When Depression Doesn't Look Like Depression

Paternal postpartum depression is often mischaracterized or overlooked, yet it presents distinct symptoms and carries significant implications for families. Christopher Choukalas’s experience highlights the urgent need to recognize and address this condition for the wellbeing of all family members.

Paternal Postpartum Depression Shows Activation Rather Than Typical Maternal Withdrawal Symptoms

Paternal Postpartum Depression Shows As Anger, Irritability, Conflict, Hypervigilance, and Risk-Taking, Not Guilt, Shame, and Lethargy

When Choukalas’s wife investigated paternal postpartum depression, the list of symptoms shocked her for how well they fit her husband: anger, irritability, conflict, risk-taking, impulsivity, and even drug seeking. Unlike maternal postpartum depression, which often manifests as sadness, guilt, or lethargy, paternal symptoms are highly activated states—constant irritability, conflict, and a sense of being on “threat mode” all the time.

Choukalas describes his own irritability as “constant,” tied to a persistent state of alertness. Risk-taking and impulsivity, such as driving dangerously or turning to substances like alcohol or cigarettes, became maladaptive strategies for coping. These behaviors differ starkly from the image of someone “who just can’t get out of bed,” presenting as high-activation responses driven by relentless internal pressure.

Paternal Postpartum Depression Often Mistaken For Personality Flaws or Marital Issues Rather Than a Treatable Mental Health Condition

Initially, Choukalas was defensive when the idea of postpartum depression was raised, resisting the notion that something could be wrong with him. He attributed his struggles to character flaws—or just to the stress of family life—thinking he was “a terrible father, a selfish spouse, or an out of control lunatic.” The concept that these experiences might be symptoms of a treatable condition only became apparent once he confronted the possibility of paternal postpartum depression.

Anxiety Underlies Paternal Postpartum Depression, Causing Jolts, Palpitations, and Threat Response

Choukalas identifies anxiety as the central force behind his symptoms, although he initially saw his hyper-responsibility and sleepless vigilance as good parenting. He suffered from physical symptoms of anxiety—feelings like “sharp, jarring electrical jolts of energy” through his chest and belly, heart palpitations, and even visits to a cardiologist for irregular heartbeat. This persistent anxiety kept his body in a state of hypervigilance, as if constantly scanning for threats to his family.

Untreated Symptoms Harm Relationships, Parenting, and Family Wellbeing

Nervous System's Threat Focus Hinders Bonding With Newborns

The biological imperative to protect can override a parent’s ability to bond. Choukalas recalls moments with his child where, even as she sought his attention, he was physically present but emotionally distant, his focus consumed by threat vigilance rather than connection. Becky Kennedy explains that a parent stuck in hypervigilance feels as though bonding is secondary to constant protection from perceived or imagined dangers—akin to defending against “bears in the forest” instead of playing peekaboo.

Panic Attacks Manifest As Rapid Catastrophic Thoughts, Chaining Hypothetical Future Disasters

Panic attacks became another dimension of Choukalas’s experience, surfacing as frantic mental spirals: one anxious thought cascading into another, “an endless parade of problems borrowed from the future” that sometimes left him unable to stand. This rapid cycling of catastrophic “if this, then that” scenarios drained his energy and undercut his stability as a parent and partner.

Anger Toward Partners Arises When Hypervigilance Makes one See Their Spouse As an Obstacle To Controlling Perceived Dangers

Irritability escalates when a parent’s determination to control threats is thwarted, even inadvertently, by a partner. Kennedy points out that in this state, the spouse becomes a perceived obstacle—resulting in acute frustration and anger. For Choukalas, after l ...

Abandonment and Neglect Cause Anxiety and a Compulsive Need to Control

Stoic, Unexpressive Upbringing Teaches Children to Deny Trauma and Suppress Emotions As Strength

Christopher Choukalas describes an upbringing where stoicism, hard work, and a lack of emotional expression are rewarded. In such an environment, children learn to suppress emotions, deny trauma, and equate strength with emotional silence.

Parental Abandonment Instills a Belief That Emotional Vulnerability Is Weakness, Leading To Decades of Denial About the Emotional Wound

Choukalas shares that after his father’s abandonment, he convinced himself for decades that he was better off without him. He denied that the experience had any emotional impact, dismissing his pain and reinforcing the belief that vulnerability is a form of weakness. This denial persisted well into adulthood.

Parental Departure Leaves Child With Dormant Injury, Triggered In Adulthood

Choukalas explains that although his father left when he was around ten or twelve, he only acknowledged the emotional wound in his mid-forties, prompted by his own experiences as a parent and work in therapy. He calls parental abandonment a dormant injury that can remain unacknowledged for decades and become triggered later in life.

Childhood Survival Adaptations Can Become Liabilities in Adulthood

Anxiety as Childhood Alertness Becomes Pathological Hypervigilance, Creating False Threats and Preventing Presence With Loved Ones

Becky Kennedy highlights that what are labeled as symptoms or weaknesses in adulthood often began as necessary childhood adaptations. Choukalas notes that his anxiety, while an effective adaptation for childhood chaos, later mutated into pathological hypervigilance. This made him perceive threats and remain on alert, making it difficult to be present with his loved ones.

Compulsive Need to Control Variables, Developed In a Chaotic Childhood, Becomes Rigidity That Damages Relationships and Stifles Parenting Spontaneity

Choukalas describes his compulsive need to control his environment as a direct result of childhood experiences. As a parent, this manifested especially around routines like his children’s sleep, where he felt that if things weren’t perfectly controlled, he couldn’t breathe. Kennedy and Choukalas agree that this level of control, although once adaptive, becomes a weakness that can stifle sponta ...

Therapy Isn't Singular: Different Modalities Help Various People and Problems, yet This Distinction Is Rarely Communicated To Those Seeking Mental Health Support

Therapy is often misunderstood as a one-size-fits-all process, but, as Christopher Choukalas and Becky Kennedy discuss, there are many distinct modalities, each suited for different people and problems. Choukalas describes that, as a graduate student in psychology, he became aware of these differences and realized cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) would not be ideal for him because he was already too cerebral. Instead, he needed a therapist who could translate thoughts into emotions and help him process feelings—something that isn’t always clear from a therapist’s online profile or website.

Kennedy emphasizes how rarely these distinctions are communicated to people seeking help. She compares it to medical care: someone wouldn’t see a dermatologist for a condition requiring an oncologist, but in mental health, people often pick therapists blindly, unaware of the nuances between modalities like dynamic, CBT, internal family systems, and somatic therapies. These approaches differ in their principles and outcomes, but this information is often not visible to clients, leading them to view therapy as a black box. Both note it’s common for people to choose therapists without understanding what therapeutic approach they practice, which can result in mismatched expectations and the false belief that therapy as a whole is ineffective if the chosen approach doesn’t fit.

A Therapist's Warmth, Presence, and Ability to Create a Safe Space for Deep Emotions Are as Crucial as Their Modality

Choukalas and Kennedy stress that beyond picking a modality, the therapist’s personal qualities are equally vital. Choukalas shares an experience in which just minutes into a first phone call with a new therapist, he broke down in sobs, feeling unexpectedly safe to express deep emotions. This immediate sense of warmth and acceptance was a clear sign of compatibility.

For men who have been conditioned to view vulnerability as a weakness, having a therapist—especially a male therapist—who can model healthy, masculine vulnerability is especially important. The right therapist can help men access feelings and express themselves authentically without shame. Both hosts underscore that the initial session is usually revealing: if clients experience discomfort or a lack of fit, it’s better to seek a new provider than give up on therapy altogether. A therapist’s capacity to create a safe, welcoming environment for all emotions is as essent ...

Untreated paternal postpartum depression and anxiety have far-reaching effects, straining marriages, shaping parenting behaviors, and inhibiting crucial parent-child bonding.

Paternal Postpartum Depression: Control, Irritability, Withdrawal Threaten Partnership and Intimacy, Putting Marriage Under Siege

Paternal postpartum depression often manifests as a relentless need for control and order, seen in Christopher Choukalas’s insistence on regimented routines for his twin infants. He describes a constant focus on optimizing sleep schedules—feeding, changing, and returning home all governed by the ticking of the clock—to manage his own anxiety and find rare moments of physical relief. Choukalas admits that the only time he could breathe was when the children were asleep, and he needed certainty about their status. This led to friction with his wife, Lindsay, who resisted his rigid routines and refused to use a baby monitor, preferring spontaneous enjoyment and flexibility over strict scheduling.

Partner's Hypervigilance and Control Leads To Viewing Spouse's Different Parenting As Threats

This difference in approach became a source of mounting tension as Choukalas interpreted his wife’s relaxed attitude as threatening the carefully constructed order he depended on for emotional stability. Parenting disagreements—such as whether to let the children stay out longer or maintain a rigid schedule—were not merely logistical but represented deeper incompatibility in stress handling. For Lindsay, the joy of parenting was being drained by Choukalas’s inflexibility, turning what could have been pleasurable family moments into a series of anxiously choreographed tasks.

Joyless, Anxious Existence: Effects of Rigid Schedules on Parenting and Partnership

The accumulation of individually sensible steps for the children’s care became, in practice, a joyless and stressful experience for both parents. Even their rare outings were overshadowed by the pressure of timing every activity for the sake of routines. Kennedy notes this accumulation of anxious control saps the pleasure from parenthood, creating a household dynamic defined by stress rather than relief. This dynamic, Choukalas explains, led him to become irritable or withdrawn when his partner did not “play ball.” The rigid system, designed to manage anxiety, instead fueled marital distance, frustration, and sometimes resentment.

Parenting Conflicts Reveal Deeper Incompatibility in Stress and Uncertainty Handling, Highlighting Worldview and Values Disconnects

Kennedy points out that these conflicts exposed how each partner processed stress and uncertainty in fundamentally different ways—optimizing for different needs and values. For Choukalas, control created a sense of safety; for Lindsay, flexibility and enjoyment were more important. The inability to bridge these views led to an ongoing misalignment, undermining intimacy and partnership.

Parental Threat-Scanning Over Bonding Leaves Children Emotionally Unreciprocated

Extended periods of paternal hypervigilance and anxiety result in a parenting style rooted in threat-scanning rather than connection. Choukalas describes his physical state as being in hypervigilant scanning mode “all the time,” with his nervous system primed for protection rather than responsiveness to emotional bids from his partner or children.

Father's Nervous System in Protection Mode: Children's Affection and Connection Bids Go Unanswered as His Focus Is On Detecting Dangers Over Emotional Engagement

When a father’s attention is overwhelmingly dedicated to pre-empting dangers and controlling the environment, opportunities for reciprocity and emotional engagement are missed. The need for continuous reassurance and safety means tha ...

Therapy Enables Emotional Release and Acknowledgment of Hidden Pain

Christopher Choukalas describes the powerful release he experiences just moments into his first therapy call, openly sobbing and voicing, "this is terrible and I need to not feel this way." He reflects on how the therapeutic environment, especially with a male therapist, allows him to share "horrible, dark, awful things in the presence of another man without losing my masculinity." He likens this process to opening a pressure cooker, where years of suppressed emotion are finally released. The therapy room acts as a safe, non-judgmental space where the emotional floodgates open, and pain, often buried under anger and the need for control, comes pouring out. Choukalas admits it was not until he was in a crisis as a father himself, in therapy, that he could finally acknowledge how deeply childhood experiences had hurt him and that he had not moved past them. Becky Kennedy underscores this realization, describing the cruel irony of adulthood symptoms—like anger or being in constant threat mode—masking deep pain that only emerges in the security of therapeutic connection.

Self-Awareness Of Coping Mechanisms' Origins and Functions Is Essential for Change and Choice

Kennedy highlights a crucial aspect of healing: recognizing that many behaviors labeled as symptoms in adulthood were once adaptive responses during childhood. What once served to protect or regulate as a child can become maladaptive later in life. She emphasizes that it is not just an event, but how the event is processed in childhood, that leaves a lasting impact in the body and psyche. Therapy provides the space to unpack and reprocess these memories and adaptations. This self-awareness enables healing that moves beyond intellectual understanding, as clients like Choukalas start to see how their present ways of coping originated as responses to early fear or instability. Processing childhood events in therapy offers a pathway to move past survival strategies and choose healthier ways of relating.

Recovery Fundamentally Transforms a Person's Capacity to Show Up As a Parent and Partner Compared To the Crisis Period

Choukalas describes how his own healing journey and reduced anxiety have fundamentally transformed how he parents. He notes that, unlike his own parents who resorted to yelling, he now has the emotional bandwidth to choose calmer, more l ...