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Postpartum Depression
After giving birth, mothers can experience a wide range of powerful emotions including, excitement, fear, joy, happiness, and anxiety. Unexpectedly, mothers can also begin to feel depressed too. Most new moms are familiar with the term “baby blues” after childbirth. The “baby blues” include, mood swings, crying spells, trouble sleeping, and feelings of anxiety. These can last up to two weeks postpartum. Some new moms will experience a more severe, long-lasting form of depression also known as postpartum depression.
Symptoms Of Postpartum Depression
- Depressed mood or severe mood swings
- Excessive crying
- Difficulty bonding with your newborn
- Withdraw from family and friends
- Insomnia & sleep troubles
- Loss of appetite or increased appetite
- Fatigue or no energy
- Irritability
- Hopelessness
- Feelings of worthlessness, guilt, or shame
- Thoughts of harming yourself or your baby
- Difficulty concentrating
- Reduced interest in activities you used to enjoy
- Anxiety and panic attacks
- Restlessness
- Recurrent thoughts of suicide or death
There are many factors that play into postpartum depression but no single cause. Physical and emotional issues may play a role in the onset of postpartum depression. After a mother gives birth changes in hormone levels in your body may lead to feelings of depression and leave you feeling fatigued. Sleep deprivation, feeling overwhelmed, feelings of unattractiveness, struggling with identity, and doubt may contribute to postpartum depression.
How Therapy Can Help
Treatment options can look different for everyone depending on severity, individual needs, or other underlying factors such as hormone levels or illness. As always, it is important to consult with your physician who may then offer specific testing or a referral to a mental health professional.
Psychotherapy and treatment models such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) can help you:
- Find healthy way to cope with feelings
- Set goals
- Identify unhelping thinking
- Identify support systems
- Help adjust your lifestyle to support you and your newborn
- Help you build positive and healthy responses
Postpartum Anxiety
It is commons to have feelings of anxiety or some level of worry after giving birth. Sometimes these feelings of worry often get out of control and can feel like they are taking over your thoughts. Postpartum anxiety can also occur along with postpartum depression, but the conditions are different despite sharing many of the same symptoms.
Postpartum anxiety affects between 11% and 21% of individuals at birth.
Symptoms of Postpartum Anxiety
- Racing thoughts
- Trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, despite feeling exhausted
- Changes in heart rate/breathing
- Dread of a sense of danger
- Excessive worry about the baby’s health or safety
- Feeling jittery or agitated
- Nausea/dizziness
- Loss of appetite
- Trouble sitting still
- Muscle Tension
- Difficulty focusing or forgetfulness
A change in hormone levels, lack of sleep, new overwhelming sense of responsibility, stress, and sometimes health conditions can put you at a higher risk for developing postpartum anxiety.
How therapy can help
Similar to postpartum depression treatment, psychotherapy and techniques such as CBT can be helpful in reframing thoughts, building coping skills to deal with feelings of anxiety, and provide psychoeducation to help you learn about what you are currently experiencing.
It may feel like you are all alone, but you are not. Call or book an appointment with us for support alongside your new journey in motherhood and to help you overcome postpartum depression/anxiety.
Help is always one call or text away:
SUICIDE HOTLINE: 1-800-784-2433, A nationwide 24 hours/ 7 days a week service. To find a local number, see: http://suicidehotlines.com
Take the First Step Towards Change
Many clients choose to address stress through couples therapy, where we work directly on the relational patterns driving emotional overload.
Contact Marina Edelman, LMFT, today for a confidential consultation.
Learn More About Marina Edelman’s Services
You can also find more information on her Psychology Today profile: Marina Edelman – Psychology Today. Or explore resources on the AEDP Institute website: Marina Edelman – AEDP Institute
FAQ
What is the difference between postpartum depression and the baby blues?
The baby blues are normal — tearfulness, mood swings, and anxiety that peak around day three or four and resolve within two weeks as hormones begin to stabilize. Postpartum depression is different in duration, severity, and what it requires. It doesn’t resolve on its own, can emerge any time in the first year after birth, and begins to affect your ability to function, sleep, and connect with your baby. If what you are experiencing has lasted beyond two weeks or feels like more than you can manage alone — please reach out. What you are feeling is real, it is treatable, and you do not have to white-knuckle your way through it.
Does having postpartum depression mean something is wrong with me as a mother?
No — and I want to be direct about this. Postpartum depression is not a reflection of your love for your baby or your capacity as a mother. It is a clinical condition shaped by hormonal shifts, sleep deprivation, identity upheaval, and the overwhelming weight of new responsibility. The mothers who experience it are not weaker than those who don’t. They are mothers whose systems have been pushed beyond what they can carry alone — and who deserve support, not shame.
Can I have postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety at the same time?
AEDP sessions tend to feel different from what many people expect therapy to be.
Rather than a structured agenda or a checklist of topics, sessions follow your emotional experience in real time. I pay close attention to what arises — a shift in your body, a moment of unexpected feeling, something that lands differently than expected — and we work with that together.
There is also a practice in AEDP called metatherapeutic processing, which simply means we pause to notice and deepen positive shifts when they occur. If something feels better, clearer, or lighter, we do not rush past it. We stay with it — because in AEDP, those moments of positive experience are not incidental. They are part of how lasting change takes root.
Sessions can feel tender, surprising, and at times quietly profound. Many clients tell me they leave feeling more like themselves than they have in years.
4. Is AEDP suitable for anxiety, depression, or emotional numbness?
Yes — and in my experience, it is particularly well-suited to these presentations.
Anxiety, depression, and emotional numbness are often the surface expression of deeper emotional experience that has had nowhere safe to go. AEDP works with the emotions beneath those symptoms — the grief, fear, longing, or shame that may have been held at a distance for a long time.
For clients who describe feeling emotionally flat or disconnected, AEDP’s emphasis on the body and present-moment experience often opens a door that purely cognitive approaches cannot reach. It does not require you to already have access to your emotions — it gently helps you find your way back to them.
5. How long does it typically take to see results with AEDP?
In my experience, most clients begin to notice something shifting within the first 4 to 6 sessions — not full resolution, but a sense of increased emotional clarity, less reactivity, or a feeling of being more present in their own life. That early movement matters, and AEDP is specifically designed to create it.
That said, every nervous system is different. A client who has spent decades in protective shutdown will move at a different pace than someone processing a more recent loss. What I can tell you is that in AEDP, you will rarely feel like you are spinning your wheels. The approach is designed to produce felt, embodied change — not just insight — and most clients can sense that something real is happening relatively early in the process.
The goal is never speed. The goal is change that is still with you five years from now.
Take the first step toward healing and connection, schedule your consultation today.
Not sure where to start? Let’s talk.