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Your Postpartum Anxiety Is Not a Hormone Problem. Here Is What Is Actually Running It. · Motherhood Uncut

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: So you've probably been treating your postpartum anxiety like a hormone problem, which I totally get.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Most people do, but that is why it's still here.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get to the bottom of this because you are not someone who quiz.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: You have tried all the supplements, maybe the breathing exercises, maybe even medication, and you've read the articles at 2 a.m.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: You've told yourself it is just your hormones and that will pass.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: And other people have probably told you this too, but your mind is still racing.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: And somewhere deep down, you are still waiting for the next thing to go wrong.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the fact that the anxiety hasn't gotten better yet, that is starting to feel like it's just you, like it's never gonna go away.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: I have worked with thousands of high-achieving moms in this exact spot.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: And what I see over and over is that the first explanation they get is the one that keeps them stuck the longest.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: But you see there is something else running your anxiety, something that has almost nothing to do with your hormone levels.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: And once you understand what that is, everything begins to make sense and everything begins to shift.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: In this video today, I'm gonna show you what you've actually been dealing with, why the hormone explanation became the default answer, and what's underneath your anxiety that nobody talks about.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: You see, that hormone explanation is real, it's just incomplete.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: And here's what most people hear your postpartum anxiety is triggered by hormonal shifts.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Estrogen drops after birth, progesterone tanks, and your brain chemistry is temporarily off.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: And your body just needs time to recalibrate.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's the story most women hear at their very first appointment after having a baby.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And doctors aren't wrong to mention it.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Hormones do shift dramatically postpartum.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Real biology is actually happening in your body.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: And a good provider is going to name it for you.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: The problem isn't that they're lying to you.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is that they're stopping the explanation too early.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: If your anxiety were mostly hormonal, it would track with your hormone levels.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: It would spike at predictable times and ease as your body stabilized.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: But for most women I work with, the anxiety doesn't follow that pattern at all.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: It spikes when the baby won't settle, when they're in a work meeting but their mind is still at home, when they feel a wave of emotion and don't know what to do with it.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Hormones don't explain why your anxiety gets worse when your toddler melts down and better when everything is quiet and controlled.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: So if it's not just hormones, what is it reacting to?
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, your anxiety is reacting to emotional discomfort, and your nervous system learned to treat that discomfort like a threat.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: I worked with a client named Larissa, and she literally tried everything.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: She was over a year postpartum.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Her hormone levels had stabilized according to her labs, and she still felt numb and anxious and very disconnected.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: The biology did what biology does, but the anxiety stuck around because the biology was never what was driving it.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: When you stop treating this as a hormone problem, you stop waiting for your body to fix something that it can't fix on its own.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And you start looking in the right place and finally doing something about it that makes a difference.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk for a moment about what your nervous system actually learned and when it learned it.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because your nervous system learned a pattern long before you had your baby.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Postpartum anxiety is something that happens to you after birth, right?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's situational, it's new, it's directly connected to becoming a mother and everything that comes with that.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Motherhood is a massive transition.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: There's tons and tons of uncertainty and unpredictability.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it makes sense that that's where the focus goes.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: A lot does change.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Your identity shifts, your sleep disappears, your priorities get flipped overnight.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, everyone zooms in on the one thing that just happened.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: The baby was born, but your nervous system didn't start from scratch when your baby showed up.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: It brought everything it already knew about handling uncertainty, managing emotional discomfort, and staying in control.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: And if you spent years in high-pressure environments getting rewarded for scanning ahead and anticipating problems and solving things before they could go wrong, your nervous system got really good at that pattern.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Motherhood didn't create your anxiety.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: It just doesn't respond to the tools that you have always used to manage it.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, what was the anxiety actually connected to before?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was connected to the feeling of emotional discomfort.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Anytime something felt uncertain, unresolved, or out of your control, your nervous system logged it as a problem to solve.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it got so fast at that response that you stopped noticing it was even happening.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Think about your life before the baby.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Were you the person who stayed late to make sure things were done right?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Who needed to know the plan before you could relax?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Who felt unsettled when something was left unresolved?
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: You probably didn't call that anxiety.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: You called it functioning.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: It was just your way of being in the world.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was your system doing exactly what it learned to do, probably when you were very young.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Motherhood just made it impossible to keep up with all that perfecting.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: For a moment here, stop seeing your anxiety as a postpartum issue and start understanding it as a pattern that's been running for a very long time.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that matters because old patterns have old roots.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: You can't supplement or exercise your way out of an old root.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Which brings us to the question I want you to sit with for just a second because it's going to tell you exactly where you are right now.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Before that, though, if this is landing for you, go ahead and subscribe because I make videos specifically for high-achieving moms dealing with postpartum and ongoing anxiety in motherhood.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And this is not the last video you're going to want to see.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so how do you know if this is your old pattern?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, think about the last time your anxiety spiked, not what was happening around you, but what was happening, you know, like inside of you.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Was there a feeling right before the spike, something uncomfortable that you move to manage or stop?
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: The pattern I'm describing looks like this.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Something happens, let's say your kid gets upset or a work email comes in and you feel a flicker of uncertainty or guilt or overwhelm, like a tightness in your shoulders or your jaw or your belly.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: And before that feeling can even fully land, your nervous system is already in motion, racing thoughts, scanning, fixing, researching, controlling.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: The feeling never actually arrives because your system is already trying to get rid of it.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: When your baby or toddler has a meltdown, is your first move to solve it or stop it, like as fast as possible?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: When you feel anxious and don't know why, do you go looking for a reason, a cause, something to fix?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: When things are calm, do you catch yourself waiting for the next shoe to drop?
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you're nodding at any of those, your nervous system is doing what it was trained to do.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: It learned that emotional discomfort isn't something to move through.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's something to manage, something to contain, something to get rid of.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And in motherhood where discomfort is constant and unpredictable, that system never gets to rest.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: So here's what's actually running your anxiety.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the part I need you to pay close attention to.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Your anxiety is being run by a nervous system that never learned to feel safe inside of discomfort.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: The one thing that needs to change now is this.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Your nervous system needs to learn that emotional discomfort is not danger.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: I had a client, and for the sake of this video, I'm just gonna call her Caitlin.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: She came to me consumed by fear and self-doubt.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: She was literally second-guessing every single decision she made as a mom, which was new for her.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: She was constantly bracing for what might go wrong next.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: And she wasn't in hormonal crisis.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Her biology was fine, but her system had never been taught that it could be okay inside of a hard feeling.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: And once she learned to stay with the discomfort instead of running from it, which I know is a tall ask if you don't know how to do that.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: But once she did that, the what if thought started to quiet.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: She told me it felt like someone finally turned the volume down on something she'd been hearing her entire life.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: So it's time to stop treating every wave of emotional discomfort like a signal that something needs to be fixed right now and start practicing what I call felt safety.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: That is the experience of being okay even inside a feeling that's uncomfortable.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Not making the feeling go away, not analyzing it, not trying to figure out why it's there, just letting it be present without your system treating it like an emergency.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: That is the shift.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: This sort of go with the flow is actually learnable.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: It is not a personality trait that you either have or don't have.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: There is something specific you can do tonight to start building exactly that.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: When you stay with a feeling instead of rushing to manage it, you're sending your nervous system new information.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: You're showing it through direct experience that discomfort can be present without disaster following.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Emotions, when you stop blocking them, move through the body in about 90 seconds.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: You're not fighting your biology here.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: You are working with it.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Think about a fire alarm.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: If a fire alarm goes off in your building and every single time you hear it, you like sprint out the door, your body learns that the alarm equals danger and run.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: But if you walk out calmly a few times and nothing bad happens, your body starts to adjust.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: The alarm stops feeling like a five alarm emergency.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Your nervous system isn't so different.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Every time you sit with a feeling and survive it, you are recalibrating what the alarm means.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: And this is not about becoming someone who doesn't feel any anxiety.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, good luck.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: But this is about becoming someone whose body doesn't treat a feeling as a reason to flee.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: That is the difference between a mom who's white knuckling through the day and a mom who feels steady even when things are hard.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: So tonight, when you notice the next wave of anxiety or emotional discomfort, try this instead of your normal response, of your normal reaction.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Step one, name it out loud or just in your head, just say what it is.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm aware that I feel anxious.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm aware that I feel overwhelmed.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Not to analyze it, just to acknowledge that is right here.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Do this for about 10 seconds.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Not long.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, without even knowing you, I can promise you that those feelings make perfect sense.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Step two, put one hand on your chest and take one slow breath out.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Not a big performance.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Just let your exhale be a little bit longer than your inhale.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: This tells your nervous system that it is safe to stay.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Step three, stay with the feeling for 60 to 90 seconds without trying to fix it or figure it out.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Just let it be there.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Notice where it sits inside your body.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Notice if it moves.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: This feeling is probably pretty uncomfortable and it may be super inconvenient, but it is not dangerous.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Step four, notice what happens on the other side.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the time, the feeling shifts, not because you solved anything, but because you stopped fighting it.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Do that once tonight.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: That is it.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: You're not trying to rewire everything in one sitting.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: You're giving your nervous system one new experience of surviving discomfort without running from it.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: One final thought.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Your anxiety isn't proof that something is permanently wrong with you.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's proof that your nervous system learned something a long time ago about how to handle hard feelings.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: And everything that's learned can be unlearned.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Your hormones were never the whole story.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Your nervous system, that's the story.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where the work actually lives.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: The next video is called Perfect Parenting versus Regulated Parenting.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you to watch it because once you understand what's running your anxiety, the question becomes what does that actually look like in the moments with your child?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: That video answers exactly that.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: The link is in the description below and it'll come up on your end screen.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead and click it, and I'll see you there.