Jania Ashlynn
The actress sat down for an interview with Wondermind about her postpartum experiences after giving birth to her now 2 ½ year old son, Lucas.
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Seeking Healing
She shared that it’s a “very British thing to not really seek therapy.” She did decide to give it a try once she realized how many people she knew that went to therapy.
“But I never felt like I needed to, and then my daughter was born. I now look back and realize I had postpartum anxiety, which I didn’t know was a thing,” she said. “I knew about postpartum depression, and I knew I didn’t have that, but I had so much anxiety.”
“I can’t parent from this place of anxiety all the time,” she continued. “It’s not going to be healthy for my kids, either. I don’t want them to feel that constant anxiety from me. So I sought therapy.”
She said that having her two children – Lucas and daughter Hayden, who is 6 – was very emotional for her, especially since her mother had passed away when she was young.
“It can bring up constant worst-case-scenario [thinking] for you, where you feel like, ‘Oh, I will die young because that’s what happened to me,'” she offered. “That’s what I knew. That was my reality.”
“It was super intense, and I had never felt that way before. And so I was like, OK, I need to do this for myself. I need to gift this to myself, gift this to my family, and go seek therapy,” she continued.
Different Generations
Luddington expressed what she wishes her own children will learn from her open conversations about mental health. She also noted how different it was from her own childhood.
“I don’t think it’s because my parents were trying to keep it a secret, but mental health just wasn’t really talked about. I think it’s really important for [my kids] to know to not be ashamed of seeking help or taking medication…any of those things that can reset your mental health,” she shared.
“That’s why I like talking about this because I feel like there’s still a stigma, and I just want to be able to be open and [want them to] understand: ‘Hey, mom has anxiety,'” she added. “I had PMDD [premenstrual dysphoric disorder] after my son was born, which I had never experienced before and didn’t know could happen. I want them to know that it doesn’t [show] weakness to seek help.”
