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Hi everyone,

I wanted to share with you one of my absolute favorite stories about PPD/TMS that came up today in our PPD/TMS drop in chat. It's an old Cherokee legend about a man and his grandson.

While the story is ostensibly about about morality, I think that it applies to so many other areas of our life, in particular to our PPD.

For example, if we become preoccupied with our symptoms and whether they are getting better or worse, then we are feeding that wolf and it will grow.

Likewise, if we are afraid of our PPD and we let that fear rule us, then we feed the fear and the fear only gets stronger.

This idea seems similar to the learned nerve pathways. The more we reinforce those nerve pathways, the stronger the nerve pathways become and the harder it is to unlearn them.

Of course, on a public forum like this, there is an additional concern that we can trigger others as well by ruminating over our symptoms and fear. People with PPD tend to be very suggestible, so that when we hear about a symptom, we tend to get it. Likewise, if we hear each other's fear, we tend to remember our own.

On the other hand, sometimes sharing a common experience is exactly what everyone needs and we grow stronger by realizing that we are not alone. It's all about finding the right balance.

Of course, sometimes we have something deep inside that needs to be expressed, and expressing it is like lancing a boil, relieving an internal pressure. Only we are able to tell whether we are lancing a boil or feeding a wolf. However, as one wise man once said, "If one thing isn't working, try another." In other words, if you starving the wolf isn't working, try lancing the boil. If lancing the boil is getting you nowhere, try not feeding the wolf.

By listening to our intuition and figuring out which approach to take, experimenting with different techniques until we learn what is best for us in any given situation, we become like scientists, figuring out what works best for us and building of a bedrock of accepting the diagnosis, thinking psychologically, and resuming activity.

In this sense, healing our PPD is pretty simple. We just learn about ourselves educate ourselves as needed, and keep studying what we need. We can help each other by sharing tips with each other and asking for feedback when we need it. But fundamentally we must do the work of learning about the diagnosis and figuring out what needs to be expressed and when it is time to starve the wolf of inner tension.

Anyway, I hope you find the story helpful. I'd be interested to hear about what others have learned about themselves. When is it best to lance the boil? When is it time to starve the wolf?