05 Feb Does the word ‘Fertility’ strike a chord?
Fertility … a word that strikes a chord with a growing number of women and couples these days. It’s a word that triggers anxiety on many different levels, everyone (women and men) needing to learn more about their own fertility, often reluctantly, will experience a whole range of emotions. Some of these seem rational, others totally irrational.
Of course Covid has compounded the anxiety with lockdowns making treatment less accessible, cut off dates and age limits loom as Covid marches on, turning our lives, hopes and expectations upside down.
We’re humans and it’s a natural desire to reproduce and create a family. When this doesn’t happen naturally and easily it feels like a failure, unfair, wrong – people feel like a failure when they don’t ‘fit’ into what society, even in modern times, still expects as the natural progression. The resulting stress creates more stress and an ongoing negative cycle.
When we’re stressed our body goes into flight/flight mode and anything that is not essential is put on hold … that can including conception until it feels ‘safe’ enough to have a baby.
Relaxation, calm and a positive mindset will help the body create an optimum environment for conception, ready to focus on baby and not dealing with external threats and ‘danger’. Easier said than done – each time an unwanted period starts, another month passes, more doubt and anxieties are created and stress levels increase hugely.
It’s not just the anxiety. There are so many emotions that surface. Women/couples feel alone and left out when they see friends, family and peers producing baby after baby easily. They understandably feel angry – ‘why me/us’ and jealous of others success. They often can’t share their own emotions and, if they do, people make upsetting comments (unwittingly).
Overwhelmed by the choices, decisions and the money that is needed to explore all options to conceive. Resentful that others have the freedom to spend their money on nice things – holidays, homes … and their young family.
For women who haven’t met their perfect partner or choose to remain single there is the double issue of their biological clock ticking and, often, disapproval or concern from friends and family around them.
It’s vital to create a strong support network of trusted connections – think carefully about who to tell, who can offer what kind of support and who should perhaps not get the full story in case they add to your stress with their comments, suggestions or own emotions.
If you’re working – we share our lives these days but fertility is a very personal journey, often kept quiet. However, it can help for someone at work to know what you’re going through. It may not be a direct colleague or your boss, perhaps someone in HR is the one but having someone who understands why you need regular appointments, who can cover for you and put in a supporting word for you can help. That doesn’t mean you need to discuss every detail with them, simply knowing someone else knows can make you feel less alone.
Top Tips for the best chance of success / for a positive mindset
****(I’ve not pushed hypnotherapy as the first thing to do but let me know, happy to change the list around and also make hypno more important)
- 1) Develop awareness of your feelings and acknowledge that they are simply emotions and not something ‘concrete’. Choose a short, daily routine to create a positive mindset with eg:
- a. Breathing – long, slow (not deep), continual breathing will calm your nervous system down and relax your mind and body.
- b. Connect to nature – go outside for 10-15mins, whatever the weather, walk slowly while observing and focussing on small details of nature.
- c. Short, positive visualisation and positive affirmations – while eg in the shower, when going to sleep and post the affirmations around the house or ask someone to message them to you regularly.
- d. Physical exercise (not too strenuous), yoga, pilates – find someone who knows about fertility/pregnancy to best support you
- 2) Address your negative feelings – anger, jealousy, anxiety, loneliness, guilt, inadequacy, fears, etc – use visualisation to let go of negative associations/triggers, work with a hypnotherapist to release deeper emotions that are affecting your wellbeing
- 3) Harness and use the power of your mind – remember, worries are only negative emotions attached to thoughts , so transforming a worry into a factual thought, and better still, releasing it, will clear your mind and allow you to move forward more freely and positively.
- 4) Stay in the moment – train your mind to focus on today, find positives in your day, don’t allow your mind run weeks, months, years ahead to ‘what if …’ scenarios. Hypnotherapy is very effective for this.
- 5) Release stress at a subconscious level, consciously choose how to respond to information and situations – a positive mindset is key
- 6) Choose a few, select people to share your journey with. Remember, your closest friends/family may not be best suited to this support
- 7) Avoid constant googling and online fertility groups – be mindful of what is useful and what is creating additional pressure or stress. Someone else’s path is not your path, whether their out come is successful or not
- 8) Remember, we like to be right so our mind looks for confirmation that we are ‘right’. Fill your mind with positives, it will look for proof of the positives rather than letting it focus on the negatives.
- 9) Don’t put life on hold for baby – continue with plans, career promotions, travel (when possible!). Babies are regularly conceived when least expected, when the focus is elsewhere and the parents are relaxed
ZCA Hypnotherapy for Fertility page
****This is on the ZCA fertility page – can you incorporate some of this? I’ve made the ‘Hypno for Fertility’ part less personal as I think it may sound less as though we’re pushing ZCA if not talking about ‘our treatments’ or ‘Kristin’. Of course happy to revert to the original, more personal text!****
If you’re receiving fertility treatment or perhaps just starting to investigate why you and a partner are struggling to conceive, you’ll know just how distressing and traumatic it can be. The impact of not being able to create the small life you long for can be extensive and goes far beyond the biological and physiological questions and concerns you’ll have. There’s also the emotional and mental anguish of coming to terms with infertility.
Many people experience anger and guilt towards partners, family or friends, stress in trying to juggle a demanding job with home life whilst managing the rigid constraints of fertility tests and treatment and, for some, the anxiety that comes from wanting to hide their fertility problems from others.
Although fertility is usually perceived as a purely medical issue the mind and body are intrinsically linked and enough anecdotal material exists to suggest that psychological issues are, in some cases, a contributing factor to fertility issues.
If you have been diagnosed with medical infertility then it’s vital that you continue to follow the advice of, and treatment recommended by, your medical practitioner. However, if no medical reason has been diagnosed for your fertility issue then the obstacles may be psychological rather than physical. In both cases hypnotherapy will support a couple – making treatment easier, with greater chance of success and creating the optimum environment for natural conception too.
The subconscious mind can play a vital role in either assisting or resisting conception and because the subconscious mind doesn’t understand or work to linear time, it can take a while for it to synchronise with your psychological or emotional state.
For example, many women spend much of their younger lives actively trying not to get pregnant. When that changes, and pregnancy becomes a goal, the subconscious mind, for so long conditioned to avoidance, can need time to play catch-up.
But there are often also additional subconscious conflicts that need to be resolved before conceiving, which is why our Hypnotherapy for Fertility sessions are so beneficial – especially as it’s estimated that up to 17% of couples will suffer from psychogenic infertility.
How Hypnotherapy for Fertility issues can help
Hypnotherapy is a gentle, natural and safe therapy which, combined with various self-help techniques, can help in many different ways.
It enables you, together with your therapist, to explore possible reasons that may lie behind the issues you’re experiencing. There are proven techniques that will enable you to release stress, reframe beliefs and create a positive approach to your preparation for a baby.
Many women have negative beliefs regarding pregnancy and birth, in many cases carried from childhood and where this is the case, we work to replace those beliefs with a more positive view of conception and birth using suggestions and visualisations that are often rejected at a conscious level.
It’s important to clear teenage fears about pregnancy and where appropriate resolve emotional issues and events from the past, such as terminations or miscarriages.
Treatments also use hypnotic suggestion to prepare and optimise the body for pregnancy, teaching relaxation techniques to support conception. Working on self-esteem and confidence to maintain positivity and to create a ‘receptive’ state for conception is vital.
Powerful physical and mental changes can occur after only a few sessions as you reduce stress, giving you the freedom to focus on what is positive – something that’s particularly beneficial for unexplained infertility.
This can also increase the chances of successful IVF, IUI or other treatment. Hypnotherapy has helped many couples undergoing fertility treatment, some who have quickly become pregnant, others who are still on their journey. Couples benefit in different ways but perhaps the best is that they can learn how to love life again, often with wonderful results.
Hypnosis is a powerful tool in aiding fertility and the overall purpose of the hypnotherapy for fertility treatment we offer if to align the conscious and subconscious, ready for conception.