Louise Thompson has admitted she’s been at “rock bottom” since the traumatic birth of her son Leo.
The 31-year-old has been suffering from PTSD and depression since November, after she nearly died giving birth to her first child.
In a candid new update with her followers, the new mum said she is “not even close to feeling like a normal person yet.”
The Made In Chelsea star wrote in a lengthy Instagram post: “Where the hell have the last three months gone? Leo turns 15 weeks today and my brain can’t comprehend it.”
“The last time I properly opened up about my trauma was on the 15th of January and I haven’t felt strong enough to talk about it since. If I could use a few words to describe the past month they would be: SCARED, CONFUSED, PARALYSED, AND TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL.”
“My brain 🧠 keeps deleting memories in order to try and protect itself and it’s so scary. Trauma and fear have no understanding of time. I remember a therapist told me that a few months ago and I didn’t understand what she meant. Now I do.”
“Extremely scary circumstances get trapped in your brain as a fight or flight response and they don’t get processed like other memories. They don’t leave with time. They get trapped in your subconscious.”
Louise continued: “To be honest I’ve been too scared to post about how I’m feeling because I’m not even close to feeling like a normal person yet. I remember when I first posted about PTSD I got really triggered by comments saying it could take 6/9 months to process and I HATED hearing that. I stopped reading everything.”
“I’ve had to block out any health related content to protect myself. Now I have come to terms with the fact that my life might never be the same again, but things honestly can’t get any worse than they’ve been over the past month so hopefully i’m at the beginning of my actual recovery 🤞🏼.”
“I have had to learn an incredible amount of patience (something I never ever had before). Perhaps one of the only good things to come out of this? The only other thing that might be beneficial one day (remarkable that i’ve even reached a point where I can think about my future) is that I might be able to help encourage other people to keep on going.”
“DON’T GIVE UP. JUST KEEP LIVING. ONE MORE DAY.”
View this post on Instagram
“I thought that living in hospital for a month was the worst time of my life,” the reality star admitted. “Wow I was wrong. I had control over my mind then.”
“Something happened about a month ago where my mind and body came crashing down in tandem. I guess I had been in self preservation mode/survival mode up until that point. Then the real mental health hell began.”
Continuing in the comment section, Louise wrote: “It’s very hard to describe in words what I’ve been going through but I have buckets and buckets of notes I’ve written to myself which I will look back on when I’m feeling better or at least a bit more like ‘Louise’.”
“These are just some of the ways in which mental health has gripped me, and I wouldn’t expect you to understand unless you have experienced a debilitating mental illness but here goes.”
View this post on Instagram
“I’ve been petrified of my cupboards. I’ve battled a phobia of my fridge and bathtub. I’ve felt so disconnected from reality it’s very scary. I wore the same clothes every day for a month. I couldn’t wear any makeup for a month.”
“I couldn’t go into the nursery or the basement. I haven’t been able to look after Leo because I’m scared he’ll trigger anxiety. I’ve felt terror and confusion in my head that is so paralysing yet painful I want to smack my head into a wall.”
“I couldn’t leave the house for 2 weeks. Sometimes I honestly feel like someone has poured actual poison into my head. I am petrified of what the medication might be doing to me. I’m scared that I’ll forget to do basic tasks like eat and drink water.”
“I often feel so brain fried that I can’t function at all, all I can do is lie down and stare into space with the occasional outbreak of tears. I love crying, tears are better than everything else I go through because the emotion of sadness is much easier to make sense of than the emotion of fear. Gosh I wish I was just sad.”
View this post on Instagram
Louise revealed: “I have depression, severe anxiety, avoidance and ptsd (although standard ptsd hasn’t kicked in yet because i’m too overwhelmed). I have spent countless days staring into space.”
“I analyse every single thought that pops into my head from the moment I wake up until the moment I get to go to sleep and they’re all horrendously intrusive. I love sleep because I get to escape for a bit, although I have had ridiculously unpleasant nightmares over the past week.”
“My body and my mind are trapped in fight or flight and they think that everything is a threat and that I’m dying all the time. I am scared of my own existence. I am scared of my past, present and my future.”
“In the night I wake up (even with the help of sleeping aids) moaning and crying because I’m in torture. I haven’t been able to feel, smell or taste anything in ages. My senses are all blocked. Sometimes I feel like I have electric shocks in my head.”
View this post on Instagram
“We now require a lot of help because often I’m too scared to look after little Leo because I’m worried he will remind me of what happened to my body. I’ve screamed and cried at being asked to put clothes away in my cupboard because my mind won’t let me do it, it won’t allow me a spare second to concentrate on anything but suffering.”
“I’ve not been able to communicate at all with people even on the most basic level. I went to a restaurant for lunch with my mum and Ryan and felt so dead in the head I thought I was about to slip into a coma. I’ve repeated to myself a million times asking ‘what is happening to me?'”
“If I’m outside I fear coming inside, if I’m inside I fear going outside. I can’t find answers for why I’m feeling so bad. I feel chemical surges that take me back to feeling normal sometimes. I wake up covered in sweat all night long.”
“Honestly I’ve been at a level of rock bottom that I never knew existed. I never understood suffering or suicide before,” she admitted.
“I have learnt a lot over the past 1/2 year. I used to watch fires on tv and not relate, now I understand the trauma,” Louise said, referring to the house fire in her home last year.
“I used to hear about PTSD after war or abuse, now I understand the trauma. It is not as easy as ‘you survived the past, so now you live’.”
“I wanted to finish this post with something a tiny bit positive. I am starting to see a glimmer of hope. I have quite a lot of people, processes and medication to thank for that.”
“I will share more as I start to feel a bit more compos mentis. What I want to remind anyone that is suffering is to KEEP BLOODY GOING. It can and will get better. Crisis teams and medication can help. Don’t be too proud to ask for HELP.”
If you have been affected by anything in this article, please visit www.pieta.ie or call 1800 247 247.
