Bad Maternal Mental Health
It's happening everywhere.
This is from an article I wrote over a year ago titled, “Primal, Conscious Mothers Want Therapy, Too.” I have adapted it and added some things, in particular to the enormous amounts of Mothers being triggered and grieving their own postpartum experiences in light of the Lindsay Clancy trials. Her words of feelings helpless, drowning, overwhelmed, exhausted, guilty and pained to hear her baby cry, and the amount of times she asked for help, have all, appropriately, agitated a nation of mothers who are disgusted that this is the culture around postpartum care.
People see Lindsay Clancy as the worst case scenario. The outcome that that could have been them, when considering the amount of stress and struggle they were under too.
Don’t get me wrong, as a therapist, this also is a worst case scenario for providers, and a lesson for a nation where Lindsays care is not by any means an uncommon practice for the healthcare system.
Therapists, Birth Workers, Mothers, Advocates for decades have been calling out this “system.” Calling out the separation, the disempowerment, the trauma, the lack of genuine support and the bodies intelligent response to it all…
and have met with accusations of “mom shaming,” called quacks, told to stay in their lanes and more.
Maybe we are listening now…
This article is specific to therapy. To my field of practice. However what we know to be true in many cases is that Maternal mental health care in the doctors office, in the psychiatrists office, is often met with more pills, more dismissing and is no better than what I am about to describe.
This is a reflection on the personal experiences, observations and reports from mothers who have pursued therapy and received nothing short of disappointing and hurtful feedback related to their mothering practices. I’ll share the confusing and disconnected ways mental health treatment contributes to the devaluing of the mother/ baby dyad.
In a culture that regurgitates popular narratives like, “fed is best!” “All that matters is a healthy baby,” sleep training and more, unfortunately the therapy space is no exception. The kicker? All these therapists who say this stuff to their clients do it under the guise of being “non-judgmental.”
I can’t think of anything more judgmental than trying to convince a mother that disconnecting from her baby will help her mental health.
This isn’t happening under the circumstance of a mother wanting to formula feed, have an elective c-section or sleep train her baby. This is happening to the mothers who are expressing distress over challenges they are experiencing and being told these things will “solve” their problems.
The therapy space is still so dismissive of mothers. Don’t believe me?
These are some direct quotes clients, friends, online “mom-therapists” and other mothers who were willing to share with me.
“Your birth happened so long ago, you can’t let it affect you this much anymore.”
“Let’s think of the things you are grateful for from your birth instead of focusing on the things you are not.”
Side note: I cannot even imagine saying this to someone as a trauma therapist. But with mothers and their experiences it’s somehow okay?
“You wanting to make breastfeeding work is making your anxiety worse and your baby is feeding off of that.”
“If you bottle fed, your partner could help more.”
For the love of everything it is 2026 people your partner can do about a million other things for support other than feed the baby.
“Not wanting to leave your baby is a sign of anxiety.”
“Sleep training has helped a lot of people, lets explore why you’re so against it.”
“Your expectations for your birth are too high.”
“Your birth plan is too unrealistic.”
“You’re kids need to get out of your bed.”
“Kids just need to be hit upside the head sometimes.”
“It’s not postpartum depression, you’re just really tired.”
“Your anxiety is passing on to the breastmilk.”
“Put your kids in daycare so you can ‘you’ time.”
“Don’t stay home with them, they’ll drive you crazy and you’ll resent them.”
“Don’t quit your job for kids! You have to have something that makes you happy.” (“Even though my job was toxic AF!”)
“You’re a stay at home mom? Oh I could never!” (“Okay so this therapist will never understand me. Great.”)
“My birth plan didn’t go as planned and my therapist couldn’t see the problem in that because she was all for the meds and interventions.”
“You need weekly date nights.” (Despite these parents having a 6 week old).
“Some women just can’t have a vaginal birth.”
“‘You just felt violated.’ When I told my therapist this felt like rape in the name of medicine.”
“Just shut the baby monitor off at night.” -by a “mom therapist” online talking to mothers with anxiety.
All things their therapist has told them. The therapist they had the courage to go see when their instincts told them something just isn’t right. The therapists they went to see to explore more about themselves and process trauma and challenges they were facing.
Unfortunately mental health therapy is not immune to the cultural conditioning of the dismissal of mothers.
Some of these women experienced birth trauma and/ or obstetric violence. They walked away from their births feeling like their bodies had failed them, rather than understanding the systemic influence of what their body did to survive. They felt taken advantage of, abused and powerless. Traumatized. Unable to shake what they went through or what was done to them during the most vulnerable phase of their life. They were told all that mattered was a healthy baby, that they were just “really tired,” or that what they experienced was just a feeling they had, not reality. I can’t think of any other area of abuse and trauma that is disclosed in the therapy space, and chalked up to “well you just feel that way,” or being told that these birth experiences are normal.
Some of these women wanted to find what was causing their breastfeeding struggles and did not want to give up on that yet. They were told fed is best and that they shouldn’t be so against formula. Even going as far as being told their desire to breastfeed was causing their own anxiety and their baby’s.
Some of these women were told from the beginning to always keep their babies in a separate space, that we “teach” infants how to sleep independently and that keeping them close would create “bad habits.” Then experienced anxiety and exhaustion at night. They were experiencing their nervous systems wired towards protecting their infants and being away from them at night will signal alarms within your body which may prevent it from going into deep rest. Instead of being told, “it’s okay to keep your baby close, if you want to,” instead of learning how to safely co-sleep, they were told sleep train and shut the monitor off.
Some of these women were being told to leave their newborns with sitters or daycare providers so they could get a “break” despite not expressing that as a desire. When really they needed more with hands on support and learn realistic ways to engage in self care as mother. They needed to learn about matrescence and the transformation as a mother that she is embarking on.
Some felt disconnected from their partners, and instead of receiving support to help both partners through their new life and initiation as a family- they were told to leave their newborns with someone else so they could go out to dinner more.
Some were co-sleeping to ensure their family got the most sleep possible, but in discussing some issues issues with intimacy, were told that they needed to get their children in their own rooms, as if cultivating intimacy is strictly limited to the bedroom.
Some women expressed how much their children trigger something inside of them, and instead of exploring how parenting is a window into their inner world, their own unmet needs as children and what it means to be reparenting, they were told that sometimes kids just need more harsh discipline.
And some women, like Lindsay Clancy, and more women I can think of, have said, “something is wrong!” “I need help” and slapped with a prescription or told they are fine.
All of these women experiencing a healthy nervous system response to isolation, lack of support and a culture reinforcing disconnection, were told they were causing their own problems.
How utterly disappointing.
We can do better than this.
So why don’t we? Why are we experiencing this in the therapy space, when the majority of therapists are women (Men are 1 in 10 for therapists). It reflects a culture of maternal dismissal and disempowerment. Where the very women we go to see, who say they are “mom therapists” are suffering from the disconnection, disembodiment and conditioning of our culture towards mothers.
If those things worked for you, or you appreciated a therapist telling you to shut off the baby monitor, then that’s the therapist for you. However these comments are not isolated to just the experience of a few women. They plague the therapy world and mothers have been turned off from therapy.
Honestly, my biggest conflict is with some of the perinatal mental health world is with simply telling women, “postpartum depression and anxiety is common,” “end the stigma” for seeking mental health support and then that support fails to explore the environment, partner involvement and attitudes of those around the mother, and instead, focuses on the most primal and innate desires of a mother as the problem for her mood.
I am a therapist, and mother, but I am NOT the mom-therapist for everyone.
I refuse to pretend that moms are the ones that are unwell when we live in a culture still normalizes and celebrates hyper-independence, deferring to others as experts, disconnection from self and separation of mother and baby.
I refuse to be another therapist who labels a mother with anxiety because she doesn’t want to leave her newborn yet. Or be another therapist that says “fed is best!” To a mother who is yearning to breastfeed her baby and struggling. I refuse to be another therapist who tells a mother her genetics and history are the cause of her postpartum depression without acknowledging her birth trauma or obstetric violence she endured.
I know I am not perfect either. I am not the best therapist for everyone and absolutely still have a lot to learn, and always will hopefully.I have probably said some cringy, possibly judgmental things to others in my career as a therapist. We are human, and sometimes that means we f*ck it up or say something the wrong way. We take responsibility for that and learn.
It also is important to note that some people who shared these comments with me, highlighted that overall the therapist was supportive and great, with the exception of these off-handed remarks. This is a great point to make here because I am not calling anyone out or saying these are “bad therapists.”
I aim to highlight that these comments, quotes and beliefs reflect a lack of knowledge, understanding and trauma-informed care in the maternal mental health world.
Mothers deserve care.
Mothers want to feel heard. They want to feel respected and validated in what they share without feeling minimized by labeling their experience as “normal.” They want to know that we can hold their grief over what happened or what didn’t happen. They want to remember their power, their innate intelligence and what it feels like to trust themselves and what their bodies are telling them. They want to hear YOU ARE NOT CRAZY for feeling this way when they live in a culture that tells them to just drop their baby off somewhere and get over it, and they want to be BELIEVED when they sound the alarm.
