I feel for you. I am a guy, so obviously I've never given birth. My wife and I have a child but she did not struggle with pos-partum depression so I have no real life experiences with that.
HOWEVER, I definitely have had horrible bouts of OCD, and have had it for about 40 of my 45 years of life.
One thing I have pondered the most about this disease is how to identify what is spiritual warfare (intrusive thoughts from satan) and what is OCD (intrusive thoughts from the chemical imbalance in our brain). I have not figured that out yet, but I have learned that they are similar and can be treated similarly.
I wrote a book (Waging War Against OCD - A Christian Approach to Victory - see WagingWarAgainstOCD.com). I want to share a snippet:
"What about all the OCD thoughts that torment us regarding our safety in Christ, our eternal salvation, our ability to know God’s will, and so forth? To say it’s not interrelated with spiritual warfare also seems nonsensical. OCD is definitely caused at least in partby a physical ailment (a serotonin imbalance in the brain), but I also know that Satan and his demons are out to attack our minds. We have a disorder that makes us more apt to obsess about things we would otherwise not dwell on, but thoughts that challenge our faith in God’s love and goodness do seem potentially spiritual in nature. My argument takes both the physical and spiritual realms into consideration in terms of developing a strategy to overcome OCD. I propose that if we address the physical part of the equation by physical means that will enable us to fight the spiritual aspect of the illness with less hindrance.
To illustrate, I use the following example. Imagine a world- class kickboxer, one of the best, with one major problem: he is incredibly closed off from the world and overly protected by his trainer. The trainer is also world-class and has one major problem: he is closed-minded about injuries. He believes a physical injury exists only if there is blood to show for it. Therefore, anytime the boxer has a busted nose, it is taken care of immediately. However, one day the boxer suffers a severely bruised rib during a bout. After the fight he describes the pain to his trainer, pleading for an X-ray. However, because no blood is visible, the trainer shrugs off the injury as whining and having a poor attitude.
In this scenario, two things would occur. First, the boxer would be extremely frustrated because he wouldn’t know how to make his trainer listen. Because he is isolated from the world, he would have to trust his trainer as he always had. He may reason that the trainer was the one who got him to the top in the first place. Second, the boxer would get creamed in his future matches. All his opponents would discover his bad rib and position themselves to maximize their advantage against this weakness.
OCD sufferers are like this boxer. We are weakened in our ability to fight our intrusive thoughts due to our hidden physical injury. Our continual struggle to feel God’s presence or be more obedient in an effort to overcome the illness results in futility over and over again. And this leaves us in despair. Our injury is hidden, and the lack of support from other Christians who cannot see the real physical nature of OCD can contribute to our hopelessness. To say Satan never uses these situations to his advantage is naïve in my opinion.
In The Christian’s Secret to a Happy Life, Hannah Whitall Smith addresses what this looks like long before OCD was ever defined. Just replace the words temptation and wrong with the phrase intrusive thoughts, and we can see how Satan could easily use this illness to his advantage.
It seems hardly worthwhile to say that temptation is not sin, and yet much distress arises from not understanding this fact. The very suggestion of wrong seems to bring pollution with it; and the poor tempted soul begins to feel as if it must be very bad indeed, and very far off from God, to have had such thoughts and suggestions.
It is as though a burglar should break into a man’s house to steal, and, when the master of the house begins to resist him and to drive him out, should turn round and accuse the owner of being himself the thief. It is the enemy’s grand ruse for entrapping us. He comes and whispers suggestions of evil to us, – doubts, blasphemies, jealousies, envyings, and pride, and then turns round and says, “Oh, how wicked you must be to think of such things! It is very plain that you are not trusting the Lord; for if you had been, it would have been impossible for these things to have entered your heart.” This reasoning sounds so very plausible that we often accept it as true, and so come under condemnation, and are filled with discouragement.
This happens even more when OCD is left untreated outside the spiritual realm. Like the boxer, Christians with OCD are world-class citizens; they have Christ living in them and have the ability to live life abundantly. Their OCD is the equivalent of a broken rib, and the enemy takes advantage. And often, like in the case of the isolated boxer, all they hear are the views of their peers, family members, and even pastoral counselors who are blind to their physical injury. They are pushed away from medicine and told that their faith needs to be strengthened. Worse yet, they are often encouraged to repent of a sin that is causing the problem. As in the boxer’s case, Christians with OCD are often severely frustrated and emotionally defeated, which is exactly where Satan wants them to be."
