Postpartum depression is not being overly sensitive;
it is a chemical tsunami.
A viewer left me a message.
He said,
"Teacher,
my partner developed severe postpartum depression six months ago.
She is constantly suicidal,
suffering from insomnia,
headaches,
and diarrhea.
She often has emotional breakdowns and cries.
Our relationship is very strained."
He asked me,
"Will you make a video about this?"
After reading that message,
my heart felt heavy for a long time.
Because I know
that what he described isn't just one person's story.
It is what millions of families are experiencing right now.
Globally,
about 17% of postpartum women experience
varying degrees of postpartum depression.
In China,
this ratio might be even higher
because many mild and moderate cases go completely unidentified.
They are silenced by being called "dramatic."
Hello,
everyone.
I am Wang Lijie.
Today, I'm making a two-part series.
This episode
is for mothers going through postpartum depression.
The next episode
is for the person by her side—
her partner.
If you are watching this video right now,
holding your child in your arms,
or if the child was just sent to the grandparents' house,
and your eyes are red,
your chest feels like it's being crushed by a stone,
and you feel like you don't deserve to be a mother,
or that your child would be better off without you,
or even that living itself is a burden—
I need you to remember one thing first.
This sentence is the core conclusion of today's video.
I'll put it out there first:
You are not broken.
Your brain
is undergoing the most violent chemical reset in human physiology.
How you feel right now
is not a reflection of your personality,
nor your ability,
nor a lack of love.
It is your nervous system experiencing a magnitude 9 earthquake.
Let's break this down layer by layer.
The first layer:
What exactly is happening to your body?
During pregnancy,
two key hormones in your body soar uncontrollably.
One is progesterone,
and the other is estrogen.
By the third trimester,
their concentrations are 100 to 1,000 times higher than normal levels.
Remember this number:
100 to 1,000 times.
This isn't a fluctuation of a few percent;
it is a spike of several orders of magnitude.
These two hormones don't just cause weight gain and nausea;
they act directly on your brain.
Progesterone has a metabolite in the brain
called Allopregnanolone.
You don't need to remember the name.
You only need to know one thing:
its effect is almost identical to a sedative.
It acts directly on a "switch" in your brain
called the GABA receptor.
What is the GABA receptor?
It's your brain's braking system.
Allopregnanolone acts like a super-efficient brake pad,
installed for nine months.
Your anxiety was suppressed.
Your fears were buffered.
Your entire nervous system was soaked in a pool of natural sedatives.
What about estrogen?
It regulates the synthesis of serotonin.
Serotonin is the neurotransmitter that makes you feel
like life is manageable.
In late pregnancy,
your serotonin production line was running at full power.
That's why many pregnant women say
that despite being physically heavy in the third trimester,
their mood is actually quite stable,
even feeling a strange sense of peace.
That's not maternal love kicking in early;
it's your brain being protected by a chemical defense system.
Then,
the baby is born.
Within 24 to 48 hours after delivery,
your progesterone and estrogen levels plummet off a cliff,
dropping from their peak to almost zero.
The speed and magnitude of this drop
is the most drastic hormonal shift known in human physiology.
Period.
Imagine this:
if you had been taking Valium for nine months,
and then one day,
without warning,
without any transition period,
you just stopped completely.
What would happen to your body?
Insomnia,
heart palpitations,
general malaise,
panic attacks,
and total loss of emotional control.
This is exactly what your body goes through postpartum.
You think you're mentally weak?
You're not.
Your nervous system is experiencing a chemical withdrawal.
And the timing of this withdrawal
is the cruelest design in human evolutionary history.
Just as your chemical defense system withdraws,
you begin a life of fragmented sleep.
Newborns need to feed every two to three hours.
Your deep sleep is repeatedly interrupted.
Yet deep sleep is the only window for the brain to clear metabolic waste,
repair neural circuits, and rebuild emotional stability.
Sleep deprivation is categorized as torture in military interrogations.
Its damage to the brain is measurable.
Chronic lack of sleep causes your amygdala—
the fear alarm center in your brain—
to react over 60% more intensely to negative stimuli.
At the same time,
the prefrontal cortex, responsible for rational regulation, declines.
In plain English:
your fear is amplified,
while your ability to control that fear is weakened.
Your chemical defense is gone;
your sleep repair channel is blocked.
These aren't two separate blows;
it's a vicious cycle.
Hormonal imbalance makes you unable to sleep;
lack of sleep further disrupts your hormones;
the disruption makes you more anxious;
the anxiety makes you even more sleepless.
It's a spiral
spinning faster and faster.
In 2019,
the FDA approved the first drug in history specifically for
postpartum depression,
called Brexanolone.
In 2023, they approved a second one,
called Zuranolone.
Guess how these two drugs work?
They artificially supplement allopregnanolone.
They replace the natural sedative that your body stopped producing.
What does this mean?
It means modern pharmacology has proven with hard evidence
that a key mechanism of postpartum depression is chemical withdrawal.
It is not a personality flaw.
It's not a matter of willpower.
The chemical ingredients in your brain were suddenly drained.
But that's only the first layer.
There is a second layer.
In 2017,
Professor Hoekzema from Leiden University in the Netherlands,
published a study in "Nature Neuroscience" that shocked the academic world.
Her team scanned the brains of twenty-five women before pregnancy
and after childbirth.
The results showed that
becoming a mother
causes massive structural changes in maternal gray matter.
Notice this:
It's not a functional change,
it's a structural change.
Physically, things have changed.
The areas with the most significant changes
are those responsible for social cognition;
the medial prefrontal cortex,
the posterior cingulate,
the temporal lobe,
and several other key nodes.
These areas help you interpret others' expressions,
predicting if a non-verbal infant is hungry,
sleepy,
or uncomfortable.
The scale of these changes is so massive,
that in the entire human life cycle,
it can only be compared to puberty.
More importantly,
these changes last for at least two years.
Professor Hoekzema's conclusion was that
this is not damage;
it's more like synaptic pruning during puberty.
The brain is undergoing a large-scale re-specialization,
concentrating computing resources on the highest priority task:
"taking care of this new life."
But the problem is,
this reconstruction doesn't happen instantly.
During this two-year transition period,
your brain is in an extremely unstable state of construction.
It's like your home is being gutted and remodeled,
while you're still living in it,
cooking,
doing laundry,
breastfeeding every two hours,
and getting less than four hours of sleep a day.
So you're forgetful.
Your attention is scattered.
You feel like you've become stupid.
Your emotions are like a roller coaster.
You haven't become stupid.
Your brain is doing something truly remarkable.
The cost is that
during this time,
your ability to handle stress is at an all-time low.
Chemical depletion combined with brain reconstruction—
two layers crashing down at once.
But the truly fatal part
is the third layer.
The third layer isn't physiological;
it's psychological.
To be precise,
it's cultural.
It's called shame.
You check your phone
and see other moms posting photos of babies on social media.
Caption: "Thank you for this little angel coming into my world."
Your mother-in-law says,
"In our day, we raised three or four kids with no problem.
How can you be like this with just one?"
Your husband looks at you with a confused expression.
He doesn't say anything,
but you know what he's thinking.
He thinks you're being dramatic.
Your friend comes to visit you
and says, "You need to cheer up.
The baby is so cute;
you should be happy!"
Then, you start to doubt yourself.
"Do I not love my child?"
"Am I naturally unfit to be a mother?"
"Do I have some fundamental flaw?"
These three thoughts
are the core cognitions most commonly reported by postpartum depression patients.
Psychological research tells us of a very important distinction:
Guilt and shame are two completely different things.
Guilt is "I did a bad thing."
Shame is "I am a bad person."
Guilt is specific,
directed at behavior,
and can be repaired.
But shame is pervasive,
directed at the self.
It doesn't ask you to fix a mistake;
it makes you feel that your existence itself is a mistake.
The areas of the brain activated by shame
follow the same neural pathways as physical pain:
the anterior insula and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex.
When you feel like a bad mother,
your brain isn't feeling metaphorical pain.
It's real pain, visible on an MRI,
the exact same type of pain as if you were burned.
And right now, your chemical defense system has withdrawn.
The supply of allopregnanolone is cut off.
Your natural sedative is gone.
The serotonin synthesis line has stopped.
Your emotional buffer is gone.
Your brain is under construction.
Cognitive resources are being seized on a large scale.
Your entire nervous system is exposed and vulnerable.
At this most fragile moment,
socio-cultural pressures hand you a shame bomb.
Your body is screaming for help,
but all you hear is:
"Why are you so useless?"
Stop for a second.
If you are going through this,
please place your hand on your chest right now.
Feel your heartbeat.
It's still beating.
Under such pressure, it's still beating.
This isn't something to take for granted.
Hormonal withdrawal is the bullet.
Brain remodeling is the wound.
Shame is the infection that prevents the wound from healing.
All three combined at once;
anyone would break under this.
Yet you are still here.
You are still watching this video.
You are still trying to understand what happened to you.
This alone
shows you are much stronger than you think.
Now,
I want to share a fact that might surprise you.
If you look at human postpartum recovery on an evolutionary scale,
you'll discover something.
Humans are the only primates on Earth
who force mothers to raise children alone.
Marmosets have collective family rearing.
Wolves have the whole pack's help.
Elephants have grandmothers and aunts for constant company.
Throughout the long span of human evolution,
it was never one mother raising one child alone.
The primitive human parenting model was village-like,
where a child was raised by the entire tribe.
To this day, your brain is still designed for that model.
It expects you to be surrounded by people after childbirth.
Someone to help you cook,
someone to hold the baby at midnight so you can sleep for two hours,
someone to hold your hand during a breakdown and say,
"I went through this too;
it'll be okay."
Anthropologists call this cooperative breeding.
It's not an extra perk;
it's a necessity for your nervous system to function normally.
But what does modern society give you?
A 60-square-meter apartment,
a partner who might be just as overwhelmed,
and an infant who cries every two hours.
You have hundreds of contacts in your phone,
but when your baby wakes up crying at 3 AM, you don't know who to call.
Your mother might be in another city.
Your best friend might be single and wouldn't understand.
You might not even know your neighbor's name.
The 'village' system human childcare evolved over millions of years
has been completely dismantled in less than a century.
But your brain hasn't had time to update yet.
It's still running on configurations from millions of years ago,
waiting for a village that isn't coming.
This is not your fault.
This is a structural flaw of modern civilization.
Your nervous system is calling for a village,
but all you have is a wall.
So,
if you are going through this,
I have a few things to tell you.
First,
go see a doctor.
Postpartum depression is a disease with clear physiological mechanisms.
It's no different from hypothyroidism or diabetes.
You wouldn't think having diabetes is being 'dramatic,'
and neither is the chemical imbalance in your brain.
Second,
if the doctor suggests medication,
don't resist it.
Many mothers refuse medication,
thinking, 'I should get through this on my own.'
Three systems in your body are collapsing simultaneously.
Medication isn't magic to make you happy;
it helps your nervous system return to a baseline where you can think,
reach out for help, and function normally.
We need to pull you out of the water first
before we talk about swimming.
Third,
if you feel like you don't love your baby,
that thought is a lie.
A core symptom of postpartum depression is emotional numbness.
It's not that your love has vanished;
it's that your brain, in order to protect itself,
has temporarily shut down all emotional channels.
It's like a circuit breaker tripping after an overload.
The power is out,
but it doesn't mean the circuit is broken.
Once the load is reduced,
the breaker will flip back on.
Those feelings will return.
Fourth,
find someone who can hold space for you.
They don't need to lecture you,
or help you analyze the causes.
Just someone
willing to sit beside you while you break down,
saying nothing,
doing nothing,
just being there.
Your parasympathetic nervous system can be reset by another person's calm breathing,
steady gaze, and warm palm.
Neuroscience calls this 'co-regulation.'
You aren't meant to carry this alone;
your brain wasn't designed for it.
If you can't find someone right now,
there are hotlines,
postpartum support groups,
and professional therapists.
Reach out;
someone will catch you.
Don't wait until you're 'sick enough' to ask for help.
You don't need to prove your pain meets a certain standard
to be worthy of help.
Fifth,
tell your partner the truth.
Tell them what you are going through.
Not for them to fix you,
but for them to see you.
Many mothers instinctively hide their condition,
fearing they're a burden to the family
or that they'll be seen as weak.
But hiding itself is consuming your last bit of energy.
You don't need to express it perfectly.
You only need to say,
"I'm not okay right now,
and I need you to know."
Finally,
I want to return to that viewer's comment at the beginning.
He said his partner was diagnosed with severe depression and moderate anxiety.
He asked if I would make a video about this.
I could hear in his words,
he is reaching his breaking point too.
Research data tells me a little-known fact:
When a mother has postpartum depression,
there is a 50% chance her partner will also show symptoms.
Half.
In other words,
postpartum depression isn't a storm a mother faces alone;
it pulls the entire family in.
In the next video,
the second part of this series,
I want to focus on him—
on everyone supporting a partner with postpartum depression.
Because you are fighting an invisible war,
and you may already be deeply scarred yourselves.
But before that,
I want to leave this final message
for the mother going through this right now:
You are not a bad mother.
You are a good mother in the eye of a storm.
And this storm has an end.
Have you experienced postpartum depression?
Or is someone close to you going through it?
How did you get through it?
Or are you still on that journey?
Tell me in the comments.
I am Wang Lijie.
See you next time.