Louise Thompson has revealed she is experiencing PTSD and feels like her body and mind are in “constant fight or flight mode” following the traumatic birth of her son.
The Made In Chelsea star (31) has shared a detailed account of the “depressive panic episodes” she is facing in a lengthy post to social media and said she spent New Year’s Day in A&E.
Thompson explained in a post in December how she had suffered complications while giving birth to her son Leo-Hunter, with her partner Ryan Libbey, and said she had experienced a “dance with death twice” while in hospital.
View this post on InstagramAdvertisement
She shared a photo on Instagram of her dressed in a cosy dressing gown holding her newborn son looking off into the distance and wrote: “I can only write when I am not having a depressive panic episode and luckily right now I am not.
“My panic episodes can last hours or days and are totally unpredictable.
“When I’m having one I can’t function, I can’t look after myself, let alone anyone else around me. I can’t even spell my name. I can’t see, I can’t hear, I can’t look anyone in the eye.”
“They have got so bad that I have convinced myself that I’m going crazy.
“I feel depersonalisation, hyper paranoia as if I’ve taken a million and one drugs and I feel like I’m stuck in another realm. I am not myself.”
Thompson explained that she was unsure if the mental reactions are causing the physical but added: “Things seem to be getting worse.
“If it was a permanent state, I don’t think I would be here.”
She continued: “I’m doing everything I can to try not to spiral… but my subconscious thinks that I’m dying all the time.
“I think I have boxed my experiences up and buried them, but they are coming back to haunt me. All the time.
“My body and mind are in constant fight or flight mode and I quite literally will be triggered by anything.”
The reality star also shared the physical symptoms she was experiencing which include pain, dizziness, fainting, temperatures and nausea.
However, she reflected on how far she had come in her recovery, evolving from worrying about “savage internal infections” and “scary blood tests results” to now being concerned about fatigue and memory loss.
“When I have one full good day I celebrate it, but I’m actually scared about what is going to come next,” she admitted.
Thompson finished her post by reaching out to anyone who has also been “trapped in this world of PTSD” and said: “If you are struggling with mental health problems, know that you are not alone.
“We are all in this together.”
Ahead of Christmas, Thompson revealed to her followers that Leo-Hunter had been treated in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and she had been treated in the adult ICU after the birth.
On Christmas Day, she shared a heartfelt post in which she paid tribute to the NHS staff who “worked through the night to save my life”.
Thompson appeared in Made In Chelsea’s first series in 2011, progressing to become one of the E4 show’s main characters, while partner Ryan Libbey joined the cast in 2016 when the series was filming in the south of France.
The couple were engaged in 2018 after he proposed during a hiking trip in Los Angeles.
