Internal Thoughts? What helps?

[slish]

I have been prescribed Ativan by my dr. to take up to 3 times a day. I'm breastfeeding and it makes me worry how it is affecting my baby. I have pretty bad ITs and I don't know how to handle it. The "anxiety" seems to be going ok without the drugs right now but the IT's are still there. The internal thoughts are mostly about the anxiety and obsessing about it. Any suggestions? Anything that has helped you? My thoughts are making me crazy!

Thanks!

[MamaMem]

My midwife just put me on Zoloft. Only had 4 half doses and already it is better.

[chaoticzenmom]

What helped me was to retrain my thinking with a counter thought. Every scenario that came through my brain and tortured me was countered with "If that ever really happened, it would be bad enough. Don't live it if you don't have to." This really helped me because every bad scenario...kidnapping, drowning, falling, plane crashing into the house, roof getting blown off by the wind, tree falling onto him, car crash or whatever other crazy thought would keep me up all night would really be countered with that. Don't live it if you don't have to. It made me want to save my energy to deal with any real things that might happen. If I was too exhausted from dealing with imaginary disasters, I wouldn't have any energy left for the real thing. And the real thing would probably not be a plane crashing into my house

s, those thoughts are hard.

[chaoticzenmom]

Sorry, more...

It took me a while to get the counter thought to work right. At first I'd indulge the disaster scenario and then say my counter thought, but I might have to say the counterthought in my head a few times to get the anxiety thought out of my head. Then, I started interrupting the thoughts midway through with the counter thought. Finally, I started countering at the first sign of anxiety which would immediately dissipate the thought. It's an automatic thought now.

[lisasaurus]

i think its also important, when you find yourself in these thoughts, is to be gentle with yourself... and remind yourself that they are just thoughts, and they have no power. it is human for your mind to go off on these tangents, and you have to accept that, we all do. i think that trying to force yourself away from these thoughts, only brings them back to you more, know what i mean? its kind of a mindfulness practice to acknowledge the thought, and then move on to something more positive. I like the idea of the counter thought to help steer you away. but remember not to beat yourself up when these thoughts arise... you are just human, and its impossible to turn thoughts off. just acknowledge and move forward.

[slish]

It is very helpful that I'm not the only one with obsessive thoughts. Here is another question- do they start to go away??? I have had them for so long I wonder if I will ever think "normal" again. Is it merely retraining and time? I have been able so far to stay off the meds and handle the physical anxiey symptoms but it is mostly the thoughts of "when is this going to end?", "will I ever be "normal" again?", etc. I'm hoping the thoughts will get better with time???

[kcparker]

I had bad PPD and obsessive negative thoughts, and one thing that I found helped was to have an instant no-thought response to it - you could pick a word or phrase that will stamp out the negative thought before it can get started, something like "Talk to the hand!", "BAM!", or the John Jacob Jingleheimer Smith song, or imagine jumping up and down on a fire that is the IT, taking a tennis racket and hitting it out of a tennis court, or putting the thought in a helium balloon and letting it drift into the clouds - basically anything that interrupts that particular circuit before it has a chance to get up and running.

So, if you are starting to think...Oh, I'm so anxious, I bet my baby BAM! ....My anxiety is never going to John Jacob Jingleheimer Smith, his name is my name too... I am obsessing about - stamp! stamp! stamp!

I also find that consistently practicing mindfulness is helpful - coming back to my breath and the present moment, sending my focus outward to washing a dish, diapering the child, whatever concrete thing I am doing. This one is harder though.

[OceansEve]

I've been battling this on and off for 4 years. It does get better but every time I get pg it starts up again, then gets better then worse after birth. I think if I can stay unpreg long enough it would go away. For me I picture the thoughts being chained and sinking to the bottom of a lake and repeating "that is not me - its fear" There are good days where I get by w/o a neg thought, but then there are weeks I feel like I'm gonna scream if my brain doesn't quit. HTH

[slish]

Here is another question for those of you who went on meds.... do they stop the ITs? Or just the PPD symptoms? I will try all of these ideas, they are great!

[fustian]

I've had anxiety / depression problems for a long time, and therefore it was no surprise when I got PPD following my daughter's birth.

I started back on my antidepressant 3 weeks post partum, and back on one of my anti anxiety meds (clonazepam which is in the same family of drugs as ativan) at about 3 months post partum. I was worried about the clonazepam making my daughter sleepy, but I never observed any impact on her. She has now just turned two and is an active and talkative kid (who still breastfeeds), I don't think the meds have had any effect on her.

Ativan is a medication with a shorter half life. If you are worried about the impact it has you can try to time when you are taking it so its peak concentration in your bloodstream (2 hours after you take it for ativan) is not a time you are likely to be feeding. I know when I first started back on my anti-depressant I was very concerned about passing the drug on to my baby and managing my doses so that the peak levels were at times that I was unlikely to be feeding (as best as one can when feeding on demand) helped assuage my anxiety somewhat. That having been said, the amount of drug passed through breastmilk is not high, and all that fiddling was more for my peace of mind than anything else.

I have dealt with intrusive IT both before and after the birth of my child. I have found that my best healthy tactic for dealing with them is to forcefully say out loud "STOP IT" when they start. That would give me a sharp interrupt and then I would continue to say "stop it" either out loud or in my head as required.

And the thoughts do go away. Things do get better. My PPD thoughts are gone completely. I had IT thoughts for about 10 years with my untreated anxiety/depression and those do reoccur depending on how well I am managing my illness, but I go months without them. So I would say that no matter how long you've been having these thoughts there is every reason to believe that you will be rid of them eventually.

Take care of yourself

[azgirl]

Yes, for me Zoloft helped a lot with the ITs. I also did CBT and that really helped. I feel "cured" in a lot of ways, but I battle the thoughts. Only now, battling the thoughts takes me from okay, fine and good to feeling really awesome and like I can do anything. The trick for me was that CBT taught me what to say so I believed what I was saying. Talking back with feel-good thoughts that don't ring true doesn't really work. When you are depressed, positive thoughts don't ring true, so it's a bit of a trick! When my PPD was at its peak I needed meds to even have the ability to "talk back". Sometimes I feel like what Zoloft REALLY did was slow me down, make me a little numb and tired and calm. Since my symptoms where: agitations, racing thoughts, anxiety and terrible insomnia, Zoloft was awesome for me. As I felt better, those effects just seemed like "side-effects" and I weaned off the Zoloft. Hope that helps. Good luck and keep us posted!

[neveryoumindthere]

Something that helped me was to question my thoughts ala Byron Katie.

Is 'Thought xyz' True? yes or no
Can I be absolutely sure that 'thought xyz' is true? yes or no
How do I react when I think the thought 'xyz'?
Who would I be *without* the thought 'xyz'?

Then you turn thought xyz into it's opposite (so if the thought was originally 'I can't handle this", then you'd change it something like "I can handle this")
and give 3 examples of how are handling it..

The videos on Byron Katie's site are really helpful and powerful

HTH

[MamaMem]

Originally Posted by slish

Here is another question for those of you who went on meds.... do they stop the ITs? Or just the PPD symptoms? I will try all of these ideas, they are great!

I have been on Zoloft for almost 2 weeks now. The thoughts are not gone, but they are far less often and intense. But more importantly, I actually have the mental ability and energy to remind myself that it's just a thought and can turn to something else.

[aries girl]

Zoloft stopped my IT's which were so bad I thought I was going to go insane. I tried everything suggested here to stop them and nothing worked except meds. I am so grateful for them, they have allowed me to experience the joy of motherhood.

[neveryoumindthere]

That's awesome and totally the whole point, to enjoy motherhood.

I don't remember if effexor helped the IT's, that was way back in highschool, but it DEFINITELY was what I needed and was the best decision I could have made. It made a world of difference and I look back at that time as one of my happiest.