Why You Don’t Feel Like Yourself Anymore — Understanding Matrescence

Have you ever thought, “I don’t feel like myself anymore,” and wondered if something was wrong with you?

In this first episode of More Than Mom with Dr. Nichelle Haynes, your host, Dr. Nichelle Haynes, perinatal psychiatrist and mother, introduces a concept that puts language to that feeling — matrescence. It’s not a diagnosis. It’s not a disorder. It’s a real, meaningful shift in identity that begins when you become a mother — and understanding it can change everything. Understanding it is the foundation for the growth we will be doing!

In this episode, you’ll explore:

• What matrescence is and why it matters
• How it compares to other times of transition
• The grief, confusion, and growth that come with becoming someone new
• What actually changes in your brain, body, and identity

You’ll also hear a gentle journaling prompt to help you begin reconnecting with yourself — not who you used to be, but who you're becoming.

This episode is for any mom who’s ever felt lost, overwhelmed, or unsure of who she is now. You are not failing. You are becoming.

Thank you for being here. Take care of yourself.

In this episode we discuss therapy and finding someone with perinatal training. You can access the Postpartum Support International Directory here.

Transcript

 You are listening to More Than Mom with Dr. Nichelle Haynes, A podcast for women in the thick of it all, navigating the messy, beautiful work of finding themselves again in and beyond motherhood. I'm Dr. Nichelle Haynes, perinatal psychiatrist mom and your companion in this space for real, but gentle conversations about identity, mental health, and the deep transformation.

We don't talk about enough because becoming a mother changes everything. And this is your chance to be intentional about that change.

In this first episode, I want to first welcome you. I'm so, so, so excited you're here. Thank you for being here. I, in this first episode, wanna talk about the shift in motherhood and give a little bit of context for what's happening. 'cause I think that we all intuitively know that there's been a big change, especially in ourselves.

And we may have seen it in our mom, friends or other people that we know who have had kiddos, but we don't really. Identify it or talk about it very openly. And so I think giving some context for this could be really helpful for building the foundation for some of the other things that we're gonna talk about.

So this episode is really important. The shift is realizing that you've changed and  thinking, I don't know who I am, I don't really even know who I was. I know what I did and I know what I do, but I don't really know who I am now. And there's a clinical term for that. It's called matrescence.

Some people say matrescence, I think either is totally fine.  The term was coined by a medical anthropologist in the 1970s. Her name was Dana Raphael. And we can recognize that it's crappy, that it's just now getting them attention. And also be grateful that we're here in a time where it is getting attention.

Matrescence refers to the developmental process that a person goes through when they become a mom. The transition encompasses a lot of different things. It's hormonal, emotional, social, maybe even spiritual. But at the core of it, there's a change in identity. And when I'm talking to my patients, I talk to them about matrescence in parallel to adolescence.

There are a few differences here that are important and we'll talk about those, but I want you to think back to when you were a kiddo, and I don't know if this is true for you, but it's definitely true for me and I think it's resonated with people I've talked to before. So we're gonna use it. We're gonna go with it.

Remember back to when you were a kiddo and you in some ways could not wait to be an adult. It was kind of like, I can watch whatever I want on tv. I can eat whatever I want, and no one can tell me what to do. And yeah, some of those things were true, but the reality of it is that when you were a kid, you couldn't understand what it was like to be an adult.

And when you were not a mom, you had some assumptions or some understanding of what it was like to be a mom, but you really couldn't understand what it meant to be a mom. Just like when you're a kid, you couldn't understand what it meant to be an adult. So. In adolescence, there is a community of people who are going through the same thing, right?

This is like middle school, high school kind of time, and it's expected that you have a long period of time to adjust your hormones. They change rapidly, but it's not a day-to-day thing, right? So adolescence comes with a community, it comes with a societal expectation. It's gonna be weird and awkward, and frankly terrible.

It happens over a period of time. But in matrescence, we all go from not a mom to a mom that same day. If you birthed your  children, you had a large change in hormones the science nerd in me wants to tell you that this change in hormones is the largest change of hormones that you will ever have.

You go from the highest level of estrogen and progesterone that you will ever have in your entire life to the level that is the same or even lower than you had pre-pregnancy. So huge hormone shift, and also your role and your responsibilities shift day to day. We know what it's like to take care of an infant, but it happens from one day to the next.

It's not like this long runway that you get with adolescence, and so
we go through matrescence and isolation. Even if you are co-parenting with someone with the same child in the same house. You guys are gonna have different experiences and your friends, even if they have kiddos on the exact same day, your kids are gonna develop differently. You're going to have a different experience than them.

And often that means that we feel isolated. So instead of the support that we get through adolescence, we just feel. Lost. We try to do things like explain it away. We say like, oh, I should be grateful. Maybe I'm just tired. Maybe I need a nap. Maybe I need a break. Maybe this is what it is. Being a mom and I didn't really understand it.

Some of those things are true, but they don't fully explain matrescence. You really are and have become someone completely new. And if you don't believe that, let's talk through some of the biologic changes that happen in your brain and in your body. matrescence really touches everything. Your brain literally changes the gray matter in your brain, prunes itself, just like you would prune a tree or something like that, and your brain prioritizes, keeping certain neural networks that help you be more empathetic and more responsive, which we think is probably a, a mechanism to help keep your baby alive, which great just means we change and your reward system changes in your brain.

I remember when my baby was really, really, really little, having him in my lap and feeling so much joy just to look at him. And I remember my kiddo's dad when we were in the hospital, he said something so funny. He said, I didn't know I could be proud of someone for blinking. That's change in his reward system too.

So your brain literally reorganizes itself. It rewires itself to be a better mom. You have a big hormone change like we talked about. There's also changes in your relationships is so, so, so normal to have difficulties in your relationships in the postpartum period.

This can be romantic relationships. This can be relationships with your other kiddos. This can be relationships with your work, with your friends, with yourself. Relationships change. You might feel like your ambition shifts one way or the other.

All of these changes are so, oh, so disorienting, but they're also normal. I want to emphasize that these changes are biologic changes that happen to help us protect and take care of our babies the best that we can, and also it's really hard.

We just don't talk about how hard it is. I think no matter how realistic your expectations of motherhood were or are, there is an inherent grief in change no matter what kind of change it is, but especially this one, matrescence, your transition to becoming a mom. Being a mom carries a really quiet grief.

It is completely normal and natural to miss parts of yourself. Your freedom. The ability to go somewhere without packing a thousand bags. You might miss the body that you had. You might miss the autonomy that you had. The freedom. The clarity that you had around who you were, and I want to be really clear here that that's normal, and recognizing and naming the grief does not in any way mean that you do not love your kiddo.

It means you're human. I'm sorry to tell you,

Letting go of who you were. To make space for who you're becoming is really delicate, tender work. It deserves, I don't know the word here. Maybe a reverence, but what we give it a shame and that's not cool, and that's why you're here.

We don't talk about this shift for a lot of reasons, but shame is one of them. And a big one is also that in our society, I'm talking about American society Here, we don't really center the mother in our cultural narrative. We center the baby. The baby gets the attention, the baby's the one that gets the.

Gives at the baby shower when the baby comes. Oh, how big was the baby? Is the baby? Okay? What's the baby's name? All of these things. And what does the mom get? She gets a cultural expectation that she's supposed to, and I know we're listening audio here, but I want you to imagine me using air quotes and rolling my eyes.

She's expected to bounce back. Ugh, my gosh. She is supposed to just magically change into this new person, but somehow be the exact same person to everyone else and have the same body that she had before, had the same work ethic that she had before work, like she's not a mom and be a mom, like she doesn't work.

She's supposed to put herself last. These are all things that you may have sort of absorbed from society and not really identified, but they're there.

The truth is, we long for who we were while simultaneously desiring to be someone else at times, and the hard part about it. Is that there is no going back .

Nope. No going back. I'm sorry. But the really cool part is that you're here and you're creating some intention about who you get to be. Now you can reclaim the parts of you that you really enjoyed before and let go of the parts that weren't serving you. You get to decide, and I think that's pretty cool.

I want you to take just a minute. Right now, I am almost certain you're multitasking. That's okay. I want you to just breathe for a second. If it feels good, put your hand over your heart and connect with yourself. Just give it a few breaths.

In this stillness, is there a version of you that you feel like you've lost? Is there a version of you that you'd like to become?

I want you to take just a second and think about that .


If you're someone who processes your emotions or your thoughts through writing, I want you to carry that prompt with you. This week. I'll tell you again, is there a version of you that you feel like you've lost? Is there a version of you that you'd like to become? Now with journaling, I don't want you to edit your journaling.

I don't want you to write something pretty. I want you to be vulnerable. It doesn't have to make sense. It doesn't have to be sentences. Just write, don't edit it. Be vulnerable with yourself and see what comes.

So I want you to remember that matrescence is a normal physiologic transition, but the psychiatrist in me has to remind you and tell you that it doesn't mean that it can't intersect with postpartum depression or anxiety. And if you feel like you are struggling with depression or anxiety, a great place to start is with therapy.

Especially someone who has perinatal training. I will include in the show notes some resources for you to identify someone who is perinatal trained. I think in this journey, having someone along your side who can provide feedback.

Who can support you, who can challenge some thoughts or challenge narratives for you could be really helpful. So if you need support, please reach out for it. I think that therapy's great for most everyone.

Thank you for being here, for listening, for creating some intention for yourself, for doing the work of becoming you. You've been listening to More Than Mom with me, Dr. Nichelle Haynes. I hope this gave you a space to breathe, to reflect, and to feel a little bit more like yourself. If it did, I would really love it if you would leave a review or share it with a mom friend.

Take her on this journey with you. If this resonated with you, I'm gonna let you know that my guided journals called In Bloom are going to be available so, so, so soon I'll keep you updated on those. They're going to include an audio portion similar to this podcast, and they will help you dive in deeper in this transformation.

Next week we'll be talking about the invisible load and why so many mothers feel overwhelmed, even when it looks like they're handling everything.

Until next time, take care of yourself.