A Grammy-winning singer is opening up about her struggles with postpartum. Alanis Morissette revealed she suffered from postpartum depression that almost turned into psychosis.
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The singer is a mother to three children. With her youngest child in 2019, she said that she "dipped into psychosis."
"Basically, I became another person. All the hormones are all over the place. There's some version of menopausal flux, combined with depression [and] invasive thoughts that are so harrowing, terrible, ceaseless," she explained. "Invasive thoughts, anxiety, depression, rage, off the charts. I felt completely out of control."
According to the singer, she "reached out to so many therapists." However, she said that they proved to be unhelpful and did not address her symptoms. She suffered from postpartum with each of her children.
Singer Talks Battle with PPD
"First time, I waited a year and two months. Second time I waited eight months. And third time, I think I waited three days. I was just like, 'Oh, no, I'm not doing this again,'" she recalled. The singer also said that she has been dealing with depression her whole life.
"I've been playing with depression my whole life. ... The depression piece inside PPD, unfortunately and fortunately I was familiar with it. It was all the other stuff [that was different]," she also said. "It was the invasive thoughts and the terror. All I could picture was death and terrible things."
She said she struggled with "losing people's trust in my sanity." The singer said that people looked at her differently through her struggles.
"I have spent my whole life attempting to establish to people I love that I'm safe and that I'm predictable, and then all of a sudden, I wasn't," she said. "That was a loss. Because people looked at me differently. They looked at me like I maybe couldn't be trusted or was going to fly off the handle. And that's not my thing."
Fortunately, she said that she got on medication to help treat her PPD. She advocated for getting the support that people need.
