The Postpartum Mental Health Crisis No One in the Church Is Talking About

Elisha's Space: Maybe you finally got the baby down, the house is quiet, and instead of feeling relief you're falling apart. You cannot explain it. You have a healthy baby. You have people who love you. You have prayed. You have read the Word. And yet something inside of you still feels broken, hollow, terrified. And if you are inside a faith community, you have already heard the answers. Just trust God more. You should be grateful. The joy of the Lord is your strength. So you smiled. You showed up on Sunday. You said you were fine because what kind of mother, what kind of Christian struggles like this. You were listening to Elisha Space and today we're breaking that question apart. Stay with me. Welcome to Elisha Space, a sanctuary for healing growth and for the kind of honest conversations that actually change things. I'm Elisha, your host, a counselor and author, and someone who has sat in the same stuck places you have. If you're new here, welcome home. I am so glad you found this. And if you've been listening for a while, I see you and I'm glad you're back. Today's episode is one I've been sitting with for quite a long time. I've sat across these women, women of deep faith, women who love God, women who love their babies, and who are suffering in silence because no one gave them permission to tell the truth. We are talking about postpartum mental health today, not the version that gets a pamphlet in the hospital and then nothing, the version that lives inside a real woman at three in the morning wondering if she will ever feel like herself again. Today's episode is practical, clinical, but pastoral. stay with me. Let me tell you what postpartum mental health actually looks like. Not in a textbook, antibody. It looks like intrusive thoughts you are too ashamed to say out loud. Thoughts that terrify you. That make you question whether you are safe. Whether your baby is safe. Whether you are the mother your child deserves. It looks like rage. Sudden, confusing, disorienting rage. directed at the people you love most. It looks like numbness, an emotional flatness so complete that you start to wonder if something in you has permanently changed, if you will ever feel warmth again. It looks like hypervigilance, checking the baby every four minutes at night, unable to sleep even when the baby is sleeping, unable to rest even when everything is quiet. It looks like weeping in the shower. not because you can name what's wrong, but because the shower is the only place no one can see you. Does any of that sound familiar? Here is what I need you to hear and I need you to actually receive this. Nothing is wrong with you. Your body is doing exactly what it was designed to do. And it's just overwhelmed. This is not a spiritual failure. This is a physiological crisis happening inside a body that has just done one of the most extraordinary and demanding things a human body can do. And the shame, the silence, the performance of fine when nothing is fine, that is the stigma. And it is actively harming women. And we are done with it today. I want to speak specifically to those of you who are navigating postpartum mental health inside a faith community, because there is a particular cruelty to the stigma that lives inside the church walls. It comes dressed as care, as concerned as theology. It sounds like you should be grateful. God gave you a healthy baby. The joy of the Lord is your strength. Maybe you just need to praise more. Perhaps there's a spiritual door that needs to be closed. Have you been in the word? Have you been praying? And I want to be careful here. I do not believe most of the people who say these things intend harm. But what those words communicate to a postpartum woman is devastating. Your suffering is your fault. Your struggle is a spiritual deficiency. You are not trusting God enough. There is a message that runs quietly through parts of American Christianity that if you are struggling, it's because you weren't faithful enough. That suffering for a believer is something to spiritually explain or quickly overcome, not something to sit with, not something to mean, certainly not something that requires a doctor. and women believe it because it comes from people they trust. I have sat from women in my counseling practice, women of genuine, robust, beautiful faith who waited months, sometimes years to ask for help, not because they didn't know something was wrong, because they were afraid that needing help meant they didn't trust God. One woman told me she thought she just needed to pray harder. She was sitting across from me in crisis, eight months postpartum. I want to say this as directly and as lovingly as I know how. Dismissing postpartum mental health as a spiritual problem is not faith. It is a failure of understanding. And understanding is exactly what we're going to build today. Let me tell you what is actually happening in the body after birth. Because knowledge isn't just power for trauma survivors. Knowledge is safety. When a woman gives birth and in the days and weeks that follow, her body undergoes the most dramatic hormonal shift in all of human biology. Estrogen and progesterone, which have been elevated throughout pregnancy, sometimes a hundred times above normal, drop precipitously within 24 to 48 hours of delivery. That collapse directly affects serotonin and dopamine and it throws the entire autotomic nervous system into dysregulation. Now here is what I need you to understand about that. The autotomic nervous system, the one that is now overwhelmed, flooded, misfiring, is the same nervous system through which you feel peace, through which you regulate emotion, through which you experience connection, attunement, and the presence of God. This is not visualization. This is physiology. The vagus nerve. Vagus literally means wandering in Latin. Rinse from your brain stem down through your heart, your lungs, your gut. It is the primary pathway. for the parasympathetic response, the rest and digest state, the felt sense of safety in the body. In postpartum dysregulation, the vagus nerve is often stuck in a state of chronic threat activation. The body is reading danger signals even when there is no danger. It cannot distinguish between a real threat and the biological overwhelm of new motherhood. and from that state, from chronic sympathetic activation, it is genuinely difficult to feel anything clearly. Peace, love, the presence of God. which is why pray harder is insufficient. Not because prayer is not powerful. It is, but because you cannot access the full depth of spiritual practice from a dysregulated nervous system. Prayer is received in the body and a body in survival mode cannot fully receive it. His peace is not dependent on your circumstances being resolved. It is a regulated nervous system in the presence of a safe guard. And that regulation, is exactly what we're building toward right now. before we keep going. If this episode is speaking to something you've been carrying, would you share it right now? Text it to one woman you know, one new mom, one friend who's been a little quieter than usual. You might be the reason she doesn't feel alone tonight. We'll keep going. So what does healing actually look like? Let me walk you through my REST framework. The model I use with women in my counseling practice applied specifically to postpartum mental health. R for regulate. The first work of postpartum healing is nervous system regulation. And I want to be specific because regulation is often misunderstood. Regulation is not suppression. It is not white knuckling. It is not performing okay until you eventually feel okay. Regulation is actual physiological down regulation of a threat response. And it happens in the body, not in the mind. For postpartum women, this often looks like vagal tuning, humming softly. even a lullaby to the baby, gentle singing, cold water on the wrist or face, which triggers the dive reflex and activates the parasympathetic branch. These are not spiritual bypasses. They are tools God built into the body. Co-regulation, sitting with someone whose nervous system feels safe, allowing their regulated state to communicate safely to yours. This is not weakness. This is the way God desired human beings. We are wired neurologically for co-regulation. You were never meant to do this alone. Sensory reduction. Postpartum bodies are often overwhelmed by sound, light, and touch. Dimming the environment when possible is not a luxury. in this season. It is medicine. E for experience. Experience and the rest are EST framework means somatic honesty. It means allowing yourself to locate and name what is happening in the body without immediately rushing to fix it. Where do you feel the anxiety right now? Is it in your chest? A tight band across your sternum? Is the tension in your jaw? your shoulders, the back of your neck? Is there tension there? Can you locate it? Can you name it without judging it? This is hard for high functioning women, for women in ministry and leadership and caregiving roles, because we have been trained to manage, to perform, to push through. Somatic honesty asks us to pause, to simply be. and the body to let what is true be true without rushing to the resolution. surrender. And surrender in this framework ⁓ not passive. It is not resignation. Surrender is an ⁓ practice ⁓ releasing control to a safe source. And for the woman listening today, that safe source is God. But I want to be specific about what that looks like physiologically. When we orient our bodies towards safety, when we breathe slowly and intentionally, when we soften our posture, when we open our hands instead of clenching them, we send a signal through the nervous system, I am not in danger. I do not need to fight or flee. Let your nervous system hear that you are not running from it. Prayered with prayer with the actual words and breath and posture of prayer. This becomes one of the most profound regulation tools available to us. Not because it is mystical magic, because it is physiology aligned with faith. And then T, trust. Trust in the R-E-S-T framework, the rest framework. It's not intellectual agreement. It is not saving, I believe God is good, while your body is in survival mode. and you feel nothing. Trust is an embodied experience of safety built over time in repetition. In every moment you reach for help and find it there. In every moment you speak the truth and are not abandoned for it. In every prayer that meets you exactly where you are. This is how trust is built in the nervous system. This is how it is built with God. And it is built slowly, gently, one regulated moment at a time. I want to do something practical with you right now. If you're driving, you can do this with your eyes open. If you have the baby in your arms, that is okay. Just stay with me. Place one hand on your chest, right over your heart. Take a slow breath in through your nose, letting it fill your chest, your belly. Don't force it, just invite it. hold for just a moment. and let it out slowly through your mouth like a sigh, like a release. one more time. Now, with your hand on your chest, notice, can you feel your heartbeat, even faintly? Your heart is beating. Your body is working. You are here. I want you to say this out loud if you can. Sight me if you need to. Nothing is wrong with me. My body is doing exactly what it was designed to do. It is just overwhelmed. And right now, in this moment, I am safe. Let your nervous system hear that. Is there any tension releasing somewhere, even slightly? That is your parasympathetic branch receiving the message. That is regulation beginning. That small shift, repeated consistently, is how healing builds, one breath at a time. Let's pray. Father. I am grateful that you made these bodies, that you knit together the very nervous systems that we are learning to regulate. for the woman listening right now who has been suffering in silence, who has smiled at church and wept in the car, who has said fine when nothing is fine. I ask that you meet her, not with easy answers, not with a quick fix, but with your presence. Let her hear what you have always been saying over her. You are not too much. You are not a failure. You are not spiritually deficient. You are overwhelmed and I am near. Give her the courage to ask for help. Give her access to care, professional, clinical, pastoral. Give her one safe person who will not turn her suffering into assurances. And remind her, in the fog of 3 a.m., in the hardest moments of a very hard season, that you have not left, that your peace is not waiting on the other side of her circumstances being resolved. It is available right here, right now in this body, in this breath. Father, I am grateful that you made these bodies, that you knit together the very nervous systems that we are learning to regulate. We receive your peace now, amen. Take one more breath with me before we close. Breathe in slowly. Hold. and release. Good. Here is your challenge. Seven days, one practice. Tell one person the truth. Not the whole truth, not your full story. Just one true sentence. I am having a harder time than I've been letting on. I need help. I'm not okay and I haven't been for a while. One person, one sentence. That is where healing begins, in the breaking of the silence. If this episode helped you today, share it. Text it to one woman you know, one new mom, one friend who's been quieter than usual. You might be the reason she finally asked for help. I mean that. I mean it literally. More resources are available at www.RestoringYouChristianCounseling.com. And if you're in a season where you need more than a podcast, where you need a trained professional, please reach out. Healing is not a solo endeavor. It was never designed to be. Until next time, you are not too much and you are not too far and you are not alone.