Danielle Jhiani, an anxiety and OCD recovery coach, explains postpartum intrusive thoughts: sudden, unwanted fears about harming your baby that are common after childbirth due to hormones and sleep loss. She shares three strategies: recognize you're not your thoughts, stop seeking reassurance, and lean in by letting the thought pass without engaging. Acceptance reduces its power.
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Danielle Gianni here, anxiety and OCD recovery coach who has personally recovered. And I help other people do the same so that OCD is no longer something that intrudes in your life. If you or someone you know is experiencing postpartum intrusive thoughts, I'm going to tell you today what they are, why you or this person might be getting them, and pay special attention to number three, because it's the least expected and most important tip that I'm going to give you. First, an intrusive thought is just a thought that we get that is either really uncomfortable are very much unwanted for a new parent. This might be a thought like, what if my baby falls and cracks his head open on the cement? Maybe for a new mother, it's, what if I hurt my baby? There's all kinds of intrusive thoughts that can come up for a new parent, either the mother or the father. So this isn't exclusive to new mothers, although it's very common for new mothers because of the hormone changes, the changes that are going on in our lives, and the fact that we have this new human being that we are responsible for, that we love so much. I can relate to this quite a bit. My son turned 6 months old this week, and postpartum intrusive thoughts are really, really common. People are just now starting to talk about them publicly, which has been so helpful for people to understand that they're normal and they happen. But what we need to understand is what can we do about them? The most important thing to remember here is that we need to learn to not give our thoughts and even our feelings so much meaning. Thoughts are just thoughts, and we all get crazy, weird thoughts sometimes. And this is so true for these intrusive thoughts that we get as a new mom. A thought like, what if I drown my baby? What if my baby dies in the middle of the night? These thoughts are uncomfortable and they can be scary because we're giving them meaning. And then they start to take on a life of their own. But I promise you, they're just thoughts. So here are three things that you can do with unwanted intrusive thoughts. That's going to help alleviate them with time. Number one, I want you to recognize that you are not your thoughts. We all get strange, crazy, weird thoughts. Sometimes it's very normal for every human being for this to happen. It's just that when we're in a state of a lack of sleep, big changes in our life, a new baby to take care of, work stacking up, we tend to be more Emotional, our thoughts tend to be more negative and they tend to be more fear based on. So I want you to understand that you are not your thoughts. Just because you get a thought doesn't mean that that thought says anything about you or reality. Which leads me to number two, we need to not give our thoughts so much meaning. So we get a thought, what if I hurt my child? I want you to understand, again, this means nothing about the fact that you want to hurt your child. You're going to hurt your child. It's just that you're in a moment of anxiety and stress and usually the thought is further from who you want to be, which why it causes so much discomfort. So you're going to practice not giving your thoughts any meaning. You're going to practice not doing anything about the thought, not thinking about it, contemplating about it, not trying to push it away, not seeking reassurance for the thought. You're going to practice just letting it be there and letting it go. I know this can feel hard in the moment, but continue to talk back to your brain and just say, okay, thank you, thought. I'm not going to give you any meaning right now. I'm going to go back to what I was doing. And number three, and this is the important one, lean in. Now, this is also going to sound very, very counterintuitive. But as somebody who's overcome anxiety and OCD with a lot of intrusive thoughts, and it's one of the best things that you can do with any sort of thought that's causing anxiety or discomfort. So leaning into the possibility that that thought is true, what you're going to do here is when you get the thought that says, what if I hurt my child? You're going to respond to your brain and say, yep, maybe I will, but I'm not going to give this thought any more attention. Again, it sounds counterintuitive, but what you're doing here is you're leaning into the possibility that it's true. Because more you try to get rid of it or prove that it's not true, it gives that thought more power. See, your amygdala is trying to get your attention. It thinks that there's something wrong, that maybe something bad will happen. And the more we try to push that thought away, the more meaning we give it or the more we believe it automatically, the more we're going to get those types of thoughts when we lean into, yep, maybe that's true. Who knows? We're teaching the brain that we can handle it. But I'm not going to give it any more attention. Again, these are ways of not giving the thought so much power and meaning. And then your brain will learn not to give these thoughts to you, not to throw this angle at you because you don't care, you're not engaging and you're okay with yep, that's a thought. Maybe it'll happen. Who knows? No more. Let me know down in the comments which of these tips you used, how it worked for you. Maybe you try them all. And if you need help with postpartum intrusive thoughts, please visit the link in the description below.
