Postpartum Depression, Explained With Heart And Science

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We open our hearts about postpartum depression as an experience, not a verdict, blending biology, identity, and soul. We share tools, stories, and a journal prompt to trade judgment for compassion and to make room for slow, honest healing.

• Talking with my daughter about anxiety, depression, and invisible thoughts
• Garden metaphor for the emptiness and rebuild after birth
• Honoring Robin Williams and why speaking thoughts out loud matters
• Present, honest parenting over perfect parenting
• Dismantling the blissful new parent myth with science and story
• Hormonal cliff, nervous system overload, identity fracture
• Traumatic births, PTSD, and why bounce back harms recovery
• Medication without shame, therapy as support, writing as lifeline
• Replacing should statements with I am truths
• Practical tools: longer exhales, micro truths, reaching for help
• Journal prompt for self-compassion and gentle return to self

Chapters

• 10:22 Kids Need Present, Honest Parents
• 12:20 Dismantling The Blissful New Parent Myth
• 15:10 Biology And The Postpartum Cliff
• 18:40 Traumatic Births, PTSD, And Stigma
• 22:20 Medication, Writing, And Finding Meaning
• 26:10 Expectation Versus Reality Of Early Motherhood
• 29:30 Replace Shoulds With I Am
• 31:20 Practical Tools For Calming And Support

Transcript

Speaker: 0:00

Welcome to Couch Time with Cat, your safe place for real conversation and a gentle check-in. KWVH presents Couch Time with Cat. Hi friends, and welcome to Couch Time with Cat, mental wellness with a friendly voice. I'm Cat, therapist, bestselling author, TEDx speaker, and endurance athlete. But most of all, I'm a wife, mama, and someone who deeply believes that people are good and healing is possible. Here in the Hill Country of Wimberley, Texas, I've built my life and practice around one purpose to make mental wellness feel accessible, compassionate, and real. This show is for those moments when life feels heavy, when you're craving clarity, or when you just need to hear, you're not alone. Each week we'll explore the terrain of mental wellness through stories, reflections, research, and tools you can bring into everyday life. Think of it as a conversation between friends, rooted in science, guided by heart, and grounded in the belief that healing does not have to feel clinical. It can feel like sitting on a couch with someone who gets it. So whether you're driving, walking, cooking, or simply catching your breath, you're welcome here. This is your space to feel seen, supported, and reminded of your own strength. I'm so glad you're here. Let's dive in. This week, I had a heart-opening conversation with my eldest daughter, Alexandra. We were chatting about feelings and we were just sharing some food together over lunch, after church, and I told her something that I hadn't shared before. I said, Hey, I wanted to share that I've experienced anxiety and depression at different times in my life. I told her about how after having each of my babies, I fell into a depression. And she paused for a moment and asked, Was it because you had a baby? And to help her understand what that felt like, I painted a picture as best I could. I asked her to imagine a full lush garden with flowers blooming and butterflies fluttering and plants thriving and a warm sun. And I said, That was my body. My body was a garden. It had all this goodness. It was growing you. I was full of life and beauty and energy. We were about to become parents, and there's just so much goodness and strength and vitality that a woman's body holds right before she's going to have a baby. I said, and then I gave birth and it was like a shovel came in. It scooped out all the plants, all the soil, and suddenly my garden was bare. I said, You came out, all those nutrients came out, and the inside of my body, and the outside for that matter, but the inside and what made up my body was empty. I had been carrying something and growing something and really curating, not something, but someone, and really curating and being so intentional about how I treated myself well for those nine to ten months. And then all of a sudden, all that was gone. And I said, So that's what depression felt like for me. Like a shovel came in and kind of scooped all that goodness out. And I said, and it took time, it took real time to rebuild my body from the inside out to nourish myself back to health. She understood and she said, Wow, that sounds intense. I said, Yeah, girl, it was really serious. It wasn't about being a mom, it was more a biological function for me. And then a few days later, we were watching Happy Feet. What a fun movie. And we were praising Robin Williams. You know, he does several of the characters in that movie. And we both shared how we thought it was deeply sad that he left this earth too soon. And I explained in an age-appropriate way that he was having a really hard time in his brain. And that sometimes when we don't talk about the thoughts that are stressing us out, no one knows how much we're hurting because our thoughts are invisible. And unless we speak them out loud, the people who love us can't help us carry them. When we share how we feel and what we think, people who love us can show up for us. And we hugged. And it felt like that coupled with the garden conversation really helped her kind of move along in terms of ooh, maybe it is important for me to share what thoughts I'm having. And I'm sharing this experience with you, not just as a therapist, but as a mother and a woman who is committed to not only being the best I can be for myself, but most definitely for being compassionate and for helping our children experience the world in a whole, safe, and loving way. Our children don't need perfect parents. They need present ones and ones who will guide them through real life, not polished or filtered or just a highlight real, but to really share with them in age-appropriate ways, of course, what we're experiencing. So when we name our struggles, when they see us trying, when they see us not succeeding, this actually really helps them along. They're much more likely to try and to share and to connect and to be vulnerable with us because we're vulnerable with them. They need to feel what honesty sounds like. They need to witness us being vulnerable so they can grow into who they are meant to be and grow into young men and women who trust their emotions instead of stepping them down. And honestly, adults need that too. So on Couch Time with Cat and in my books, and even as a therapist, I try to be as open as is appropriate to sharing my struggles, not just because or not because I want somebody to feel sorry for me. Rather, I want to say, hey, I felt that too, and there's hope, and we can connect in this way, and we're really all just walking each other home, as the saying goes. When I became a mother, people told me it would be the happiest moment of my life. They didn't tell me it might also be the loneliest. Today we're talking about postpartum depression, not as a diagnosis, but as an experience. You're listening to Couch Time with Cat. I'm Cat, and today we're talking about something many parents carry quietly, bravely, and often alone. And I want to begin with a truth. Sometimes you hold your baby and you love them, but you don't recognize yourself. Sometimes joy doesn't come immediately. Sometimes you hold your baby and you love them, but you don't recognize yourself, and that's disorienting. Sometimes you feel grateful and devastated in the same breath. Sometimes you're surrounded by people and feel completely invisible. And sometimes you wonder why you're not the version of yourself you thought you'd be. And sometimes you're afraid to say any of this out loud because judgment is real and rejection is real. So instead of admitting to it, because sometimes people can't handle our difficult emotions, we just gloss over them. Today we're dismantling the myth of the blissful new parent. We're honoring the biology, the psychology, and the heart of postpartum depression. And we're making room for this experience. If this season has taught me anything, it might be that becoming a parent is not just about creating a life, but it's about meeting parts of ourselves that we didn't know we had. Let's start with a little science and mix in a little soul. Postpartum depression is not a failure of love. It is not a weakness. It doesn't mean you're a bad person or a bad mother. And it's certainly not something you can like cheer your way out of. Biologically, the body experiences a hormonal cliff after birth. Estrogen and progesterone plummet. Dopamine and serotonin struggle to stabilize, and your nervous system is exhausted from months of hypervigilance. Not to mention the actual experience of giving birth, and not to mention the chaos that is the few days after birth where you're just you're getting toted around and your baby's in and out and you're not able to sleep, and it's a lot. Psychologically, identity fractures, and it takes some time to reform. You are no longer who you were, but you don't yet know who you are becoming. Listen, ladies, childbirth is serious business. And for some people, it is sweet and delightful and quick and not painful. And for others, it's on the completely opposite side of the scale. Both my births, which we'll talk about later, were very intense and very traumatic. And so I'm so happy for the women who experience just really sweet emotional experiences during their birth. That was not my experience. Emotionally, you're asked to give endlessly while your own cup feels like it's got a hole at the bottom. I mean, there is just no amount of replenishment that is going to come immediately as a new mother. And spiritually, you're standing in one of the most vulnerable thresholds of human life. That is not small, that is not easy, and that is not something we should ever expect someone to walk through without support. I just, as a new mother, I had no clue. Even as a pregnant woman, I had no, I had no clue how much help I was gonna need and how ignorant I was about raising a child and the amount of time, emotional time, emotion and time rather, that it was going to take to really nurture this baby. I have experienced postpartum depression twice. I'm a woman, I'm a mom, I'm a therapist, I'm all these things. But I love to be honest and transparent about this experience. I've never shared it with somebody and they say, Wow, you're so weird. When I share it with somebody, they say, Oh, wow, that must have been so hard. Me too. I'm often met with a supportive and a listening ear rather than a judgmental ear. Both of my childbirths were traumatic. And after my second birth, my OB looked at me and said, Listen, you're probably gonna have PTSD from this. And and I did. And she was, this is her business. So, I mean, she sees this all the time, my OB. So, of course, she's kind of said it off the cuff. And I didn't have my wits about me yet. So when she said it, I didn't even know really what to do with that news. But I listened and I just kind of went on about my day. I didn't have anywhere to put that information or anything, like I didn't have an action item, so to speak. But I did fall into depression and it was confusing and isolating and disorienting. And I loved and I loved my children then and I love them deeply now. And I also felt very lost and empty, and I needed a medication. I took Zoloft both times. And I'm proud that I sought out support in that way. I'm I'm definitely pro whatever helps. If medication helps, great. If acupuncture helps, great. If praying helps you, great. If you want all three, great. I am of the thinking that taking medication doesn't mean somebody has failed or that they're taking an easy way out. For me, it's a quality of life choice. Is there something out there that's that's going to support me enough so that I can stabilize and then I can work my way out of it? And maybe once I'm out of it, I can remove that medication piece. But in no way do I think that medication is the easy way out. But taking medication helped me stay in my body, it helped me stay present in my relationships, and it helped me heal on a slower timeline so that I could make deliberate choices about how I wanted to show up as a mother, as a woman, as a wife, and how I wanted to heal. And one of the ways I healed was through writing. I wrote The Courage to Become: Stories of Hope for Navigating Love, Marriage, and Motherhood as a lifeline. I started writing it when my eldest was four months old. So there was a voice inside of me that knew you need to heal, and this is one way that's going to help you heal. So during her nap times, I would write. That's when I started writing my first book when she was four months old. And at that time, I didn't know it was going to be a book, actually. I just knew I had to write. So at that time, I wasn't writing for others. I was really writing for my own healing. I spoke candidly about the depression and giving birth and all my experiences. And eventually, when I named it and I started working with it, the depression began to lose its grip. Writing didn't erase my pain, but it helped me assign it meaning. It helped me assign it some symbolism, which helped me eventually heal. I was becoming a participant in the story, an active participant in the story. And it didn't feel like depression was happening to me, but rather I was using it and molding it and creating a life that I really wanted. So when I talk about postpartum depression, I do not speak in theory. I speak from lived experience as well as professional understanding and a deep reverence for how complex and tender this season can be. Expectation versus experience. Oh Lord. And that story looks like soft blankets and walks in a stroller, and everybody's getting good sleep, and there's always food in the fridge, and there's lots of cuddles, right? That's the story we're sold. It's gonna be sweet and beautiful. And are there moments of sweetness? Yes. Is there beauty? Yes. Is there also a tornado? Yes. And so when reality doesn't match that sweet story, we often assume we are the problem or that we are doing it wrong. I remember being a new mom and um I was 31-ish, I think. Don't hold me to that, but I think I was 31 when I had my eldest. And Instagram was kind of new then, but I remember taking selfies. Oh my gosh. Holding her in one hand and taking a selfie with both of us in another. And I didn't know what I was doing at the time, but what I was really doing was showing, I'm okay, I'm alive, proof of life, here we are, we're so cute. Like I was just grabbing at straws to try to connect with people. And when motherhood doesn't meet up with the story that they sell us, that's a very difficult experience to reconcile. Let's take a little breath. Oh my goodness. Maybe roll your shoulders and complete the sentence for me. What I wish people understood about my early parenting experience is I'll repeat that again. What I wish people understood about my early parenting experience is maybe you're gonna fill in the blank with something gorgeous, like it was easier than it looked, or it was so much fun, or it was the best time of my life. And all that is perfect. I'm so happy for you. And maybe you're gonna fill in the blank with, oh man, it was brutal. I looked like I was holding it together, but I really wasn't. Or I had an identity crisis, or I didn't know what I was doing, and that felt terrible. Right? Fill it in in a way that is authentic to you. Don't worry about any judgment. No one's gonna judge you here. You're listening to Couch Time with Cat. I'm Cat, and today we're talking about when the joy doesn't come, the biology, psychology, and heart of postpartum depression. And if you have a question you'd like to ask anonymously, you can call or text 956-249-7930, and I'll answer it here on the show. Biology beneath the feeling. Your body was not designed to bounce back. If I could take a red marker to every bounce back ad I've ever seen, I would. Something that I wrote in my book that is a very hard-earned truth was when we try to bounce back after having a baby, we are trying to make ourselves smaller, not weight-wise or physically, but we have just experienced this huge physical, biological, spiritual expansion as a human being. And then we think, oh, I gotta go, I gotta fit back into my genes. We are missing the forest for the trees here. And every ad that sells us that we need to bounce back is wrong. We have just expanded in the most gorgeous way. We're actually supposed to get bigger. Our hearts and our minds and our emotions are just have just grown exponentially. And they want to, and then they want to put us back in this tiny little box. And that's we don't need to do that. We don't need to bounce back. We can adapt and we can enjoy our new expansiveness. Your nervous system after birth is tender and raw and hyper-responsive. And trauma during childbirth only deepens that sensitivity. When my OB named PTSD for me, something shifted. And it took several months for me to understand that something shifted. I heard her say PTSD, but I'll reiterate that I couldn't receive it in that moment because I was just very task-oriented, you know, feed the baby every two hours, change the diaper, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So it took me several months to accept that information and then to do something with it. So that PTSD diagnosis was really giving me permission to understand that what I had experienced was very traumatic. I'll share with you quickly what happened. I lost a lot of blood. I lost 50% of my blood. I had to have a blood transfusion. I had to be taken to the OR. It was very, it was very, very serious. I gave birth to my youngest, and then all sorts of stuff started happening and they wheeled me out. And I talk about it actually in my second book, A Gentle Return, because it was such a deeply, deeply formative experience. And um as I was losing blood, I was losing consciousness. I mean, it was a whole, it was a whole thing. So I know that I'm not the only one, and I know that many, many women experience very traumatic births. And so bouncing back is just nowhere on the table after somebody experiences something like that. Our brains are not betraying us, our body is not failing us, our emotions are not lying to us, but rather when we're feeling postpartum depression, part of that is our biology, our physiology is reorienting psychology and identity. Postpartum depression often tells us I should be happier, I should be stronger, I should be grateful. But healing begins when we replace should with should statements with I am statements. So really leaning into and accepting what is happening in the moment. So maybe for you is I am tired, I am overwhelmed, I am human. When we lean on the should statements, we're really trying to force ourselves out of what we're actually feeling. Maybe, maybe we're not trying to gloss over it on purpose, but we're just really trying to get to those feelings. But the should statements kind of feel forced. But if you name what you're actually feeling, you're much more likely to heal faster. So we're not going to tell ourselves a story about who we are or who we're not in that moment. So maybe not say, oh wow, I'm a bad mom. No, no, no. How about I feel overwhelmed today? And just taking that judgment out of the statement and just sharing how we feel in the moment can be so powerful. You're listening to Couch Time with Cat. I'm Cat, and today we're talking about postpartum depression and what it really means to be human in early motherhood. And if you have a question you'd like to ask anonymously, you can call or text 956-249-7930. Let's move on to some practical tools. Tool number one that I want to share with you, listener, is a nervous system, like giving it a little massage. And what that is, it's super simple, and I've shared it several times before, but I've never named it that is a longer exhale than an inhale. So if you're in this season of life, I'm talking directly to mothers in early motherhood right now. I want to encourage you to take longer exhales than inhales. So what does that look like? So it's maybe it's an inhale for four counts, inhale through your nose, and then you're gonna exhale for eight, kind of like you're cooling down a hot cup of cocoa. Ready? Six, seven, eight. And just that simple rhythm is very calming to your nervous system. Tool number two is I want you to share micro truths. So I am tired, I am hungry, I love my baby, and I don't feel good today. Really embrace the and of it all. Depression is gonna try to tell you that you're only bad, or it's only bad, or the situation is bad. It's gloomy. Ooh, how are we gonna get through this? It's all bad. It kind of washes everything in gray. But two things can be true at the same time. You can love that sweet baby with their like little bubble toes and little bubble fingers and tiny little cheeks. You can love that baby so well and feel depressed. That is allowed. That is okay. Tool number three is reach for support. Medication is not weakness, therapy is not failure. Asking for help is not quitting. Zoloft didn't take away my love, it gave me a way to access it. Let me share with you a little image that I often share with clients is that let's say you're in an ocean and you're in a boat, you're in a little boat, and the boat is taking on water, and you're trying your very best to plug every hole, and you're getting really tired because the water is coming in, and how can you steer your boat and keep it afloat? And it's just a lot to do for one person. What Zolof did for me was it gave me a life jacket. So I was no longer trying to keep the boat afloat. Rather, I lived in an ocean my life, and it just gave me a little support to help swim, but I was no longer trying to keep anything afloat. I could just focus on swimming, and I had a little support while I was doing it. So it just helps you give you a little boost so you can navigate your life in a better way. There was a moment while I was writing the courage to become when I realized I wasn't writing just to be understood, but I was writing to survive. I was writing as a way to heal. And oh man, those are those were very sweet, sweet and earnest days. I was writing to reclaim myself. And eventually reclaiming myself and healing myself led to me really wanting to show up for other women. And that's when I decided, oh, what I'm writing is going to be a book. I didn't set out to write a book, but I was writing so much, and I thought, wow, this is a lot of material. These are a lot of words, and what can I do with them? And I thought, oh, let me share my story so that other women don't have to feel alone so that we can do this together and we can have hope as we experience these life-changing transitions. Before we close, I want to encourage you to write this journal prompt down. What part of my early motherhood still wants compassion instead of judgment? I'll repeat it again. What part of my early motherhood still wants compassion instead of judgment? And maybe that compassion is gonna come straight from you to you. Maybe it'll come from your husband or your mom or your dad or your bestie. But what if you looked at your early motherhood through the lens of compassion and see how much you were going through, how hard you were trying, all that was changing, all that you were juggling. What if you saw yourself like I see you? Gorgeous, capable, strong, able, a light. Listener, your feelings are not failures. Your body is responding to this huge change. Your story is unfolding and you're allowed to heal slowly. You are not broken, you are becoming. Thank you for trusting me with your heart today. If you want to connect further or learn about my work or writing, you can find me at gattyaholum.com. That's c A T I A H O L M dot com. And until next time, be gentle with yourself, be honest with your heart, and remember, I'm so proud of you. Thank you for spending this time with me. If something from today's conversation resonated, or if you're in a season where support would help, visit me at gattheahhallam.com. That's C-A-T-I-A-H-O-L-M.com. You can also leave an anonymous question for the show by calling or texting 956-249-7930. I'd love to hear what's on your heart. If Couch Time with Cat has been meaningful to you, it would mean so much if you'd subscribe, rate, and leave a review. It helps others find us and it grows this community of care. And if you know someone who needs a little light right now, send them this episode. Remind them they're not alone. Until next time, be gentle with yourself. Keep showing up and know I'm right here with you.