Roos - social support and stress management

So social support is really important for stress management at any stage of life. Humans are incredibly social creatures. We evolved from primates who are also social creatures. We have evolved to live in groups to have these relationships. And one of the really powerful ways that they help with stress management in the prenatal period is that they provide what’s called a social buffer to one stress response. So when we’re hyped up, we’re stressed, our heart rates up, our stress hormones are up, being in the presence of someone who’s supportive, having physical touch, a hug, someone supportive to call on the phone, someone to text actually decreases your body’s stress response.

You know that there was an alarm. You know that something’s going on that’s not good. But the presence of that social support tells your physiology at the cellular level that you can handle it because you have a supportive community around you. And so cultivating that support for people, encouraging them to seek social support. One of the things that I hate most about depression is that it tells you to isolate yourself. You hear a message, I should pull away from people, I should withdraw. I might be a burden to people. And that messaging, it’s both not accurate and it really limits you from getting the exact type of support that’s going to help you get out of that episode of depression or to cope with those systems or the stressors that are contributing to depression.

And so I really think that sort of education around those type of thoughts and depression is really, really critical for both providers and for parents to know about the importance of seeking out social connection and in sharing emotions as a critical way to be moving on from tough emotions and mitigating stress. And I think it’s also an important thing for partners or for anyone who knows someone that’s pregnant who might be struggling with these symptoms. I think it’s easy to be dismissive of, you know, everything’s going so well, you should be happy that it’s such a most wonderful time. But being open about sharing that it can be incredibly wonderful. It can also be incredibly hard. It can be incredibly stressful, it can be incredibly sad; are really important for opening the potential to have that discussion. Because often some of the biggest stigma that people have is against ourself for mental health challenges.