Quiet Confessions Ep 4: The Spiral I Couldn’t Stop

In this Quiet Confessions mini-episode, Chelsea shares their experience with postpartum OCD, something they didn’t realize they had until it completely overtook their second postpartum journey. 

From health anxiety and relentless Googling to ER visits and overwhelming fear, Chelsea reflects on how OCD showed up in unexpected ways. 

This honest confession sheds light on a lesser-discussed part of postpartum mental health and the intense need for reassurance when nothing feels safe or certain. 

Key Takeaways 

• Postpartum OCD can look very different from mainstream portrayals—often involving obsessive worry and health anxiety rather than cleanliness or order.
• The overlap between anxiety and OCD is significant, but there’s a difference in intensity and focus, especially postpartum.
• Google searches can intensify fears and obsessive thought patterns, especially for new parents.
• Reassurance-seeking is a common compulsion in OCD and often increases when other compulsions (like Googling) are restricted.
• Exposure therapy and dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), along with medication, were key parts of Chelsea’s recovery.
• It’s possible to mistake OCD for generalized anxiety for years—postpartum can be the moment it becomes unmistakable.

Memorable Quotes 

• “Google was my worst enemy.”
• “I was literally rewriting my life in an instant.”
• “I don't think I've ever admitted that out loud, but that was not a safe drive home.”
• “Postpartum OCD doesn’t get talked about as much—and it doesn’t always look like the stereotypes.”
• “I just don’t want her to die... and nothing was rational at that point.”
• “Reassurance seeking, perseverating, and Googling. That was my whole world.”
• “This isn’t the life I pictured.”

Transcript

Chelsea Myers (00:01)
Hey, welcome to Quiet Confessions, a quick check-in from me, Chelsea, with unfiltered thoughts and whatever's on my mind. And today, I thought I would talk a little bit about what my postpartum OCD looked like. Don't ask me why or how I came to that conclusion, that that would be my topic for today.

I think it's because I have started trauma processing a little bit in therapy. And when I sat down with this little bit of time to spare between nap time and when my oldest gets off the bus, I thought to myself, wow, I have not ever really gone deep into what

that whole process looked like and I haven't thought about it in a while and when I do, it's a little triggering. So yes, I'm intentionally kind of triggering myself, but that's something that I'm working on in therapy. Side note, rabbit hole, my actual homework assignment from therapy this week was to watch a medical drama that would make me uncomfortable.

We're going through my list of triggers and starting from like the least triggering to the most triggering and doing exposure therapy. And one of the things that triggers me are medical dramas, except for The Pitt If you know, you know, I could go off on a whole other tangent on that, but let's just say chef's kiss for The Pitt. So that was not what I could watch. That was not allowed. My therapist recommended house because

Instead of humanizing the doctors. It really doesn't and it's the first episode was pretty triggering so but that's not What i'm gonna talk about that was a rabbit hole But just so you know, i'm working on trauma processing. That was my homework this week and then I was just sitting here thinking to myself Wow, I haven't really thought about this part of my second postpartum journey so

That's what we're going to chat about briefly. Because, you know, I'm going to keep it short for you guys. And I don't have a lot of time anyway. But so again, short recap, if this is your first time tuning in, I had postpartum depression and anxiety after I had my oldest daughter back in 2015. And then when I had my youngest daughter in 2022.

I had several very acute perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, including postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, postpartum PTSD, and postpartum OCD. So I'm gonna talk about where the OCD came in and how it kind of overlaps with anxiety a little bit, but was way more intense than just postpartum anxiety.

Spoiler alert, this sort of opened mine and my therapist's my whole medical team's eyes to the fact that my diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder since the time I was like seven, that it's actually been OCD all along. And it was kind of like a light bulb moment, like, my God, that makes a lot of things make sense. So how did it manifest in my postpartum experience?

after having my youngest? Well, I can tell you I don't, I cannot pinpoint the moment that it like started. It wasn't like a light switch moment. It wasn't like a, something's different. The first thing I recall is, and how it manifested for me was medical.

anxiety and perseverating on medical things in myself and in my newborn at the time and that probably stemmed from my birth trauma and postpartum hemorrhage.

So yeah, I don't know. Like I said, we haven't got there in therapy yet, but this is me like processing it out loud right now. But I do remember one of the first things I remember is I was watching Star Trek, because I'm a Trekkie. I'm a nerd, you guys, and I'm proud of it. But anyway, I was watching Star Trek with my husband and I stood up, I like shot up out of my chair.

And I remember getting this whole body sensation of just like fear and panic. And I said, I think I might throw up. And then I said, no, I'm not going to throw up. I think I have a blood clot. And I cannot tell you why I thought I had a blood clot, but I thought I had a blood clot in my leg. I don't remember feeling a bump or seeing anything.

I just knew that I was at a higher risk for blood clots because I had just had a cesarean and I had had another surgery after having my hemorrhage. So I just stood up and thought I was going to throw up and then just said out loud, like, I think I have a blood clot. And my husband was like, what are you talking about?

And I honestly don't remember much about me past that, but I remember at the same time, I was Googling all of this stuff about my daughter because she just behaved so differently than my oldest daughter. And hindsight is 20-20 and my mental state is a lot different now, but.

Babies are all different and they're going to act differently and have different personalities and do different things. But what I knew of or what I thought I knew of as normal was like not what I was experiencing. So whereas my oldest was a pretty easygoing baby and she ate really well and I mean we had to adjust her formula but like and she slept pretty well and for the most part.

She was a pretty easy baby. My youngest was a very, very, very fussy baby. Super sensitive in terms of formula because I couldn't breastfeed. She cried just all the time and she wasn't smiling and she was asleep a lot. now the things that I'm going to say next, any

seasoned mom is going to know or I would assume you're gonna know that these are normal things that newborns do newborns are weird and they do weird things but my brain was telling me that these were all wrong so she would like a roll her eyes and stuff in her sleep and make all these weird twitchy faces and sometimes like

she would giggle in her sleep or as she was falling asleep, she would giggle when she was really little, like less than a month old. And sometimes she would have these strange breathing patterns and it would only last a couple of seconds and then it would stop. Well, I threw all of those terms into Google and I know now and I'm telling you if you don't know,

Do not do that, especially in those early postpartum days. Do not Google things. Just don't. Just ask a friend. Ask your doctor if you're concerned. Ask your parents or an aunt or an uncle, anybody. Don't Google this stuff because Google, yes, most of the Google hits were like, this is normal. But of course, I found one that seemingly

hit all of the things that I thought were symptoms and pointed me in a direction of this really, really rare seizure disorder that manifested in something called gelastic seizures, which is laughing uncontrollably, but not because you want to, not because anything's funny. And honestly, the youngest case of it happening was like toddler years, but

I latched onto this. So let's before we even dive into that, let's recognize the fact that I'm already for no reason other than I have time and sitting there Googling what's wrong with my kid, which I'm sure all of us have done, but I'm doing it relentlessly until I find something that tells me that there's something wrong.

And then I go down this rabbit hole of, well, if she has this genetic disorder, like, what does that mean for her future? And what does that mean for us? And I'm literally rewriting my life in an instant. And then I'm finding like support groups. my husband, just, I remember showing the thing to my husband and being like, doesn't this sound like her? And he was.

so exhausted. He had been dealing with, I mean, I couldn't do much because of, I mean, I was still recovering from my C-section and my hemorrhage and all of that stuff. So he was exhausted. I was exhausted. I showed him the Google results and he goes, yeah, that kind of, like, I don't remember his exact words. I just remember him sort of kind of agreeing. And that sent me into a...

spiral and I was up that whole night just googling, googling, googling. The next morning I called her doctor's office and told them what I had found and what I was concerned about and I had to go get my own blood tests done because remember I said I thought I had a blood clot so my doctor sent me to go get blood work done. And as I'm on the way,

to get my blood drawn, the doctor's office calls and says they want us to go to the ER with my newborn to get everything checked out. So I'm driving to get my labs done, sobbing uncontrollably, trying to call my mother who was unavailable, but we have so many friends in the medical field, especially in the pediatric.

medical field and so I was trying to get in touch with one of those friends and just crying and crying and crying and I did end up getting in touch with this friend who was incredibly kind and all I wanted to know was how do I advocate so that they take me seriously which again hindsight I was not in my right mind but

This friend was so kind and so considerate and she just told me like, if you go, you're going to go in, you're going to tell them your concerns.

Chelsea Myers (11:17)
Basically, she was just amazing at talking me down kind of a little bit. I never came down. But just walking me through the steps of what it would look like when we got to the ER. So yeah, I'm bawling, I'm sobbing in my car and on the way to get my blood drawn, sobbing through getting my blood drawn. And then I drive back home and we pack up.

me and my husband and the baby and go to a different hospital because that's where they, that's where her doctor wanted to send us. And we go to the ED and we're waiting just like you do. And this is 2022. So still, still kind of COVID times. So it was scary to just be in there in general. My anxiety was insane. I was taking little videos of her every time she would have one of her like breathing episodes.

or like the eye thing. I don't know. She didn't do the giggle thing, but they finally took us back and saw us and I was a complete disaster. I don't remember any of the questions that they asked. I do remember that they decided that they were going to admit her for an overnight stay to do... ⁓

monitoring to watch for seizure activities. And when a tech came down to like put all the little electrodes on her head, I was in the corner of the room sobbing. And they asked us who was going to stay with her. And I couldn't do it. So my husband stayed with her.

And I drove home and this is after like not sleeping for two nights now. That was probably the most dangerous driving decision I've ever made in my entire life. And I don't think I've ever admitted that out loud, but that was not a safe drive home. And it was about a 40 minute drive. but I made it home. Couldn't eat cause I was so sick. I was so anxious and sick. I again, didn't sleep that night at all.

and I was so, so, so sick. Like I was nauseous and my whole body felt like, like I was, I don't even know the best way to describe it. Like my whole body was just completely seized up and petrified and shaking and dizzy. And I drove back to the hospital the next morning to go pick them up.

⁓ she had had no seizure activity and I mean, my husband hadn't really slept at all and she was really uncomfortable and I got there and I barely made it up to the, children's wing. When I got there, I thought I was going to pass out. so we rang the nurse bell for me and

They got a wheelchair and took me down to the ED and I actually spent a few hours in the ED while she was still being assessed and getting ready for discharge. But basically what the ED doctor told me, or ER doctor, every time I say ED, I think erectile dysfunction, but everyone refers to the emergency room as the emergency department here. So.

If that's not what they do where you're from, that's what I'm talking about. ⁓ They told me they thought that I probably was anxious and maybe had a stomach bug. I mean, they didn't really do a whole lot. They gave me some Zofran and sent me on my way. I still was not well. We'll get into that in a different episode, but

We took my newborn home and tried to wash the stuff, the sticky, sticky stuff out of her hair as best we could. That day she turned one month old. and the worrying didn't stop. It just didn't stop. I remember talking to my therapist and being like, I, this is, I think this is what's going on. And we had to be at the ER and we're going to meet with neurology and.

And I just was like, this isn't the life that I pictured. I just don't want, I don't want her to die. And I went through the whole thing and my therapist was talking with me and trying to sort of help me rationalize, but nothing was really rational at that point. But to make a very, very long story short, the ways that my postpartum OCD showed up,

was loud and it lasted so long and it just morphed from one thing to another to another and Google was my worst enemy. I Googled everything about her, about me. I was constantly reassurance seeking like, am I going to get better? If you know anything about my story, you know that I was very, very ill for a very long time.

both mentally and physically. And I would ask everyone all the time, am I gonna be like this forever? Is this forever? Am I gonna get better? And like, is my daughter okay? Am I gonna be able to be back with my kids every time that I was hospitalized? So reassurance seeking, perseverating, and Googling all the time. Now, when I was hospitalized for my mental health, the three times, obviously I didn't have access.

to Google and that's when the reassurance seeking would kick into overdrive and I would just ask every single doctor, nurse, anyone, like what is the, why do I feel this way? Is this gonna stop? Am I gonna feel this way forever? What's gonna make it stop? It was crazy. another episode I'll get into when I finally got into a program that taught me

real skills through dialectical behavioral therapy to deal with all of this and the medication that helps me access those skills. But yeah, that doesn't even feel like it scratches the surface, but I wanted to kind of highlight it because one, it's still really triggering to think about and I have a lot of health anxiety in general. And two, because postpartum OCD doesn't get talked about as much.

And yeah, this is what it looked like for me. And we have this idea of people with OCD, like cleaning everything or putting things in certain spots and having things in certain order. And that's one way of it manifesting, but it can manifest in very, very different ways. It can manifest in rituals, which I also do that as well. But again, different, different topic for a different day.

It can manifest in a lot of ways, so I thought I would just share how it manifested for me. But, unfortunately, while I was recording this, I got a call and my kiddo is sick and I went and picked her up. So she is home now. She is resting and I need to tend to her. So, from my chaos to yours, thanks for sharing this quiet confession with me. I'm Chelsea and I'll catch you next time.