Welcome to IVF This, episode 118, Parenting Yourself Through IVF. 

Hello, hello, my beautiful bread. I hope you are all doing so, so well today. We are already in the heat of the summer here in Austin. It is oppressively hot. We've already been in the hundreds. for the last few days and there's not really a projection for us to get much lower than like 95. So say prayers for me because I'm not the most emotionally stable person when I'm super hot. 

I don't understand people who love summer down here in Texas because it is just so oppressive, but I think I complain about it every single year and I have no resolution to not complain about it. So congratulations to all my IVF’ers. You get to hear me bitch about it every single summer. 

I wanted to remind everyone before we get started on this episode that I'm really excited about. I think it's going to be a nice little reframe for everyone. And it's essentially another aspect or avenue of what we already talk about on this podcast. So I'm excited to bring it to you. 

But first I wanted to mention that I've taken the consultation calls and the free mini session because I kind of get both. I have had both on my calendar for years and years and years. And  I find that when I do either or, there's like an amalgamation of both or a combination of both. So it's like, we'll do a consultation which really shouldn't involve any coaching or at least how it's taught by other business coaches or whatever, that you shouldn't really do coaching on consultation calls, but I end up coaching on consultation calls. And then, you know, per the coaching business, you really shouldn't do a sales pitch on a mini session. 

And I don't always, just depending, I always wanna see where the other person is, but I find I do a combination of both. So I have rebranded the consultation slash mini session call to be a “Take Back Your Life” call. So it's 50 minutes and we get to do whatever you wanna do. If you wanna ask me questions, if you wanna get coaching, if you wanna just straight jump into what it would be like to work together, we can do all of that, a combination of that, only that on that call. 

So. That's what you're gonna find now in either my social media bios or on my website, which is www.ivfthiscoaching.com or my social media is at ivfthiscoaching.com, both for Instagram and Facebook. That's what you're going to see a take back your life call. That's what we're doing. All right. I don't give a shit what other coaches do. I don't care what business coaches tell me I need to be doing. This is what works for my community, for us. So that's what we're doing. So it's going to be take back your life, 50 minutes, your time. 

We do it. Whatever we want to at that time, whatever you want to do at that time, it is your 50 minutes to ask me questions, coach, all that stuff, okay? So that's the first thing I wanted to mention. 

Now, before I get started, I do understand that the title of this episode could be triggering for some people. I want you to know that I'm not gonna be talking about parenting children. I know it's in the title, Parent Yourself Through IVF, but I also know the sticky wicket of the word parent, okay? So if you're not quite ready to listen to this episode, even though it's not gonna have anything to do with babies, this is all about you as a person and... finding fulfillment, nourishment, all those things with you. If you're not ready to listen to this episode, that's okay. You're not gonna hurt my feelings. We got 117 other episodes, plus some greatest hit rewinds, bonus material. We've got plenty of stuff for you to listen to right now. If the title or the idea of what could be discussed in this podcast is too much for you, that's okay. I still love you. It's not a problem. Just move on, okay? 

I do wanna lay. the thickest foundation for this podcast episode, okay? This podcast episode, when we talk about reparenting or parenting yourself, when I talk about it, I want you to know that this is never about taking a dig at or disrespecting your parents, your caregivers, the people that raised you. That's not what parenting yourself or reparenting yourself is all about, right? 

I think what we forget a lot about parents, because we see them in a role, like our caregivers or the people that raised us, we see them in a very specific role. And I think that we forget that they're humans. They are messy and complicated and they have their own garbage just like we do. And sometimes I think that we forget that. I think that we forget their humanness. And so it can be very easy when we're talking about parenting ourselves or re-parenting ourselves, however you want to phrase it. that it's almost a sign to them that they have done something wrong or an affirmation to us that they have done something wrong. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about people who are already going through their own stuff and trying to guide tiny creatures through this world, right? 

It's gonna be the same for you or it's the same for other people who have children. Like it's all the same. We're all messy, complicated creatures. And so I wanna make sure that This podcast is about how to love and care for yourself throughout the process. 

This isn't about finding absolution or clarity or understanding that the people who raised you did something wrong, right? This is about the understanding, the basic principle of parenting yourself is that you now as a grown adult can have a better understanding and a better awareness around your needs and how to take care of yourself. and how to communicate with yourself and how to nourish yourself more than anyone else. 

When you are being parented, you are doing so through their lens. They are viewing you and their expectations and their standards through their own lens, based on their own beliefs and their own biases and their own judgments and their own preferences. That's not a problem. I'm not speaking specifically about abuse or neglect, right? Those are the extremes. We're talking about like right in the middle, okay? But I think that it's really important to understand that as an adult, you now have the responsibility to take care of yourself and to learn what that means and to learn how to care and nourish yourself. And that's what we're gonna be talking about, okay? 

I think the reason that we're never taught specifically by our caregivers, about our feelings, and about emotions, and how to validate ourselves, or how to validate our own experiences, or anything like that, is because they were not taught that, right? There is not a high level of emotional accountability, which means emotional accountability is, I can take responsibility for my actions, right? My emotions are my responsibility. You said something, or you did something, and I had a feeling, a thought about it. that feeling and that thought, while it was a kind of a result of what happened or what you said to me or whatever, those are my responsibilities.

 I say this a lot to the people in my lives because I have a lot of big feelings, right? My feelings, my big feelings are not your fault, but I am having big feelings, right? It's the understanding that like, I am allowed to have my feelings. My feelings are never wrong. Right, there's always a reason. They always make sense when they appear. The question is, am I gonna make them someone else's fault? The question is, am I gonna make them someone else's problem, or am I gonna take responsibility for them, right?

 So parenting yourself in many ways is about a fundamental emotional accountability. So that's what we wanna make sure is the groundwork for what we're laying. Your emotions and your thoughts will always be the only two things that you can control. The other one thing that you can control, right, there's three things total, how you think, how you feel, and what you do, right? 

Taking emotional accountability and saying that I own my emotions, I own my thoughts. Also, you have to be responsible for your actions. You have to be accountable for your actions. So that's all part of this, right? That is part of reparenting. When we take responsibility, when we take accountability, the thing that we wanna do is learn how we're gonna talk to ourselves. The thing that we're gonna do is learn how to talk to ourselves. It is not gonna do any good. It is not going to serve you to begin the process of taking emotional accountability if you are still going to be a jerk to yourself at the other side. It is all the things altogether, all at once. Okay? 

So when we get really good at taking responsibility for ourself, when we get really good at taking accountability for our thoughts and our feelings and what we do with them, our actions, the other side of that coin is how are you gonna compassionately and gracefully accept and allow those feelings to be there and not be a jerk to yourself? That's the whole thing. Because what happens is when we are a jerk to ourselves, the whole cycle starts over. And most of the time, I think it's really understated is the best word I can think of. It's understated the idea that the words that we say to ourselves are somehow our own words. 

You were not born thinking of yourself as an idiot, as a loser, as a piece of crap, as whatever label that you put yourself on, right? Like, I had a client who talked a lot about how I'm a jealous person, I'm a mean person, I can be a cruel person. You can't be, those are emotions that you're experiencing, right? Those are things that you're doing. If you believe that you're being cruel, that's still an action. It's not a judgment on your personality or your character, right? From a very hurt place, you are reacting cruelly to people, things, whatever. You're not a jealous person. You are a person experiencing jealousy, and that's not a bad thing. It's a normal human emotion. It's a normal human experience. 

So when you're taking accountability for yourself, you're saying, I can understand. I can accept that right now I'm thinking thoughts that are creating a feeling of jealousy for me. I'm not a bad person. I'm a person who wants something very badly. And from that place of hurt, that jealousy is coming up. Those thoughts are created and that feeling, I'm just coursing through my body right now, right? I've done nothing wrong. 

So that is the, if you hear anything from this podcast episode, I want you to hear that. You are not bad, you are not wrong, there's nothing wrong with you. You're a person experiencing enormous emotional, psychological, financial, logistical. pressure. Okay? Now there's nothing wrong with you. 

So I've got three ways that you're going to learn how to parent yourself through this process. And these three ways are, we talk about it within the context of IVF. These three things can be used within the context of anything. Work, relationships, whatever, right? 

So we can still love and appreciate. people in our lives who maybe have not treated us the way we had hoped to be treated or the way that we deserve to be treated and decide we're going to do something different. Okay? 

So the first step is number one, focus on the repair. 

When I was working on my master's degree in social work, my concentration was children and family studies, right? Within social work. 

And so what we talk about with authoritative parenting, a parenting style, some people might know it as gentle parenting, the crux of it is it's authoritative parenting. And the idea is that when you are so dysregulated, When you are screaming at the top of your lungs, when you're having a tantrum, when you are so unable, when the emotion is overcoming you so powerfully, that you cannot almost control yourself, you almost can't help yourself, then what you do is you focus on the repair. 

So again, relationships. This is relationship 101. I do this a lot. I have been working for many, many years to become a less reactive person. because I have a tendency to be emotionally reactive. My ADHD, and ADHD in general, speaks a lot to emotional dysregulation, lack of emotional inhibition, things like that. So for neurodivergent people, it is you are very likely emotionally reactive, okay? 

So one of the things that I focus on is when I snap at my husband, he'll say something like, ooh, coming in hot, or something like that. And that's a little bit of a funny cue for me. And then instead of doubling down on my anger, instead of doubling down on whatever emotion I was experiencing, I focus on the repair. I can't take back the words. I can't take back what I did, but I can take ownership of it. I'm really, I'm sorry. I should not have said that the way that I did. I was having a big feeling. and I'm sorry that I took that big feeling out on you. I'm sorry that I made my feelings your problem. That's what focusing on the repair is. 

So when we're talking about parenting yourself, focusing on the repair looks a lot like when you go searching down Dr. Google, right? You heard about a new thing on maybe one of the Facebook groups, and you're like, oh, I gotta research that. Or the doctor tells you something that they're gonna try next round, or that they've been thinking about trying next round. And you're like, I gotta go research that into oblivion. And it gets to a point where your past research, your past information gathering, and you're trying to find certainty, right? Usually that, it's a very thin line, but usually you know you've fallen off the cliff when you are kind of obsessing about it. It's the first thing you wanna look up at the beginning of the day, or you're spending hours upon hours at night when you should be sleeping or resting or whatever. when you're trying to research that, when you're trying to find more information. Maybe you've gone past journal articles and now you're looking for anecdotal information, right? You're searching Reddit or YouTube for other people who've experienced this, right? And you leave feeling worse than when you started. That's usually the point where we start to bully ourselves. What the hell's wrong with me? Why can't I just let this go? This doesn't even feel good anymore. What are you even doing here? That's the point where you're like, you know what? I know I was looking for something I'm not gonna find on Reddit or YouTube or in the Facebook groups or or crowdsourcing information. I'm not gonna find it. I'm not gonna find it there. It's something that I'm looking for in here. I'm chasing a feeling. That's very normal. I'm very scared. This is what scared feels like. Allow yourself to kind of narrate that, right? I can feel my heart pumping, it's palpitating. Maybe I'm a little bit sweaty. I have butterflies or a lead ball in my stomach, right? Give yourself the opportunity to acknowledge that emotion. Right? Fear is driving me. Urgency is driving me. And that's okay. It's human. Nothing has gone wrong here. I'm okay. Right? That is focusing on the repair. That is allowing yourself to experience all the things that you want to experience. You want to be able to open up and allow all of the feelings. Because if we can... That is like the most beautiful assurance to yourself that you can handle whatever is going to happen. If you're on board for all of the feelings, there's nothing you won't be able to navigate. Not that it's not gonna be hard, not that it's not gonna be painful, but it's not gonna kill you. Okay? All right. 

Number two, tell yourselves the things that you wish you could hear. So, I'm in the beta launch for my group program. We have a fantastic group of six women. These women are just so phenomenally invested in learning as well as building the community that I am trying to build through the group coaching program, the container that I'm offering, right? And a lot of what we have been talking about these first few weeks, right? 

It's all about creating awareness, learning the think, feel, do cycle, learning how to do those things for yourself so that you can coach yourself through anything. And one of the women came and she was talking about how, you know, she's wanting to hear information, she's wanting to hear specific things from her mother or family members, right? Wants to hear that level of support, like, oh yes, I see why you would do this, I see why you want to do this. This has to be tremendously difficult for you. What a very hard thing to try to decide to do and move forward. I'm very proud of you. These are the things that she is craving from the people that she loves. Understandably so. That is that connection is such a basic human need that we want. That's not a problem. It becomes a problem when the people who you're looking for To say that to you, don't deliver, and you make that mean something about them or your relationship with them. That's where it gets sticky. That's where it gets painful. So if there is something that you are wanting to hear from someone else, I want you to offer that to yourself. 

“Man, this is a really hard decision for us to make. God, this isn't the decision we wanted to make. This isn't the route we wanted to go. We're here now, and I'm really proud of you. I'm really impressed with how much you're willing to take on in pursuit of this. I'm so just awestruck by how amazing you are.” Anything that you wanna hear from someone else, I want you to offer that to yourself. 

Okay, and the last thing. The last way that we can reparent ourselves or parent ourselves is that we can ask for help. All creatures that live in this world, all animals, are born with the one thing that they need for survival. So a giraffe is born with the ability to run. A snake is born with the ability to bite. Humans are born with the ability to scream, to ask for help, okay? From yourself. Ask for help from yourself. What is the, this is my favorite question of all time. What is the most loving thing I can do for myself right now? If you stop and pause and ask yourself that question, you're gonna find a, just a drove of information that your brain is gonna offer you, okay? 

Whether it's to rest, go out and do something physical to burn off some of the adrenaline and cortisol, right? To take a few moments, put in your, you know, air pods and listen to brown noise. That's actually what I do when I feel very overstimulated. I don't listen to anything but like white noise or brown noise or something like that. What's the most loving thing that I can do for myself? 

You can also ask for help from others, right? You know, I need support in this. Tell them what you want them to say. It doesn't make it disingenuous if they say it. You're just telling them, you're giving them your playbook instead of requesting that they read your mind based on your own needs. They don't have that ability. The people that we love, I truly do believe, want to support us in the best way possible. They often just don't know how. So if you tell them, I really need support right now, what do you need support with? Right, I'm pretending to be a two-party conversation. What do you need support with? I'm just, I feel like I'm going back and forth on this decision. I know this decision is the right decision for me and for our family, but I'm just, I keep just going back and forth, right? God, that's gotta be really hard. Right? I want you to tell them, I need support with this. I need just confirmation that I'm not a terrible person. Confirmation that I can be making the right decision. That I'm not selfish or whatever it is that you're telling yourself that you are because you're kind of churning that over and over. I want you to offer that to yourself. 

These three things, these three fundamental things, this is the stuff that we talk about every single week on this podcast. And there's a reason. Repetition is the way that we learn. So when we talk about parenting ourselves or how to care for ourselves, how to nourish ourselves, whatever verbiage works for you that makes the most sense, that resonates the most, it is no bother of mine. Whatever you choose that works and serves you, that's what I want you to focus on. But it's always gonna be around repairing that relationship with yourself. telling yourself the things that you wish you could hear from other people and asking for help from the people that you know, love and want to support you. And that my friend, that is the thing. That's the thing that's going to make this process just a little bit easier for you. And that is what I have for you this week. I hope you have a beautiful week and I'll talk to you soon.