Ask Jay: How Do You Take Care of Yourself Through Life’s Hardest Seasons?

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

In this episode, Jay Shetty responds to several listener messages regarding profound life challenges, including postpartum medical complications, a brain

Key takeaways

• Postpartum preeclampsia is particularly dangerous because the highest risk period often occurs after hospital discharge.
• Building a support system is a critical factor in preventing long-term trauma following a crisis.

Main topics

• Postpartum health and anxiety
• Navigating medical trauma

Notable quotes

Moving past something is work you do after that thing is over.

Conclusion

The episode provides a compassionate framework for finding strength an

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:01) Hey, it's Jay. I don't know what your day's been like, but I was just thinking about you for a minute. And I hope you're being a little patient with yourself because you deserve it. And yeah, I'll talk to you soon. Speaker 1 (0:24) Today we're talking about health. So much of our lives are built around the feeling of control, but when physical or mental health challenges show up, that control can vanish overnight. It can feel terrifying, isolating, and utterly exhausting to navigate a body or a mind that feels like it is working against you. I'm ready to dive into these messages with you today. Let's get into it. Speaker 5 (0:50) Hi, Jay. I just had my third baby. I am in the thick of the postpartum period. I have postpartum anxiety pretty bad with him, like I did with my first baby. I was diagnosed with preeclampsia and had to be readmitted. That threw my anxiety into a whirlwind. I'm also a mom-baby nurse. So I know too much, but postpartum preeclampsia is just not talked about enough. Being in this situation, going through one of the scariest things that a postpartum mom can go through. How do we move past trauma when we're currently living what we most feared would happen? Speaker 1 (1:26) Congratulations on your third baby. As exciting as that is, I'm also so sorry you're dealing with postpartum anxiety for a second time. I obviously have no idea what that must be like and I commend you for working through it. You mentioned that postpartum preeclampsia isn't talked about enough and I agree. So let me explain it for anyone listening who might not be familiar with it. Not for you because you're a mom baby nurse and you know this better than I do. So you can correct me if I get it wrong. But postpartum preeclampsia is a condition involving dangerously high blood pressure after giving birth and it is really hard to predict. Left untreated, it can cause seizures and strokes. And what makes it super dangerous is that in general, the blood pressure peaks tend to happen somewhere between day three and day six after delivery. That's important because most patients are discharged from the hospital around 48 hours after delivery, which means that the highest risk period lands after you've gone home. You're on your own with a newborn, running on no sleep, and then something life-threatening happens. And I'll bet that when people find out you're a nurse, they say something like, well, at least you know what's happening. But you don't just know what's happening. You know every way it can go. You have seen the bad outcomes, not as statistics, but with real people. So to your actual question, how do we move past trauma when we're currently living the thing we were most afraid of? Moving past something is work you do after that thing is over. and it does not sound like it is over for you yet. Maybe part of what's exhausting you is trying to recover from something you're not done experiencing yet, which is a bit like trying to review a movie you're currently watching right now. But there is real work you can do right now. But to be clear, I would never pretend to know how you should manage your postpartum anxiety or preeclampsia. But I want to do my best to answer your question about navigating trauma in the midst of living a major fear. There's a well-known piece of research by psychologist Chris Bruin and his colleagues studying what predicts whether someone develops lasting trauma. What they found is that some of the strongest factors were the circumstances surrounding the event, including whether the person had support around them. Now, that's a correlation rather than a guarantee, and I'm not telling you that if you have enough people around you, nothing can hurt you. But if leaning on a support system is an option for you right now, this is the moment to use it. I think one of the most difficult things about going through a traumatic experience is that you feel extremely alone and you feel misunderstood. We feel alone because when we're going through a difficult moment, it can feel like we're the only ones going through it. And that's a legitimate feeling. I want to validate that. But in reality, there are other people going through it in their own way. And there may be times when you want to stay away from other people, but there are times when actually knowing that you're going through the same thing as someone else, hearing their story, them hearing yours, is the greatest source of comfort. I encourage you to find other mothers who've been through this before or are going through it right now, not for advice, not for a quick fix or a solution, because we know that is impossible, but just to be able to share your heart with, for them to share theirs with you. And for you to create that bond and that connection of being surrounded by people who truly understand your pain and so that you don't feel alone. The other part about being understood actually comes from us being able to explain what we're going through. I think one of the biggest problems about going through a difficult time is that we're scared that other people are going to think we've changed. We're scared about who we're becoming. We're scared about our identity, our perception. We're worried that we're not as fun as we used to be. We're worried that we're not as bright as we used to be. You might be emotionally heavier than usual. You might be carrying more than you're used to. And you could tell the other people around you notice it as well. When I'm going through a difficult time, I believe it's so important to communicate and articulate and explain what you're experiencing and how it's something you don't want and how you're not sure when you're going to be out of it or what it takes. But being able to share that with the people around you, the people you spend the most time with, allows not only them to understand you better, but for you to feel understood, for you to feel seen. When you're going through moments of great change and great transition, the biggest pain you experience is people not seeing you. Help the people who love you and who are around you see you and share with them the experience that you're currently going through. so that they can also meet you with empathy, context, and compassion. If you had ended your message at, I've just had my third baby, I would have told you that was plenty to be dealing with. You're taking care of a lot of people right now, in your house and at your job.