Recovery

[Zebrawhite]

How long did it take you to recover from ppp?

I am 3 weeks after my 2nd episode and still waking up anxious and scared. What helped you get better?

[Maria_at_APP Moderator]

Dear Zebrawhite,

Are you in an MBU at the moment? In the very early days my recovery consisted of being able to sleep, eat and taking my meds. I know you are having trouble with the first due to medication side effects, I hope those resolve very soon for you, sleep is so important for us.

I started doing therapy in the MBU and that was hugely helpful as well. It helped to start making sense of the world again and slowly building my confidence which was so shattered. Mindfulness helped with my anxiety too, it's a bit of finding out what works for you. It could be taking walks when you get leave or doing some gentle exercise.

Jenny shared the recovery guides and they were also so helpful to me. Take very good care, we are here for whatever you need

[Zebrawhite in reply to Maria_at_APP]

Thank you Maria, I am at home now and do find walks help. I will take a look at the guides too.

Sorry for my short responses, my right arm is weak so typing difficult. I appreciate all your advice though x

[Maria_at_APP Moderator in reply to Zebrawhite]

There is no need to reply dear Zebrawhite, just rest. I am glad that the walks are helping I found them very grounding and its my rebooting time. Take good care, we are all here for you

Maria

[Survivedwithcolor]

I'm sorry to hear you are experiencing PP again. I only experienced it with my second child and had no more children after that. Assuming you received treatment after the first child, your recovery time with that child is probably the best indicator of how long the recovery time will be with your second. However, any mother knows that children and births can all be very different, so that's probably not a good guide either.

In the reading I've done, and from what I've seen on this forum, some women recover quickly, within 6-8 weeks, and others don't recover for many years. It seems to vary widely and depends on your circumstances, your access to care, your previous mental health history, and other things. I unfortunately fell into the "many years" category, but I also went undiagnosed and untreated for ten months before being hospitalized, and then I was misdiagnosed and treated incorrectly. If I had PP now, it might have been different. Mine was 20+ years ago. The important thing to know is that even with all that, I did eventually get better and recover, and so do most other women.

Things that helped me during the time I was very ill were family support, having someone to talk to, and keeping myself busy (I was actually working at the time and while this in some ways made it worse, it also kept my thoughts at bay much of the time), and drawing and writing. My forum name is "survivedwithcolor" because drawing was what I did to survive. Somehow my colored pencils made much more sense to me than a lot of other things. It got me through. I did not exercise much but I now think that exercise can be really powerful if you can do it, even just walking. Exercise has changed my life in the last two years. If you can find any kind of physical activity you like to do, that will be very good for you.

If you are musical, that can also be very therapeutic. Music reaches parts of your brain that nothing else does. Singing or playing an instrument is still excellent therapy for me. If you always wanted to learn an instrument, maybe try it now. Learn a language on one of those online apps. Do Sudoku or crossword puzzles. Keeping your brain activated can be helpful for healing and take your mind off anxious or repetitive thoughts.