How to Ground Yourself Emotionally Throughout Your Fertility Journey
The road to starting a family can be long and complex, full of emotional highs and lows. When you are just starting to explore the world of fertility testing for women and fertility treatment options, everything can feel quite overwhelming. Preparing yourself to face the emotional challenges ahead is one of the many important steps along your fertility journey. This post will provide information on the emotional challenges you can expect during your in vitro fertilization treatment and offer strategies and tips for supporting your emotional well-being in a productive way.
The emotional toll – what to expect
The level of emotional stress during infertility treatments is unique to each person. It’s beneficial to be aware of the toll that IVF treatments can take on your mental health throughout the process. There are a range of aspects about in vitro fertilization that can cause significant stress: the time spent with infertility doctors prior to treatment, the nerves of waiting to hear if the embryo has successfully implanted, the financial aspects, and your body’s physical reaction to fertility support medications, just to name a few. While this can seem like a lot to handle, there are effective techniques that can help you with whatever stressors are specific to your IVF journey.
Managing stress
It is important to identify the factors that are causing stress for you, and to begin researching strategies to cope with them. While there is much debate about whether infertility can be caused by stress, studies have found that effective stress management has a positive impact on IVF success rates. Infertility specialists and doctors alike agree that getting a good night’s sleep is a great way to try and eliminate stress from the source. It is during sleep that our bodies rest, heal, and regulate our hormones, among many other important functions. Avoiding electronics before bed and developing a nighttime routine have been shown to reduce irritability and stress. Exercise has also proven to be effective in balancing one’s mood, so treatment-safe exercise like going for moderate walks, or light yoga, is another great way to manage stress levels. Better sleep routines and a light exercise regimen are great first steps in managing your IVF-related stress.
Utilize your support network
Your social support network can be an excellent resource for navigating many of life’s challenges, including infertility treatments. Your social connections are a reminder that you’re not alone and have people in your life who care for you. Research has shown that having social support in your life can help to minimize stress. Talking to friends or loved ones about the stress of IVF treatment and the complex emotions you are feeling may seem like an overly simplistic solution, but sometimes the affirmation that your feelings are valid, and that you are cared for can be fulfilling.
Self-care
Caring for yourself and recognizing there may be bumps along the road of your infertility treatment is very important. You’re putting a lot of pressure on yourself and your body during IVF treatment, so remembering to give yourself a break and be kind is of the utmost importance. Don’t be afraid to reach out for help if you need it, and listen to your body’s needs for rest and nourishment. Even fertility doctors and fertility specialists will tell you that taking a breather and focusing on the little things is one of the most effective ways to relieve stress.
Mindfulness and meditation
Grounding yourself during the stress of your IVF treatments is crucial to your mental wellbeing. If you’ve never tried practicing mindfulness and meditation before, it can feel daunting. The good news is there’s a range of apps that will help guide you through the process. MindfulIVF is a useful app designed to help those going through in-vitro fertilization improve their mental health and feel more relaxed. The Headspace app also offers a range of guided meditations and tips to help you relax from the stress of infertility treatments. You might also give the following podcasts a listen:
Gratitude
It can be hard to remember to feel grateful when you’re exhausted by stress, but it is an effective way to quickly re-ground yourself. Thinking about the positive aspects of your day to day life, and writing them down can help to brighten your perspective, and allow you to appreciate the beauty and joy that fertility treatment can bring into your life.
Journaling
Journaling can be an effective tool to work through any strong emotions that you may be feeling throughout your infertility treatments. Recognizing that you’re experiencing intense or unpleasant emotions and then writing them down helps you become more aware of those feelings and better able to process them. If there are aspects of your infertility treatments you find are too overwhelming to discuss with someone, writing them down is a helpful way to articulate and process negative thoughts.
Treat yourself
When taking care of yourself, it is important to identify your needs and what you value most. By noting this, you can integrate self-care into your infertility treatment journey more effectively. This needs-based identification can help to relieve stress because it helps you seek out solutions that satisfy what you value.
You can dedicate yourself to weekly self-care practice by focusing on something that is meaningful to you. This can be as simple as treating yourself to a nice meal, or as involved as taking a course to learn and develop skills or committing to an elaborate and luxurious skincare routine.
Setting aside that time for yourself can help you to feel more in control of your life, and better manage the stress of infertility treatments.
Set boundaries
Your IVF treatment is a personal journey and not something you’re obligated to discuss with all of your friends and family. No one is entitled to your IVF treatment journey, and setting boundaries with regards to what aspects you will discuss with others is a great way to feel more in control and reduce the stress of feeling like you owe others an explanation. Your infertility specialist is one person you should feel comfortable being open with.
It is important to not let your in vitro fertilization treatment or others’ invasive questions surrounding infertility in women, take over every aspect of your life.
Avoid self-blame
There is a lot of uncertainty and stress that accompanies fertility support. An important step in reducing your mental load is learning to recognize the negative thoughts you have about yourself and to reframe them. The RAIN technique can be used to accomplish this:
- Recognize the emotion and pay attention to it without judgement.
- Accept that this is your present reality.
- Investigate how you feel with self-compassion.
- Non-identification, which comes from addressing these thoughts without judgement.
This strategy can help with balancing the negative feelings of stress and uncertainty that can arise from infertility in women and their various fertility treatment options.
Seek out counselling & support
There are a lot of benefits to seeking out additional psychological support during your IVF journey. Patients with infertility or who are undergoing fertility treatment frequently report that their mental health is negatively impacted. It’s for this reason that infertility counselling is a growing field in psychology. Working with someone who knows and understands what you are going through can help you explore and unpack what you’re feeling in a safe space. Your doctor or fertility specialist may be able to refer you to someone. Likewise, you can use this tool on the ASRM website to look up healthcare professionals in your area.
You can also find in-person support groups to connect you with people in your area who have similar experiences. Resolve.org makes finding a support group in your area easier, but you can also ask your fertility clinic for recommendations.
Seek out blogs and online communities
Reading about the difficulties others have gone through during their IVF treatment can help to normalize your own struggles. It can be easy to hyper-fixate on stressors, but reading about other people who have lived through a similar experience to yours, and how they learned to cope, can be validating, and in some cases provide you with more hope. There are many blogs and books available that discuss fertility treatment options, the common nature of infertility in women, and the issues that can accompany this.
Infertility in women is more common than you might expect and knowing that there are others who are managing similar challenges can make you feel less alone in your experience. Start by choosing one of the above strategies to focus on, and you can always build from there. There are many ways to get the support you need, no matter how much your infertility treatments are affecting you mentally and physically.
