What is postpartum rage?
“My baby was born and now I have this mom rage!”
“Postpartum rage,” or “mom rage” tends to float around as a colloquial phrase used to describe irritability or quick frustration with daily happenings that arises after a child is born. So often, new parents will say, “this isn’t me!” and “why is this happening? I love my baby but sometimes I just can’t handle everything!”
Postpartum irritability is symptom, not a diagnosis. In the same way that when we have a cough, it can be from pneumonia, asthma, or we inhaled a little bit of the lemonade we were drinking.
One of the more common answers is that the irritability is a symptom of an underlying postpartum depression. Some people experience depression as sadness, but others can feel more anger or like they have a short fuse. This is usually accompanied by issues with sleep, appetite, feeling joy, concentration and heavy guilt or shame, or even hopelessness or suicidal thoughts.
However, I want to point out that what I see frequently in my practice is that irritability is commonly related to underlying anxiety! When we feel worry, our world can become overwhelming, and this means we have exceeded the bandwidth we currently have for tolerating stressful things. Maybe the plumber coming one hour later than planned is manageable, but once the baby also has a fever, the older child needs to be picked up from school early, the fridge is down to fruit pouches and ketchup, and then our spouse gets tied up in a long work meeting that goes through dinnertime, we end up snapping! And this can be followed by guilt or shame, as this is not consistent with the parent we want to be, and yet we’re trying our best! It’s too much for us to handle on top of the constant whirring of anxiety in our mind, reminding us of all the worst-case scenarios out there. We are trying to meet everyone else’s needs and plan for every future possibility, and we lose sight of what we need. Treatment for anxiety (postpartum or otherwise) can help elongate that bandwidth, and help you identify where your limits are, so that you no longer get to the point where you’re pushed past what you can handle.
It's always important to remember that other psychiatric illnesses can overlap with postpartum irritability, like bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and even psychosis, so if you have concerns about your mental health, seek out a local physician psychiatrist to help you figure out what’s truly going on and partner with you to treat it. You deserve it!