I ask myself if there’s something wrong with me everyday

Hi Amelia,

First of all I would like to mention that postpartum depression happens fairly often.  In fact, a recent study found that 1 in 7 women may experience postpartum depression in the year after giving birth. With approximately 4 million live births occurring each year in the United States, this equates to almost 600,000 postpartum depression diagnoses.  The symptoms can also last for quite a long time, as well.  In other words, there are a lot of people who have had a similar experience to you, so hopefully, you can see that sometimes this is part of life, and there is nothing wrong with you.  

Unfortunately, it sounds like you had quite a few negative experiences with an ex-partner, and that being said, your experiences with your ex-partner has probably influenced your feelings, as well.  More specifically, your pregnancy experiences were likely impacted by your ex-partner.

I understand that you may feel that something is “wrong” with you, but it might be helpful to recognize that you may feel a certain way, but that does not mean that is a reality.

In therapy, you might be able to identify what it is specifically that you feel “wrong” about and tease out more clearly what you might find hard to let go. 

Depending on your postpartum symptoms, therapy can be helpful with your depressive symptoms.  Support groups can also be helpful if that is something you are open to.  Simply put, you are not alone in your feelings and there are many women (& men) who experience postpartum depression.

As far as forgiveness, that is something that is really up to you.  You can choose to forgive or not, you might not be ready to do so.  You can forgive, but that doesn’t mean you need to forget.

When you consider everything that you have gone through, you are likely doing as good as one could expect given the circumstances.  The good news is that with support and therapy, you can definitely gain coping skills that will help you in dealing with the stress and depression that you have been experiencing.

You are not alone, and there are therapeutic options that can help you.