with with me, it was that bit of it not just taking away the first, but so many of the moments that I expected. So I expected to have a baby shower, to have the big pregnant bump, to do a birth plan, to go to an antenatal class, to do all the things that you kind of imagine doing within your pregnancy, and that all kind of got taken away by having my baby early. But then I didn't have the birth experience that I wanted. I didn't have the golden hour, which is often quite a big trigger for a lot of people that they didn't get that contact with their baby straight away. Afterwards the feeding experience is different and you're often not there for the first feed, the first nappy change. You're often separated. Within that they're taking your baby home. You're often going home without them.
Speaker 2There's so many moments and it's not just in the NICU, it's then you get home and you do things like going to a baby group and it's like this doesn't feel how it I thought it was going to feel. I feel like the odd one out here. Or you're spending so much time kind of wrapped up in your mind and in your mental health that you're like I'm not feeling that joy, I'm not feeling that presence that I'm supposed to be having my maternity leave is going, I'm going to loads of medical appointments so I'm not having the maternity leave that I wanted. Or even then the birthday, for example, that first birthday, you're like I wish it was just joy and it was just excitement. But it's often a trauma anniversary as well, so that feels like it's getting taken away.
Speaker 2So there's so many moments that feel like they're missed. And I think when your expectation is kind of at a certain level, what you expect to happen or what you wish would happen, and then the fall is so far from that, I guess that that's the bit where grief exists, because you feel like you know, I so wanted that, like and the the most common thing that you see is that people come with jealousy or resentment towards other people and often reframing it as being like under the surface of that is probably grief. Right, it's the fact that they had what you wanted and that feels really, really sad and that for people, feels like a bit of a light bulb moment, I think by kind of labeling it as grief, rather than that feeling of like jealousy which can feel quite nasty or tricky, to kind of have and and the profound sadness right that comes along with that, um, and as you say like yeah, the, I think yeah with your first baby.
Speaker 1Obviously you don't really know what to expect, but you have this, this sort of idealized image in your mind, I think, of what it's going to be like, don't you?
Speaker 2and.
Speaker 1I imagine for second or third time parents who have a child, who have a baby in NICU, that must be very tricky as well, because they may have had a a sort of inverted commas, normal birth and everything went smoothly, and then they have that experience. So it's very nuanced, isn't it?
Speaker 2yeah, completely, completely. And you know, you do get people who it's obviously different kinds of feelings for people who have, because then they've got the siblings at home as well, and that's another level as well. Um, but it's, you know, it's so much around that bit of being in NICU and being like the stuff that did happen, but it's so much also about the stuff that didn't happen, which is a real huge, huge thing. Yeah absolutely.
Speaker 1And if we're thinking about a parent's time actually in NICU and you you said a little bit about it there I think you've never, I've never experienced it. So just the, as you say, the kind of the beeps and the machines and the, the noises and the hearing other parents crying or or yeah, I can't imagine. I can imagine how, just how difficult it is just being in that space, um, let alone sort of thinking about your own baby. Can you, can you sort of offer some, some sort of tips on like, if someone's listening and they haven't come across you before and they are a NICU parent and they're there at this point, like what, how can they cope with that, with that environment, with that experience?
Speaker 2I think that first bit and for me it was big of kind of just acknowledging that this is really really hard, that this is even traumatic, like NICU is often in a crisis situation and it is OK to feel however you feel about it. So I think that was the first thing, because I remember having some thoughts that felt really shameful, really dark, really tricky, and I remember being like like what's wrong with me for having these thoughts, whereas if I'd had someone else to say just that and just kind of do that validation, just go like it's completely understandable to be having the thoughts and the feelings that you're having, that in its own kind of removes some of that shame. So I think that's the first thing, um, I think you have to do that bit of just taking it a moment at a time. They often talk about the fact that NICU is like a roller coaster and it is because you have maybe a little bit of time where things seem to be going well and then it feels like they're not going so well and then it goes back to being okay and then it doesn't and it just kind of goes all over the place and for some people that that roller coaster is more vicious um, and it can feel like like whiplash when, when you've got, when you're in that situation. So sometimes you have to go down to being like a moment at a time, so not even like a morning at a time, it's like a moment at a time and just take it as it comes, rather than kind of letting yourself shoot forward into worst case scenario, which again completely understandable that your brain is doing that.
Navigating NICU Challenges and Beyond
Speaker 2But coming back to the kind of present moment bit is really really important thinking about what you can do. I also think finding kind of micro moments of control is really important because it can feel really out of control. So there's so much that's decided for you. But if you can do small things like choosing which book to read to your baby or choosing which um like sheet or blankets or stuff like that that you use, or getting involved in their cares, um, looking after them, so like changing nappies, doing oral care, stuff like that that can really help you rebuild that sense of control and kind of feeling like a parent. When it all feels so medicalised. And I think that the bonding experience looks completely different in NICU and so many people think that they can't bond or that the only thing that they can do is produce milk. So there's a huge focus on producing milk. When you're there and for some people it's not that easy it's really really difficult.
Speaker 1Well, if you're very stressed, if you're feeling you're going to be stressed and that is going to massively impact how you produce milk, or maybe not even make it so that you're not producing right.
Speaker 2Exactly. And you know, like with me it was that kind of emergency section and then my body's supposed to know how to produce milk, like having a baby two months early, like of course it's not going to like and it's not got the oxytocin and stuff like that. So you've got the cortisol that is kind of preventing that milk production, ketocin and stuff like that. So you've got the cortisol that is kind of preventing that milk production. So it's hard to do that. But there is such a huge focus on the milk there, do you mean from the medical staff, from the medical staff? Yeah, it's. It's, this huge focus of this is the most healing thing that you can do. This is the most important thing that you can do. Um, no pressure, then you can do. This is the most important thing that you can do. Um, no pressure then. No, yeah, no pressure then.
Speaker 2Um, I remember a doctor saying to me about, like if you can produce this milk, then your baby's iq will be higher. He will get gcses. I just remember being like two days out, like completely dissociated, being like okay, like that's what I've got to do, um, but it's, there are so many other ways that you can bond to. Yeah, like we said, kind of reading, talking to your baby, just being with them, thinking about them, looking at them, um touch, if you can't physically hold them, because sometimes you you can't um putting your hands in the incubator and doing things called containment, holding um, doing things that allow you to feel soothed. All of that kind of stuff is really important.
Speaker 2Um, and then I guess the last bit is having an outlet in some kind of ways. So you're often sitting there by the incubator on your own and you're just in there with your thoughts and you know, having that connection with other people or having an outlet, a journal voice, noting it, getting it out in some kind of way, is really, really helpful. Um, and again, that's a huge reason why we've got the nikki space is a way that people can do that and have people connect with them back as well. Um, but yes, though, I guess they they are some of the things that you could do to help no, but they all sound.
Speaker 1They all sound brilliant and things that I wouldn't have thought of um. The other thing that comes to my mind is can you talk about some of the unique challenges that fathers or non-birthing partners might experience, because I think often in in sort of any sort of birthing experience, uh, dad's non-birthing partners can sort of not be left out of the conversation a little bit, but I'm curious about, um, what that's like and and whether you have any tips for for for them yeah.
Speaker 2So if you, if you think about what normally happens for a dad is the mom, the birthing person is, gives birth and then they are taken to the wards to be able to be looked after physically. Afterwards the dad or the non-birthing person goes to the NICU with the baby. That tends to be what happens. So they are there with the baby, normally when the baby is the most medically unstable, when they are needing a huge amount of intervention trying to stabilize the baby, and the dad is there on his own kind of in the NICU on their own. The majority of NICU staff are absolutely incredible in in supporting and reassuring and giving information, but from working with loads of dads, it's that bit of going like.
Speaker 2I felt really alone. I felt really responsible. I felt really torn of being like I should be with you know, my partner, but I should also be with the baby. And this feeling of like I have to stay strong. I have to be the rock. I'm not allowed to let my partner see that this is hard. You have to go back with pictures and be like they're okay or delivering the news, making sense of it. But they're traumatized too. You know they've been through a huge amount, even if they're just witnessing it. There's a huge amount of trauma as a result of that just standing there and feeling quite helpless, I guess, within it, and quite powerless. And from a lot of dads that I work with, it's that bit of going I want to fix. I want to make this feel better in some kind of way and you can't in those kind of moments it's really very difficult.
Speaker 2I think for a lot of dads non-birthing partners we see that when they get home it's that bit of going, maybe feeling quite disconnected. They still experience all of the same perinatal mental health struggles, ptsd, anxiety, depression, all of that but maybe it shows up a bit differently. So you might see kind of quicker to anger, you might see that disconnection, maybe throwing themselves into other things work, for example, they might have to return to work while their baby's still in neonatal care, maybe just not wanting to talk about it. So a lot of people kind of doing that bit of going. It's in the past, stop going over it, we're not going to talk about it. It's that kind of avoidance, yeah, kind of thing. Um, because I think quite often dads don't have that space to be able to voice how it is that they're feeling, either because their partner's going through a hell of a lot and they don't want to burden them with it, or that there isn't the space created there for them to be able to name, process how they feel.
Speaker 1But they do feel it all too and I'm guessing do you, in terms of the work that you do, do you see mainly women or the mums?
Speaker 2mainly yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's mainly women. The majority of the time it's that two people will turn up together, okay, and then it will be like, well, actually he needs a little bit more support. And then I see, see him a little bit more, um. But very rarely do I get a dad just approach me on his own, um, I it has happened. But the majority is like they come together and then it's kind of like, oh, actually it's him, him who needs a little bit more support so there's still work to do there, isn't there in terms of?
Speaker 1kind of societal norms around men's mental health and seek support.
Speaker 2And yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean even the fact that perinatal mental health services it should be men and women like it should be right, it's just that bit of it's just not spoken about enough.
Speaker 1And you know, men need so much of that support, they struggle with so many of those things and we just need to be talking about it yeah absolutely so can you, um tell us a bit about once, once you've got baby home, um, what have you seen in terms of, and your experience as well, of a sort of how the NICU experience shapes your parenting or your parenting experience? Um, because I imagine from from what you said today, you know, quite apart from the the mental health challenges that show up, I imagine it's incredibly difficult to settle into kind of normal family life once you've had an experience like that yeah, and I think it's just that.
Speaker 2I think it's it's like you are still holding your breath after discharge, right, you don't. You don't get home and you're like, thank god, that's all over and it all feels good now and we're safe and we're home, and all of that, like the trauma of the experience, still stays with you. You know it. Like we said before, it's gone from having that medical team 24 7 watching your baby to them being completely on your own. And there's a huge mix of emotions in coming home, where a lot of people assume it would just be excited yay, great, this is what you've wanted. But there's a lot of anxiety around it too. And then it's a real adjustment period because then you are doing it on your own. So we see a huge amount of anxiety, particularly around health, making sure your baby is okay. For me, I just remember that bit of just not being able to sleep because I was just watching, constantly, making sure that he was breathing, um, and it was that bit of just going if there were any colds, any kind of illness or anything like that, just so hyper vigilant, because those colds often landed your baby back in hospital. There was often because that their immune system isn't strong enough, their lungs aren't strong enough, all of that. So there is a real threat there.
Speaker 2Yeah, as well as that kind of perceived threat too, there's anxiety around things like milestones, because the conversations that you have in the NICU is we're going to watch and wait for the next two years to just see how this impacts your child developmentally and there might be other issues that you're looking out for, like babies have a lot of brain bleeds and things like that in neonatal care. So you're kind of waiting to see what the impact of that would be on your child. Um, so it's a lot of is that milestone happening? There's a lot of comparison there. There's a lot of is that milestone happening? There's a lot of comparison there.
Speaker 2There's a lot of, um, kind of worry around it, and I think that a lot of parents become anxious parents and they go well, is this just what? How I am? Am I just an anxious person? Am I? Would I be kind of overprotective or overcompensating for things or really worried about them all the time? But from the work that I've done with people, it doesn't have to be like that. So you can reduce that hypervigilance, you can reduce that anxiety, you can process that trauma so that you're able to be the parent that you want to be, that's aligned with your values and how you want to parent and all of those kinds of things. Often it's that kind of holding on to that trauma and that anxiety of the experience that is kind of getting in the way of the way that you want to to parent.
Speaker 1Yeah, because even if you haven't had a baby in NICU, and it's particularly with your first baby, you, you are anxious, aren't you, and you are kind of looking out for signs of illness and things. But when you've had that experience in NICU, I mean, yeah it's, you know, 50 fold that will the anxiety will be going to, and I imagine that parents find it quite difficult to let go of the hypervigilance because obviously it keeps baby safe, right, or keeps the child safe.
Speaker 2Yeah, exactly that. I think that this benefits to remaining hypervigilant, you know, especially at the beginning. And it isn't until and that's why maybe we see people later on where they're like, okay, this actually is no longer helpful, like this is actually getting in the way of the way that I'm on a parent. Now actually I don't need to be this hyper vigilant anymore, um, but that's when we start to go okay, we want to get you, you to a place where you're vigilant, but not where that alarm system is kind of going off every kind of point we wanted to be going with when we need it to go off. So that's the point that we want to get people to. And I think that that's where you know, with things like the health anxiety course and stuff we talk about that.
Speaker 2We also talk about exactly what you just said that there is a normalness around becoming a parent in terms of that matrescence period and that identity shift and all of that, like your brains being rewired to being more emotional and more in tune with your baby and more hypervigilant, to completely normal. But it's almost, like you know, trauma, tressence, like uh, you know some where you've been through trauma and and becoming a mom in some kind of way. That kind of puts that matrescence bit on steroids, a little bit like it just feels so magnified and you feel like such a different person, like identity is a massive one for people, because it just feels like everything that they felt like they knew has just been shaken. Yeah, and you become a parent all at the same time. So there's a huge amount to make sense of.
Speaker 1And would you?
Speaker 2say there are any sort of misconceptions about being an EQ parent or the sort of mental health around an EQ parent that you'd like to sort of debunk. I think the biggest one is that bit of your baby's fine now, so you should be fine too. Or you're home now, so you should be fine too. Or you're home now, so you should be okay. It's that bit of you know from what we know about trauma.
Speaker 2It doesn't end when the crisis ends Like it can continue. Your brain and your body can still be telling you that you are unsafe, that you're to blame, that you know, whatever it is, that you're not a good parent. And that is the trauma talking. And it's not about kind of getting over the experience or putting it behind you, which a lot of people kind of feel like they should be, kind of months or even years down the line. It's that bit of kind of going. This is how you feel that is valid, that needs some exploration and maybe needs a little bit of time to get that help and support, to be able to kind of help you with that, to be able to shift with it.
Speaker 1You know, yeah, absolutely thank you so much for taking the time. It's been a really personally, a really informative chat with you because I, as I said, I don't tend to work with people who've had that experience. So thank you so much for being here. No worries, thanks for having me. Thank you for listening to this episode of Hello Therapy. If you found it helpful, don't forget to subscribe, follow and review. You can get more well-being and mental health tips by joining our email list and visiting the resources section of our website at harleyclinicalcouk. The hello therapy podcast and the information provided by me, dr liz white, is solely intended for information and educational purposes and does not constitute personalized advice. Please do reach out to your GP or a mental health professional if you need support. Until next time, take care of yourself.
