I Thought Constant Anxiety Was Just The Price You Pay For Being A Parent

I started my journey with therapy 20 years ago, shortly after my dad died in an accident. Twenty years and six therapists later, I feel extremely fortunate to continue to maintain my mental wellness, especially as a first-generation immigrant.

My parents moved my siblings and me to the United States from Taiwan when we were very little, and throughout our childhood mental health was never spoken about or even considered. In our Asian American community, like so many American immigrant communities, we were raised to keep our heads down and power through any emotional turbulence we might be feeling; mental health care still came with a huge stigma attached. Our parents sacrificed so much for us to be here — it was considered ungrateful to complain. And so we were brought up in largely white communities, confronting frequent racism but lacking the language to talk about it and the emotional support we needed. Instead, we simply grew up learning not to bother other people with our problems.

Thankfully my mom is more open-minded than many immigrant parents, and after the immense trauma of my siblings and I losing our father, she paid for us to all go to therapy. Through our grief, we became closer than ever.

Then, a decade after my dad passed, I was married and trying for my first child. After quickly and joyously learning I was pregnant, a few weeks later my husband and I were devastated when I had a miscarriage. The loss was in some ways the worst personal loss I have ever experienced, worse even than losing my dad.

I got pregnant again a few months later. It was what my OB considered a “boringly normal” pregnancy, but the miscarriage had spurred a new anxiety — a constant hum in my brain. I never stopped worrying about how I would keep my then-unborn child safe.

At the time I thought it must be normal, how every new parent felt. Eight hours after I had delivered my firstborn, bleeding profusely, aching everywhere and barely able to lift my arms, I remember holding her and simultaneously feeling a massive weight bear down on my chest: “Holy sh*t, this is forever.” I tiptoed my way through the fourth trimester — every minor decision felt like life or death, from watching her “wake windows” to washing her crusty newborn hair. The torture of infant sleep deprivation took a massive toll, and by the time my daughter was 10 weeks old, I was in an incredibly dark place.

The constant anxiety was my everyday background noise — I genuinely thought it was just the price I paid for being a parent, and it didn’t even occur to me to bring it up with my therapist.

Even after sleep training, the worry never stopped. I worried about her tripping down the stairs while I was holding her hand or falling off the playground equipment while I was spotting her. I worried that we would get into a car accident while I was driving, hyper-aware of my surroundings. I constantly worried I would make a small mistake that would end in catastrophe. By the time I was pregnant with my second child, the constant anxiety was my everyday background noise — I genuinely thought it was just the price I paid for being a parent, and it didn’t even occur to me to bring it up with my therapist.

My youngest was born while my husband, daughter, and I were living with my mom in suburban North Carolina, having picked up our entire lives and moved cross country from Portland, Oregon, our beloved home of more than a decade. I was working a stressful full-time job while supporting my husband’s new bakery by solo parenting on bake days and market days. We technically had Sundays as our one “family day” but it often felt more like a recovery day, trying to catch up on sleep and squeezing in whatever quality time we could manage in our sleep deprivation. We had my mom’s help but it still wasn’t enough.

One morning, after a particularly bad fight with my husband over socks — I have no recollection of the details of this fight, only that it was about socks — I got so mad I slammed the refrigerator door shut and it bounced back open and a shelf of condiments came crashing out of it. It scared my infant son and he started wailing, which made me cry too. Standing in a pool of pickle juice and spicy aioli and broken glass while sobbing uncontrollably felt like an apt metaphor for my mental state.

I kicked myself for not starting sooner, but even the decades of therapy couldn’t fully undo the stigma I grew up with.

My mom, having witnessed this event from the next room, approached me gingerly the next morning. She asked me if I was doing OK. I said, “No, I’m not OK.” And then she told me in the most compassionate voice, “I just think that you can change your mindset if you just don’t call it ‘depression’ or ‘anxiety.’” I can laugh now when I think of this story, but my real-time response was to scream at her that she had no idea what she was talking about and that her saying that made me feel even worse. I screamed at her until she cried and profusely apologized. I had never before (and have never since) spoken to her like I did that morning, but it felt like yet again being asked to power through, and I had had enough.

The answer for me came in SSRIs. After the sock fight and screaming at my mom, I realized I needed more help than exercise or talk therapy could provide. I reached out to my incredible midwife and described my symptoms, and she prescribed a low dose of Prozac for my postpartum anxiety and depression. Within two weeks, I started feeling like some version of myself again — I felt occasional bursts of genuine joy and ease, two emotions I had largely been without for the eight months my youngest had been alive. I kicked myself for not starting sooner, but even the decades of therapy couldn’t fully undo the stigma I grew up with.

So much of the act of parenting is reparenting the self; just constantly pushing a giant boulder up a hill and hoping it stays at the top, and when it does eventually roll back downhill maybe it gets a little less heavy each time. I was able to wean off the meds when I weaned my son and my hormones shifted, but now I know it’s something that works for me if I ever need it again.

I no longer carry the shame and stigma that mental health care still holds in my Asian American community, and my husband and I work incredibly hard to model emotional awareness and intelligence to our kids. Despite my mom’s misunderstanding about how postpartum anxiety and depression function, she remains to this day one of my greatest supporters. And I have a lot of hope that we’re raising the next generation to understand the importance of mental health even more so than we do.

Ingrid Chen McCarthy is a professional chef, mom of two, and community organizer based in Greensboro, North Carolina. She works as a research and development chef for a specialty grocery company and is also the co-owner of a cottage bakery, Breadservice, with her baker husband Jeff. She is proudly Taiwanese American.