Rooted Mama Podcast
Episode 23: Depression in Motherhood
Welcome to the Rooted Mama podcast. My name is Shelby Leppin. I’m a mom of six kids and a mental health nurse practitioner. I’m here to teach you how to manage your mental health and thrive in motherhood.
This episode is going to be about depression. I’m really excited about this episode because I am finally going to get to put several key pieces together and present this information to you in a really new and different way. So let’s jump into the episode. Let’s talk about depression.
Experiences with Depression [00:00:33]
Depression is kind of a catch-all term that I think people have used so much that we’ve perhaps began to lack understanding culturally about what true depression actually looks like. I think one of the biggest challenges about being a mental health professional is watching people suffer. And feeling really powerless to help them.
Honestly, the more I’ve grown and learned and the more skills I’ve developed as a clinician, that’s actually become one of my favorite parts of my job is to meet with a client, see what they’re dealing with, give recommendations, and then have them come back and genuinely they be feeling better and start to turn things around. I think depression is really hard to deal with because as anyone who’s struggled with mental illness can tell you, it feels really hopeless.
It feels like it’s always going to be bad and it’s always going to be this way. In a lot of ways, I like to describe it as you’re swimming in a pool and you’re swimming as hard as you possibly can, but you’re still drowning.
And it doesn’t matter how much effort you put forward, it still feels like you’re drowning and suffocating. And it’s just that constant state of hopeless and helpless and worthless. And the thought is there of like, can I ever, will I ever get better? Will this ever change? Is this going to change? Is this going to go on forever? And so the longer I’ve worked in this field and met with people, I just have so much more confidence and hope than I used to have.
I genuinely believe that it is possible to heal from depression and to rewire these maladaptive patterns that our brain adopts to cope. We don’t really have to settle for okay. We can genuinely thrive and feel better mind, body, and soul.
And I want to explain this in the most comprehensive way possible, because this has taken me a long time to sort through and organize and really wrestle with like, what is, what is depression? What does it look like? What causes it? And, and why, why do some people get depressed and then get better and never really struggle with it again? And why do some people struggle with depression over and over and over again? And so I want to go through what I’ve been through.
I would consider the key categories of things we need to deal with if we want to treat depression. I don’t want to oversimplify this or make any of you who struggle with depression feel like, oh, it’s my fault. But I also, at the same time, want to give you hope that there are things you can actually do to get better. But the key is you have to show up and be able to do them and do them consistently. And that can be really challenging. When you’re already depressed, because one of the key symptoms of depression is low motivation, low energy, changes in sleep and appetite. It’s, it’s all the, it essentially robs you of the tools you need to get better. And that’s why I think it’s so hard to deal with and overcome.
So I hope as you listen to this episode, I hope you will be encouraged and supported and feel like if you struggle with this, or if someone you love struggles with this, that you don’t have to stay stuck. So as I break this down, I really want you to keep in mind that each of these involves a decent amount of work. And so you’re not going to be able to snap your fingers and do all of this all at once. This is not meant to overwhelm you or shame you or make you feel like, oh, if I just did these steps, then everything would be great. There’s a lot to this. But I do want you to walk away from this feeling like, you know what, there are some things I can commit to and work on and start to feel better in these areas of my life. Now, let’s dive into it.
Physical Health and Depression [00:04:25]
Let’s talk about physical health and depression. I think this is the category that often gets overlooked the most because people just don’t have the mental bandwidth to deal with it.
Honestly, I would say that almost all the clients I work with struggle to take care of themselves on some level. A lot of them will skip breakfast, eat maybe a small lunch, and then have a bigger dinner or binge at the end of the night because they’re hungry. And they try to survive on coffee. And once they do, they’re going to be able to get back to work. And so I think that’s a really important thing to think about. And I think that’s a really important thing to think about. And typically when I ask them about this, their response is pretty universal of, oh, I don’t want to gain weight. I’m worried about my weight. But what they don’t realize is that the habits that you have in your daily life actually play a huge role in how you feel physically. And when you feel terrible physically, your ability to handle mental stress and be resilient goes down exponentially.
So if you struggle with any mental health problem at all, you have got to prioritize nourishing, your body, and balancing your blood sugar. This means that you need to eat breakfast, and you need to make sure you’re eating enough protein. If you can eat consistently and nourish your body, it is so much easier for your body to heal from mental health issues. You want your body to be able to handle stress. And to do that, you need to put fuel in your system. I talked about this in a previous episode, but when you’re trying to treat anorexia, medications really don’t make a huge difference.
And the reason for that is there’s not enough nutrients for the body to pull from to actually change the levels of a person’s mood. You have to give your body the tools it needs to thrive and to do well. And ironically, starving yourself actually just adds to the stress of your body, which puts you in a metabolic state that actually makes it a lot harder to lose weight. Sleep is also really important as well.
Criteria for Diagnosing Depression [00:06:17]
The criteria, it is used to diagnose depression is a pervasive, overwhelming feeling of sadness that lasts for a period of two weeks or more, with at least five of the following symptoms, including changes in appetite.
Some people eat all the time when they’re depressed, some people don’t eat at all.
Others, it just fluctuates, sleeping too much or not sleeping enough, fatigue, low energy, feeling hopeless, helpless, worthless, poor focus and poor motivation, and then thinking about death or feeling suicidal.
You don’t have to be suicidal to be depressed, but you definitely have the thought of, man, it would just be so much easier if I went to bed and didn’t wake up.
And so it kind of is this vicious cycle because the more you don’t take care of yourself, the easier it is for you to stay in that depressive cycle. And the more you feel depressed, the easier it is to stop taking care of yourself because you just genuinely, don’t care. And so most of the time, the best way to prevent this is to put some habits in place ahead of time so that if those feelings come, it’s much easier to continue to take care of yourself.
A lot of times by the time people get to depression, they’ve had those bad habits for so long that it’s really hard for their bodies to get out of it.
The Nervous System and Depression [00:07:48]
Next, let’s talk about depression and the nervous system. If you remember from our previous episode, where we talked about depression and the nervous system, we talked about depression and the nervous system. The nervous system really is the energetic part of our body that functions as our body’s home security system. Its primary objective is to keep us safe. And it does this in a variety of ways.
So it’s really important that you not ignore this part of things because essentially all of us have a home-based operating system that we’re more comfortable with. And so if you remember from that previous episode, I described the nervous system as a ladder. And this is kind of a summation of polyvagal theory, if you want to do some more of your own research.
But essentially at the top of the ladder is our ventral vagal state. And that’s where we feel safe and connected and at peace. I would argue that most of us don’t spend enough time in that state, but in an ideal world, that’s really where you want to be the vast majority of the time. None of these states are necessarily good or bad, right or wrong. It’s just, they are. They’re tools that our body uses to function and to keep us safe.
But if you spend time outside of your ventral vagal for long periods of time, it’s easy for your body to kind of adopt that area, that level of functioning as kind of home base. And that’s what can get us into trouble with our overall health. So if you struggle with anxiety, you will probably be more prone to land in the middle of the ladder, which is our sympathetic or fight or flight system. This system is essential for if there’s a threat, you need to have mobilization and energy to move away from that threat state.
But if you get stuck here and your body stays here all the time, you’re probably going to present with anxiety because you’re going to have this constant restless energy, this nervous energy of, I have to do something. I’m anticipating something’s going wrong. What do I do? What do I do? But it’s really easy to burn out in this state because there’s not really an actual threat for you to address. Now, if you are someone who tends to shut down, that is going to be your dorsal state. So it goes ventral vagals, the top of the ladder, your sympathetics in the middle, and your dorsal is at the bottom. And that’s your shutdown response.
And that’s essentially where your body’s like, I have tried and tried and tried and nothing is working. Nothing’s keeping us safe or removing us from this threat. So therefore, I’m going to just shut down. And so typically, if you struggle with depression, this could be your body’s home base, where energetically and emotionally, your body just goes to this place of I can’t deal with this. So I’m just going to shut down. I’m going to stay in bed, I’m going to ignore everything. I literally I can’t function, I can’t deal with these things.
So again, the more you learn how to regulate your nervous system, the easier it will be to avoid going into these shutdowns, or these anxious states. Because again, we want to spend time at the top of the ladder where we feel safe and connected and loved. And getting to that point can definitely be challenging for people, especially if you live in a state of chronic stress and chronic anxiety.
And sometimes what can happen is if you tend to more sympathetic, and you feel anxious all the time, you’ll feel anxious and go go go until you burn out. And then you’ll drop down and actually go dorsal where you shut down. So if you’re in a state of anxiety, you’re going to want to stay in bed, you’re going to feel anxious.
So it’s actually fairly common for clients to fluctuate between those two patterns, depending on what other mental health issues they struggle with. And so learning how to regulate your nervous system and how to help your help your body and your spirit identify when you’re actually safe is a really critical part of healing from depression.
Brain Patterns and Depression [00:11:40]
The final piece of the puzzle is your brain pattern. And this is something that I’ve experienced firsthand. And I’ve been doing this for a long time. I just recently kind of put all the pieces together of how this all works. And I got really excited because I was like, Oh, that answers so many questions about why and how and who and when and all the things.
So when I was younger, I really struggled with depression. I remember times of just feeling absolutely hopeless and helpless and worthless. And I genuinely felt like there was nothing I could do to get away from that or get out of that. And I believe that this had everything to do with my brain. And I think that’s a really important part of how we’re going to be able to keep ourselves safe.
So I’m going to talk about the brain pattern. So if you listen to the break episode I did, you’ll notice that your brain pattern is the pathway that your body uses to keep you safe. So physically, you you run on fuel and nutrients, and your nervous system has everything to do with your energetic body. Whereas your brain pattern is more the behavioral or practical way that your brain is keeping you safe. Again, all of these kind of tie together.
But if you divvy them into three sections, it’s a lot easier to focus on how do I really repair this one area. In my opinion, it just makes it more manageable. So this pattern that your brain develops really informs and shapes the lens through which you see the world and how you respond to different situations and circumstances. And so when I was younger, my brain pattern would always lead me to the conclusion that I was a terrible person and I could never measure up and make a difference in the world around me. I really wanted to be able to do what I wanted to do. And so I really wanted to be able to have control and feel like I what I did mattered.
And so when as a child, you often don’t have a lot of control over your environment. And so I always felt abandoned and forgotten in a lot of ways. And so that would lead me to a place of really deep and perpetual despair. And it kind of became this vicious cycle where those thoughts would take root and I would genuinely believe them and then I would feel more depressed, more anxious, more fearful. And so the cycle would continue.
Now that I’m older and have been able to rewire those thought patterns, I don’t actually struggle with depression anymore. And it’s not that my brain couldn’t go to that place again. It very well could. But the difference is that there are barriers that actually prevent me from going down that pathway anymore. If my brain were to try to use the same cycle it did when I was younger, my adult self would not be able to go down that path. And so I would look and go, no, like that’s not how we operate anymore. This is the evidence that refutes that conclusion.
Healing your Brain Patterns [00:14:33]
And so in a lot of ways, when you are able to rewire that pattern, you in essence, kind of chop off that pathway. So it’s not that it couldn’t pop up again. It’s just that the brain can’t use the same pathway to get to that conclusion anymore. And so it doesn’t keep cycling. So when you go through break method, you’re actually able to see why your brain is doing that. And so that’s one of the things that I’ve been able to do. And then we can go through and successfully rewire this as well. And so if we focus on these three, three areas, we can experience dramatic healing when it comes to depression.
Now, is this easy? No. And theoretically, yes, it’s easy for me to sit in some sum up these struggles into three nice, neat little categories. But I genuinely want to share this because I get so fired up when people feel like they’re trapped and hopeless, and there’s nothing they can do about it.
And so I’m going to when there actually is. And so I really love sharing this with people so they can understand, I’m not doomed. I’m not just a product of my genetics or my brain pattern. I can heal and I can have hope that this is going to get better. Is there work with this? Yes. Do we sometimes need to rely on God to do a miracle in our life? Yes, 100%. But I wanted to give you guys a place to start of if you have struggled with depression continuously, and it keeps coming up, and it’s coming up over and over again. I encourage you to look into this information I’m sharing with you, send me an email, talk to me, I would love to share my story with you more in depth, and talk about how I got out of that place and have been able to stay out as well.
I have tons of free resources on this topic at shelbyleppin.com. I’m also taking clients right now. I’m excited to see more practitioners really look at mental illness from a much deeper perspective.
I’m excited to see more practitioners really look at mental illness from a much more holistic approach where we can go back to the root and actually solve the deeper issues that are driving the problem instead of just covering it up with a bandaid. Because I genuinely think for a long time, the only thing we had to offer clients was bandaid solutions. And there’s nothing wrong with using a bandaid.
Sometimes medications and different types of therapies are not only necessary, but life saving as well. But I think we’re finally getting, to the time where we can get to the root cause of actually what is causing these issues, and actually pull it out by the root and see it change for the better. And I am so excited to get to see more people be able to just enjoy the freedom and the joy and the hope that comes with that. And I just think it’s going to be amazing.
Thank you for listening, friends. As always, please share this with a friend who would find it encouraging and leave us a review so more people can learn about mental illness. And I’ll see you in the next video. Bye. I’ll talk soon, friends.
Link to discovery call: api.leadconnectorhq.com/widget/bookings/shelbyleppin01