Whether you are just starting to explore fertility options, in the midst of treatment, or navigating the complex emotions of unsuccessful attempts, counselling can offer a safe and supportive space where you can express your feelings, fears, and hopes.
Experience of Infertility and Pregnancy Loss
Common experiences of infertility and reoccurring pregnancy loss include:
- feeling alone or isolated in your experience
- feeling overwhelmed by fertility treatments and decisions
- feelings of grief, overwhelming sadness or emptiness
- feelings of depression, including feeling physically weak, numb, unmotivated or thoughts of self-blame
- feelings of anxiety such as restlessness, muscle tension, racing thoughts or sleep disturbance
- feeling of anger at yourself, others, or the medical system
- difficulty relating to your partner, friends or family
Past dynamics such as history of emotional, physical or sexual trauma, experience with grief or other losses, family history and structure, and/or reproductive journey history can have an impact on whether infertility is traumatic or not. Additionally, sociodemographic characteristics such as ethnicity, income, sexual orientation, gender, geographic location, and medical care all shape the experience of infertility.
Infertility and Loss
For many, infertility entails a long road lined with financial strain, invasive medical treatments, mental health challenges and social isolation. The depth of loss might include:
Loss of self-esteem
Loss of sense of health and healthy body image
Loss of social status or financial security
Loss of important relationships (breaking off from friends and family who don’t understand)
Loss of joy in the relationship with your partner(s)
Loss of identity
Loss of sense of control
Loss of a dream
Loss of a pregnancy
Psychological Impact of Infertility
- treatment is invasive on parts of your body that may hold trauma and harm (nervous system response that can be triggering)
- fertility medications can cause mood symptoms
- sex life is impacted
- emotional impact on the couple
- commonly activates shame, guilt, anger, sadness and loss of control
- individuals/couples are asked to make long-term decisions right at the beginning of treatment which can feel overwhelming
- LGBTQ2SIA+ folks face barriers associated with heteronormative assumptions
Counselling Support for Infertility
Here is how I can help and what counselling might involve:
- identify and work through fears and triggers (such as medical examinations, family expectations or experiencing pain)
- develop tools to help you feel grounded, safe and calm during the fertility treatment
- explore feelings of sadness, anger, isolation, hopelessness, shame or guilt to help minimize symptoms of anxiety and depression
- develop a healthy relationship with your body
- process traumatic or disappointing fertility experiences
- discuss plan for disclosure of fertility treatments to friends and family
- check-in to see how you are coping after treatment cycles
- support you through processing loss (loss of imagined pregnancy, loss of relationships altered by infertility, loss of one’s ability to conceive, pregnancy loss, and so on)
Reach out if you need support. You do not need to experience this alone.
“I acknowledged and bowed down to my status of childless after child loss and decided I was no longer going to be held captive by it. I was no longer going to sit in the cold, stark white medical waiting room of the fertility clinic with my cycle-monitoring charts and my notion that I could control any of it. So I stopped. I stopped trying to be selected. I stopped banging my head against the wall trying for another pregnancy. Instead, I focused on nurturing and nourishing my childless self that so desperately need to be tended to.” – Arraial, N., The Pieces of Me and You; in Through, Not Around: Stories of Infertility and Pregnancy Loss by Allison McDonald Ace, Ariel Ng Bourbonnais, and Caroline Starr
