Flashbacks - Part I

I have flashbacks from the time period when I suffered from psychosis. If you look up postpartum psychosis up in Wikipedia,it explains postpartum psychosis (or puerperal psychosis) as a term that covers a group of mental illnesses with the sudden onset of psychotic symptoms following childbirth. Some patients have typical manic symptoms, such as euphoria, overactivity, decreased sleep requirement, loquaciousness, flight of ideas, increased sociability, disinhibition, irritability, violence and delusions, which are usually grandiose or religious in content; on the whole these symptoms are more severe than in mania occurring at other times, with highly disorganized speech and extreme excitement. Others have severe depression with delusions, verbal hallucinations, mutism, stupor or transient swings into hypomania. Some switch from mania to depression (or vice versa) within the same episode. Atypical features include perplexity, confusion, emotions like extreme fear and ecstasy, catatonia or rapid changes of mental state with transient delusional ideas; these are so striking that some authors have regarded them as a distinct, specific disease, but they are the defining features of acute polymorphic (cycloid) psychoses, and are seen in other contexts (for example, menstrual psychosis) and in men. I truly experienced all of the above symptoms.

Postpartum psychosis is ALWAYS an emergency. It is often a life or death situation and it was for me. That time in my life comes back at me often. What a scary experience I lived through. It makes me so empathetic to people who live with schizophrenia. I am one of the lucky ones. I only had an episode. Some people live with hallucinations, hearing voices, not being able to distinguish what is real and what isn't on a daily basis. Those poor people. I met people like that when I was hospitalized and what a hell they live in.

I flashback to that time period often still because I am still healing from the trauma. I remember being afraid that if I didn't see everyone in the same spot, that someone was going to die. I grabbed onto my cousin's hand in my garage and begged him not to leave because I thought that if he drove away, he was going to die. I was hysterical. He turned around and did leave, but I later found out that I was so bad that they made him say that to me so he could go inside the house. He was crying. I was so afraid to sleep. I had everyone in the room crying because I was so hysterical. I also remember fighting my husband. He wanted me to get into the car so he could drive me to the hospital and I was combative. Completely not myself and uncooperative. An ambulance had to be called.

What I need to work on is not feeling guilty and ashamed of what happened that day. I could not control what happened and God knows I would have rather been well than been sick.

What a difference a year has made that I can finally talk about what happened that day. There is so much more to say about that day, but I think I have talked enough about it today. There is always tomorrow. Thanks for listening.