Is this Baby Blues or Something Deeper? Understanding PMADs

It’s often said that having a baby changes everything—but few people talk about how it changes you.

The postpartum period is a time of deep emotional, physical, and identity transformation. It’s common to feel overwhelmed, teary, and tired in the first couple of weeks after birth. This is often referred to as the "baby blues" and affects up to 80% of new parents.

But when the sadness lingers, the anxiety sharpens, or the joy disappears completely—you may be experiencing something more serious.

What Are PMADs?

Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders (PMADs) include a spectrum of emotional disorders that occur during pregnancy or within the first year postpartum. They include:

• Postpartum depression

• Postpartum anxiety

• Postpartum OCD

• Postpartum PTSD

• Postpartum psychosis

These are not character flaws or personal failures—they are treatable conditions that affect 1 in 5 birthing people. And they can also affect fathers and non-birthing partners.

Signs It Might Be More Than Baby Blues

• Intense irritability, sadness, or numbness lasting beyond 2 weeks

• Difficulty bonding with your baby

• Constant worry, racing thoughts, or fear of harming yourself or your baby

• Feeling overwhelmed by daily tasks or unable to sleep when the baby sleeps

Culturally Responsive Care Matters

If you're a BIPOC parent, you may be carrying additional layers of stigma, cultural pressure, or silence around emotional struggle. You may feel like you have to be strong, grateful, or perfect.

You don't. You deserve care, too.

A culturally responsive, trauma-informed therapist can hold space for your healing without judgment, and without asking you to explain your culture.

You Are Not Alone

PMADs are common. They are treatable. And seeking support is not weakness—it's love in action.

If you're unsure what you're feeling, therapy can help you sort through the noise and return to yourself. You're not a bad parent. You're a human being in transition.

You deserve support that honors your whole story.

🗓️ Support Is Available

If you’re a new or expecting parent in New York and this post resonates with you, I invite you to schedule a free 15-minute consultation. Together, we can explore what compassionate, culturally responsive care might look like for you. Email me at ashleyrodriguezphd@gmail.com to schedule.

When You’ve Outgrown the Role You Were Raised to Play

Do you ever feel like you’re doing everything "right" on the outside but feel lost on the inside? You may have a steady job, a growing family, or a community you care for deeply—and still wonder, Who am I now?

This is common for many first-generation and BIPOC adults navigating adulthood. We often step into adult roles still carrying the expectations and identities we were handed as children: the fixer, the caretaker, the achiever, the peacemaker.

But as we grow—especially during life transitions like becoming a parent, starting a new relationship, or shifting careers—those roles may no longer fit.

Signs You've Outgrown an Old Role

• You feel resentment doing things you used to take pride in

• You experience burnout from always being the one others depend on

• You struggle to say no or set boundaries, even when you're exhausted

• You find yourself asking, "What do I actually want?"

Why This Feels So Hard

Letting go of old roles can feel like disloyalty. Many of us were conditioned to believe our worth comes from how much we give. Shifting out of these identities may be met with guilt, pushback, or grief.

But here's the truth: growth requires grief. When we outgrow roles, we create space for more authentic self-definition.

Therapy Can Help You Reclaim Your Identity

In therapy, you can:

• Explore who you are beyond the roles you've played

• Grieve the parts of you that were never allowed to rest

• Build language around your needs, not just your responsibilities

• Learn to hold boundaries without shame

Outgrowing a role doesn’t mean you’re abandoning your family. It means you’re finally choosing yourself.

Ready to Reclaim Your Identity?

If you're based in New York and this post resonates with you, I invite you to schedule a free 15-minute consultation. Therapy can help you reconnect with who you truly are—and who you’re becoming.

Email me at ashleyrodriguezphd@gmail.com to schedule a consultation

Why First-Gen Mental Health Is Unique — and Why You’re Not Broken

Being the first in your family to attend college, pursue a professional career, or navigate parenting with emotional awareness is a powerful achievement—and often a lonely one. If you're a first-generation adult, you may feel caught between cultures, roles, and expectations. You may carry pride and pressure in equal measure. This emotional complexity is what makes first-gen mental health both unique and often misunderstood.

What Is a First-Gen Adult?

A "first-generation adult" typically refers to someone who is the first in their family to grow up or come of age in a new country, or the first to access significant milestones such as higher education, professional careers, or therapy. Many first-gen individuals are the U.S.-born children of immigrants, or the first in their family to graduate college, enter white-collar professions, or engage in mental health support. This role often comes with high expectations, uncharted territory, and deep emotional layers.

As a first-gen Latina and psychologist, I see how deeply this duality shapes emotional wellbeing. Many of us were raised in households where emotional awareness wasn’t always accessible—not because our families didn’t care, but because they were navigating economic hardship, cultural displacement, and structural barriers. In these environments, survival often required focus on practical needs rather than emotional reflection. Gratitude was expected. Struggle was normalized. Seeking help was sometimes stigmatized.

The Beauty and Difficulty of Being Bicultural

Living between two cultures is both enriching and disorienting. Gloria Anzaldúa's concept of the "Borderlands" speaks to this experience—the psychological and emotional space where multiple identities intersect, clash, and evolve. First-gen individuals often live in this in-between: translating one world while trying to thrive in another.

You may feel too much or not enough for either culture. You might speak fluent English and still carry shame for not speaking your family's native language fluently. You may feel the need to excel in professional settings while holding onto cultural values of humility, collectivism, and caretaking.

There is beauty in this adaptability AND it comes with grief. Grief for what your parents couldn’t teach you about college applications, financial aid, or setting boundaries. Grief for the parts of yourself that had to grow up too quickly just to make it.

The Strengths of Being First-Gen

Let’s begin by honoring your strengths. First-gen individuals are:

• Resourceful: You've learned to navigate systems your family may not have had access to.

• Resilient: You've carried emotional and logistical burdens with little support.

• Responsible: You've often taken on adult roles early in life—translating, caregiving, advocating.

• Deeply Connected to Family: Even when boundaries are hard, you value your roots.

These traits are incredible and they often come with invisible costs.

The Emotional Weight You Carry

Being "the first" often means:

• Feeling guilt for having opportunities your family didn’t

• Struggling with boundaries and code-switching between home and professional environments

• Minimizing your needs because you were taught not to complain

• Suppressing emotions that don’t feel "productive" or "grateful"

This can lead to anxiety, burnout, identity confusion, and a persistent sense that you are "too much" or "not enough."

You're Not Broken—You're Carrying Too Much

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, or disconnected, it doesn’t mean you’re weak. It means you’re human.

Therapy can be a space where you stop performing strength and start exploring what it means to be held. You don’t have to shrink to honor your family. You don’t have to abandon your values to heal. In fact, culturally responsive therapy integrates your identity and your healing.

You are not broken. You are breaking new ground. And that deserves care.

🗓️ Ready to Start Therapy?

If you live in New York and are looking for a culturally responsive therapist who understands the complexities of first-gen identity, I invite you to schedule a free 15-minute consultation. Let’s explore how therapy can support your healing, growth, and legacy.

👉 Schedule a Consultation: Email me at ashleyrodriguezphd@gmail.com

Welcome to Therapy That Honors Your Culture & Story

✨ Welcome: A Space for Your Healing, Not Your Performance

If you’re here, something inside you is asking for more — more ease, more connection, more clarity.
And maybe, just maybe, you’re tired of holding it all together alone.

I want to begin this blog by saying what often goes unsaid:
Starting therapy is an act of courage.
Whether you're still considering it or already in the process, it’s okay if you feel overwhelmed, unsure, guarded, hopeful, or all of the above.

There is no one “right” way to begin healing.

🧡 All of You Is Welcome Here

If you’re a first-generation adult who’s always been the strong one...
If you're a new parent grieving the version of yourself you once knew...
If you’re navigating life transitions that no one prepared you for…
If you're trying to make peace with a childhood that still shows up in your present…

You are not alone.

Therapy doesn't require you to have all the answers — it invites you to ask different questions.
Questions like:

• “What would it mean to choose myself without guilt?”

• “How do I break the cycle without breaking down?”

• “Who am I outside of the roles I’ve always played?”
  

This blog will be a space where those questions are honored, and where the complexity of your lived experience — as a BIPOC, first-gen, cycle-breaking human — is not only understood, but centered.

🌟 What You Can Expect From This Blog

Here, I’ll share reflections, resources, and clinical insights related to:

• First-generation mental health

• Life transitions and identity exploration

• Perinatal and postpartum emotional wellness

• Boundaries, burnout, and emotional regulation

• Healing from intergenerational trauma

My intention is not to give you quick fixes or rigid checklists.
Instead, I’ll offer grounded guidance rooted in my values as a clinician:

• Trauma-informed care that honors the nervous system and the whole person

• Culturally responsive practice that doesn’t ask you to explain or dilute who you are

• Deep compassion for the stuck, scared, or self-critical parts of you

• Commitment to relational healing, not just surface-level symptom relief

Whether you're here to gather insight, find resonance, or begin your therapy journey, I’m glad you’ve landed here.

💫 A Final Reminder

It’s okay to have doubts.
It’s okay to feel like therapy might be “too much” or “too tender.”
It’s okay if past experiences made you question whether healing is even possible.

And still — you are worthy of care.
You don’t have to carry the weight of your story in silence.
You don’t have to hold your healing alone.

When you're ready, I’m here to walk with you.

In care,
Dr. Ashley Rodriguez
NY Licensed Psychologist | Perinatal Mental Health Certified
Email ashleyrodriguezphd@gmail.com to schedule a consult