When I think other people can hear my thoughts.

After the birth of my first son, I developed postpartum psychosis. Everyone on my mental health team assumed postpartum depression would come knocking on my door. About three weeks after the birth of my son, I found myself hiding in the closet holding my son tight because that’s where the government couldn’t find us. I knew right then that my mental state was way beyond depression. It was psychotic.

As I began the treatment for the disorder, an interesting symptom came about. I started to believe with all the fibers in my being that people could hear my thoughts. There was no place safe for me. I had a hard time getting out of the house because of the paranoia that evil would somehow ruin my day or my life. I believed drivers behind me were serial killers trying to kidnap my son and me so they may kill us. When I could manage to talk myself back into sanity, another paranoia would strike. People knew what I was thinking. I could think about how much I needed to pee and a couple next to me would laugh. Yes, the two events have nothing to do with anything but there I was knowing that they were laughing at the mother with an infant child, who needed the toilet. It became worse because then thoughts that I had never thought before would enter my mind. I would think about a murder I didn’t commit and then I would have a detailed description of where the body was buried. I knew I was going to be arrested and hopefully let go when the place I “buried” the body turned up nothing.

The antipsychotic Latuda went a long way in helping this type of paranoia. It took a couple of months but I went back to a 90% confidence rate that my private thoughts were just that- private.