Author Archives: Isaiah Lin

Therapist Corner #2: Postpartum Rage

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Q: I am 3 months postpartum and am shocked by how angry I am all the time. I expected I might feel sad or even depressed after giving birth, but not angry. I blow up and yell at my husband all the time, and I’m worried about my baby being around all this anger. I’m not an angry person, and I don’t know why I feel this way. What is wrong with me?

A: Postpartum rage is not an uncommon experience (see books How Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids and All the Rage: Mothers, Fathers & the Myth of Equal Partnership). While anger in our society is often seen as a dangerous and destructive emotion that should never be expressed (especially for women!), anger often is an indicator of unmet needs, limits that are being pushed past, or boundaries that are being violated. Anger is a signal that there is some threat to you in the environment.

The postpartum period is, understandably, a prime time for a mother’s needs to go unmet, and often by necessity. Of course, you often need to prioritize your baby’s needs over your own. And you absolutely have to place your needs high enough up on the priority list that you are able be there for your family in a whole and healthy way. You cannot pour from an empty cup.

With postpartum rage, it is always important to zoom out and look at the big picture to see what changes can be made to better ensure that your basic needs are being met. It is essential that you are eating regular meals, getting adequate sleep, and having some (even small) amount of time to yourself without the responsibility of caring for baby every day.

For most people, getting at least one stretch of 4 consecutive hours of sleep as well as additional hours of broken sleep can make an incredible difference in their mental health and ability to function. Sometimes this means going to sleep early in the evening (if that’s when your baby sleeps the longest) or pumping earlier in the day/supplementing with formula so that your partner can feed the baby without waking you up if breastfeeding is significantly impacting your sleep.

What supports do you have in your life? Is your partner participating in the care of your baby and the home the way you need? Do you have others in your life you could enlist for support? It is absolutely imperative (and not selfish) to make sure your needs are being met during this intense first year of your baby’s life.

If you are ever concerned that you are about to take your anger out on your baby, always put your baby in a safe place (e.g. crib or bassinet) and leave the room. It is ok for your baby to cry while you take the space you need. Call a supportive person in your life if you are concerned that you can’t go back to care for your baby after taking that space.

If you feel like you need extra support figuring out how to make changes to get your needs met or don’t know whom to turn to, please reach out for either individual or couples counseling. We would gladly come alongside you to figure out how to get your needs met so that the anger is no longer needed.

-Grace Carpenter, MS, LMHC

Grace Carpenter is a therapist at Samaritan Center who focuses on perinatal, postpartum, and infertility concerns.

 

Welcome to the Therapist’s Corner, a place where people can ask questions about struggles, relationships, or the rest of life, and therapists at Samaritan Center can give their quick and thoughtful answers. We hope you enjoy these responses and find them helpful. If you have a question that could benefit from the thoughts or advice of a trained mental health professional, send it our way at contact@samaritanps.org to have it answered.

Renewed Resolutions

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There is renewed hope every new year as the struggles of the previous year give way to a fresh start. As January 1st strikes, people all over the world join on a journey of change as they make their resolutions for 2024. It is the day gyms are most crowded and the most promises are made. Well, we’re now into February. How are we doing, folks?

Did you know that the second Friday of January is referred to as Quitters’ Day, and that Ditch New Year’s Resolution Day falls on January 17th. We know that the vast majority of people will not keep their resolutions: in fact, a study from Sundried.com found that 43% of people begin the year already anticipating that they will give up by the end of the month. Many people decide to give up altogether, resigned that things cannot and will never change.

In many ways, the phenomenon of New Year’s resolutions reflects the larger process of change we experience as humans. Even though we have a desire to grow, change is hard. It’s hard to begin, and it’s hard to sustain. Sometimes, the pressure and overwhelm associated with stepping out of a comfort zone keeps a person from even thinking about it. But the New Year is upon us.. well, the lunar one that is. Perhaps it’s as good of a reason as any to make some new resolutions. Are you willing try again? If so, here are some tips that may help:

1. Keep it simple. It can be tempting to try to change everything all at once or to engage goals with full abandon, but that often leads to taking actions without the underlying structures to sustain them. It’s like a runner who starts off the block too quickly and begins to fade because they do not have the energy left to finish strong. Instead, focus on smaller increments of change that will challenge you to grow but are still manageable. Gradual steps can build towards greater growth. Bruce Lee once said, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” Building depth and not breadth by simplifying goals is a good way to build long-term and sustainable change.

2. Find your meaning. According to Angela Duckworth, a leading expert on grit, one important ingredient for follow-through and perseverance is to identify and focus on your passions. The more an individual action is attached to a larger meaning and desire, the greater the motivation to complete that action. We see this play out all the time. Students grind to achieve a grade at the end of the year. Athletes run wind sprints because every rep gets them closer to the championship. What might be your larger reason to work out, stop drinking, or try something new? Focusing on that can provide continued direction when you run into the dog days of summer.

3. Don’t do it alone. Reaching out to another person can be an incredibly important resource when it comes to follow through. Someone who gives consistent encouragement and accountability can provide a secondary, external source of motivation when internal willpower falters. Furthermore, working with another person offers an opportunity for feedback and reflection that is vital to learning and growth. Not only are there external benefits to reaching out, research has also found sharing goals with another person–particularly someone we hold in high esteem–can actually increase internal motivation as well.

4. Try again… again. Unfortunately, we will all face failure. Research from the University of Scranton found that a whopping 92% of people do not keep their New Year’s resolutions. Just as telling, however, is a study by Norcross and Vangarelli which found that those who successfully kept their resolutions still averaged 14 setbacks over a two-year period. A big part of success is learning what to do with failure. Failure is often thought of as the end of the story and is connected with feelings of incompetence, embarrassment, or rejection. One effective way of overcoming that mindset about failure is to see it as part of the growth process rather than the end result. As Thomas Edison famously said, “I have not failed 10,000 times, I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.”

Regardless of where you are with your resolutions, whether you are still going strong, have crashed and burned, or never started to begin with, we hope that this message can be a little bit of encouragement to continue, restart, or begin your journey of change. There is always the next opportunity to try again. There is always a new chance to grow. As the scriptures say, “His mercies are new every morning.” Have at it once more!

 

This writing was originally posted in an email sent to our mailing list on February 9th, 2024. Please enter your email at the bottom of the page if you would like to sign up to be part of our mailing list.

Therapist’s Corner #1: Right Time for Couples Therapy

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Q: My partner and I argue frequently, sometimes bitterly. I think some arguing is normal, right? Yet I do worry that it’s become a problem. When is the right time to start couples counseling?

A: Thank you for this question! It is such a common one for many couples who are trying to decide what is normal and what is a serious warning sign. The first thing I would say is that couples therapy does not have to be a last resort. It can greatly ease difficulties in relationships, even longstanding ones. And it is a resource that many people avail themselves of proactively—to nurture generally healthy bonds.

You are correct, of course, that some amount of conflict in a couple’s relationship is to be expected and even healthy. For it to be submerged or circumvented routinely would be troubling in itself. Couples can engage in conflict in constructive and beneficial ways. Or quite the opposite. When argument becomes the norm, especially when it feels hurtful or even abusive, an outside resource such as therapy can be critical.

For couples who identify their fighting as a problem, the right time to start is, well, before it’s too late. That sounds glib, and it is, but it is also completely true. Therapy generally proves useful in identifying deeply ingrained patterns that have a way of taking over a couple’s interactions. Each partner can benefit from seeing the patterns clearly on their many levels: behavioral, perceptual, and emotional. With help from the therapist, partners can explore their contributions to these patterns and can support one another in their growth and change.

So why do people resist therapy, given the potential benefits? The reasons are many and are understandable. As already mentioned, expense is often one factor. For another thing, therapy can be intimidating. It opens a couple’s private life to a stranger, which can feel unwelcome or even shameful. Many people find that vulnerability even more distasteful than the strains and discontent of the ongoing relationship.

In addition, there is simply the complexity of a relationship, especially one that has evolved, however unhealthily, over many years and changes and cycles of up and down. Sometimes the memories of better times early in the relationship create a false sense of hope that a healthy state will surely somehow return on its own. If only circumstances—infants or adolescents in the household, or bouts of illness—would change, then the relief would allow the relationship to recover.

In fairness, this is not without validity. Circumstances can be a big factor in couples’ difficulties, and their skills and capacities for resolving the distress in their relationships can prove adequate for the necessary healing and resolution. Or they can be adequate in some circumstances but not in others.

So the question of seeking counseling comes back to a couple’s own discernment. If a couple has sufficient resources and trust in the process, they might seek counseling to nurture an already secure relationship. If circumstances are distressing, it might be helpful to seek guidance simply to deal with the circumstances more effectively. If the patterns of dysfunction are hurtful, it is almost always better to seek help now if possible rather than allow the hurts to accumulate and compound.

The right time for couples counseling can be whenever there is a clear sense of opportunity or urgency. Couples do quarrel, some seasons of “coupledom” are inherently more challenging than others, and people and relationships do change, but couples are wise to assess their relationship health regularly and honestly—and even that assessment can be a short-term goal to pursue with a therapist.

-Eric Stroo, MA, LMHC

Eric Stroo is a therapist at Samaritan Center. He currently works with individuals and couples.

 

Welcome to the Therapist’s Corner, a place where people can ask questions about struggles, relationships, or the rest of life, and therapists at Samaritan Center can give their quick and thoughtful answers. We hope you enjoy these responses and find them helpful. If you have a question that could benefit from the thoughts or advice of a trained mental health professional, send it our way at contact@samaritanps.org to have it answered.

Change Your Mind

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A friend recently shared with me their copy of Nikita Gill’s book, Where Hope Comes From. The first poem, entitled “And a Message from the Universe,” goes like this:

In every moment of your existence,
Several realities
Are bursting across the cosmos. 

Planets explode.
Stars burst.
Solar systems dissolve

Or welcome a new planet
Into the orbit of their own
Sun-like star. 

The universe gives them life
And says,
Now help me live. 

Listen.
I am saying that if you change your thoughts,
You, too, can change your universe. 

As I reflect on this, part of me is skeptical: Change your universe?  Really?  Another part of me nods along, “We CAN change our/the universe If we allow our “same-stuff-as-stars” cerebrums to shift. For there is a whole universe in there.

And, somewhere in my same cerebral space are swirling around words from the August 27 lectionary passage, the starting words of Romans 12:

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be TRANSformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” 

Perfect—not meaning without blemish or error—instead perfect meaning whole and integrated. Such is God’s good will for each of us, that we might find wholeness and healing in our holy lives.

Perhaps the Apostle Paul and Nikita Gill are onto the same thing. That by God or by grace, these mysterious and wonder-filled minds are key to our transformation, even the changing of our very universe.  Which for us—and for those we hold in our hearts—begins right here… begins right now.