Being able to say that I am in recovery from postpartum OCD is something I never thought would be possible for me. When I was in the middle of dealing with postpartum OCD, it felt like I would never be able to get out of it. Recovery wasn’t something that happened for me overnight either. It took me a year of weekly therapy sessions, sometimes two per week. I had to actively work to change my mindset and learn how to manage intrusive thoughts. Once I got to the recovery phase, I was so happy.

While recovery from postpartum OCD is the best feeling, it can bring a lot of stress too. Constantly in the back of my mind, I worry that it could happen to me again. The longer I go without dealing with intrusive thoughts, the more I panic when I get one again. Nothing on this earth scares me more than getting an intrusive thought about my daughter. She is the person I love most in this world. The thought of something happening to her is unbearable.

The more I move on from what I went through with my postpartum OCD, the easier it is to be hard on myself when I experience an intrusive thought, or feel triggered by something. Recovery is a slow process, and I have to remind myself of that every day. I have never experienced something so challenging in my life. Recovery from postpartum OCD is so hard because the intrusive thoughts are so scary. Sometimes I wish that I could just have a “normal” mind that didn’t have OCD or anxiety. When I get like that, I really try hard to remind myself of all of the good things I have done, because wishing to be something else is not going to help me at all.

I am so good at giving other people advice on being kind of themselves when they go through a difficult time. The problem is, I can never do the same for myself. I am my own harshest critic, especially when it comes to what happened to me with postpartum OCD. I have to constantly remind myself that I am not where I was a year ago. Just because I have an intrusive thought, doesn’t make me a bad person. I have to just accept them for what they are, a thought, no matter how hard that may seem. Intrusive thoughts are something that will always be part of OCD, and that is okay. We just have to remember that.