Welcome to IVF This, Episode 152 IVF and Learning to Receive

Hello, hello, hello my beautiful friends. I hope you are all doing so, so well. I’ve got a lot of stuff to go through today so I’m just gonna get straight to it. 

I was talking to two different women, 1) is an existing client of mine and the 2) was a potential client of mine. And what about my interactions with them spawned this podcast topic.

So we’re going to talk about why it is a problem if we don't learn to receive in infertility. We’re going to talk about what we might be feeling that makes it so hard to receive in infertility. And then we’re going to talk about why we’re feeling that way in the first place. And then towards the end I’m going to give you three things you can actually do to increase your ability to receive even during infertility. 

First things first- I don’t think anyone “needs” a coach. You can take what I talk about on the podcast, the self-help section of a library, bookstore, or audible and piece meal it together. I think you can get where you want to be FASTER, with a coach, but we are not a “need. “ And I don’t ever want anybody to think that they need it because then you miss what you actually already have. You miss what’s actually already inside of you. 

And what I believe is that you have everything you need inside of you. That you’re fully capable. You can read all the self-help, infertility, grief/ loss books. You can listen to all the self-help podcasts. You can get all the support that you want to get, you have access to that. So anybody who tells you that they need a coach in my opinion is a little suspect. But when I received emails from two different women that I had met with, and they were very motivated and excited to work with me- both of them states that said, to me those emails spoke to a bigger problem that is worth talking about which is our ability to receive. I think that receiving during infertility, our ability to receive is so important for a few reasons. 

Second, the financial considerations of IVF cannot be overstated

I sent over $70K in pursuit of my family. There are very real considerations that people need to consider when looking into IVF and that I am completely respectful of for people who want to work with me. 

So the two women I mentioned, first is a current client of mine. We were talking about her feeling a bit trapped when trying to make a decision about whether or not to go out of town on a girls trip. It was going to be out of state, like a long weekend where she would have to fly out. With a group of friends that she hasn’t seen in a few years and loves dearly. And just the cost of it and feeling like she needs to put EVERY DIME towards her upcoming IVF cycle. So a few highlights that we discussed- 1) what does her partner do to participate in the savings? 2) Would the money place her in financial hardship? 3) would the money used for the trip take away money for IVF and the answer was all no. well, more detail about her husbands savings practice but the other answers were no. So why wouldn’t she give herself the gift of community and experience? When even her husband was strongly encouraging her to go? Spoiler alert, it’s tried to receiving. 

The other story about a potential new client, with vey similar theme. Her reasoning for not doing coaching was that she didn’t think she “needed” it- which, I want you to refer to what I said at the opening about no one needing it, but also that she didn’t want to “take up a spot, where soeone else could benefit.” Now they aren’t going to get to receive all of the goodness, all of the growth, all the perspective, all the tools, all the life changing stuff that I know my coaching offers and it breaks my heart because where else are they doing it? What else are they not letting themselves have? Where else could it be better than it is, but they're telling themselves someone else needs it more than they do and now they miss out. 

When we don’t know how to receive, or we never learn- then we stay stuck. Wherever we are stuck- personal, professional, relational, financial- all the al’s

We stay stuck. Remember when I’ve said that your brain will always choose a familiar hell over an unfamiliar heaven- a lot of that is tied to receiving. It's my honest opinion that if we don't learn to receive during infertility/ IVF we will block ourselves from loving life again. 

I remember a therapist one time, I was training under her and she was talking to a client- I won’t talk about the specifics but she told them, “It’s like you’re the frog in the boiling water. When you jumped in that water it was room temperature and then the heat got turned up slowly and gradually over time and you didn’t ever jump out because it happened so slowly, so gradually. You didn’t notice that it was happening.” But it’s that, it's that we don't even realize because, yes, it’s familiar, and maybe it’s so much better. Or it’s just that it’s familiar, and so it feels safer or more comfortable- even if we’re miserable. 

Maybe, Where we are is so much better than where we were in early stages of infertility or even when we were younger and we were going through something else, that our frame of reference is now focused on how awful it used to be and it’s not so awful anymore. But we don’t look forward and see how good it could be if we develop the skill of receiving. And I also think that our relationships can suffer if we don’t learn to receive. There are people out there who want to support us. There are connections that we have that we value. And when we aren’t willing to accept help from those people, they don’t get the chance to feel good about giving, we shut them out. And I don’t know about you but for me, I want to keep the people who love me close. I value those relationships. And if they want to give, I want to give them the opportunity to give and I want to be able to receive, but it's not always so easy for us, which is why I’m doing this podcast episode. 

So let’s talk about what might be making it hard for you. I’m going to give you a whole list of reasons that it might be hard for you. And even if only one of them applies, this is worth working on. Maybe you will relate to more than one, but even if only one of them applies, stay until the end and listen to the three things that I’m going to tell you that you can do. So here’s why it might be really hard for you to receive during infertility and IVF.

 A lot of us are very afraid of vulnerability. We do not want to appear weak. We do not want to appear fragile. We want people to think we are strong. We have some ideas around vulnerability and it being bad. Now, I believe, I’m a big fan of Brené Brown. I don’t know if you all know Brené’s work. But I am a big fan of Brené, she is a vulnerability researcher and shame researcher and many other things. But I believe being vulnerable is a sign of strength. Being vulnerable, feeling scared and doing something anyway, softening when we feel fear, man, that’s hard. 

That’s a sign of a strong person when we’re willing to be vulnerable but most of us weren’t taught that. So of course, if we think that accepting help, receiving is going to make us appear weak or fragile. We don’t want that. And maybe we pride ourselves on being independent, self-sufficient, which makes it really hard to accept help from others. Some of us really worry about burdening other people. We don’t want to burden people that offer us help and then we tell ourselves I don’t want to be a burden. Yet, they’re offering us help. 

And we’re denying them the chance to help, or we make ourselves feel guilty for even wanting the help. I should be able to do it. And I made myself feel terrible when I struggled to handle something because of my thoughts that I should be able to handle it. And I made myself feel guilty about that and a lot of us are doing it. Some of us have trust issues, maybe you do too. We have issues trusting others. 

Maybe you had a support network that wasn't there for you in the way that you wanted them to be or maybe somebody burned you earlier in life, even before your loss. Maybe you’re suspect of someone's motivations. And so it’s hard for you to receive because it's hard for you to trust. That’s a skill too that we can learn. And I will just tell you, I should probably do a podcast episode on this. 

You don’t need to learn to trust other people as much as you need to learn to trust yourself to navigate whatever happens that other people might do. Some of us find it difficult to receive because we’re worried about being judged by others. We’re worried that other people will criticize us, they’ll tell us, “Well, she's not handling her “situation” well. Or she doesn’t have it all together. She’s not doing as well as I thought she would be doing. 

So we worry that if they offer help and we accept it that they will be criticizing us and we think that's a problem, their criticism. By the way, it's not. Other people's criticism is not a problem for us. What we tell ourselves when other people criticize us is a problem for us, but other people's criticism is not the problem we tend to think it is. Maybe for you it's a stigma that you grew up with. Maybe there’s a stigma attached to what it means to ask for help or get support especially as it relates to mental health. 

A lot of us, we didn’t choose it on purpose, but have a stigma about asking for help, what it means. Maybe you identify as a control freak. Maybe you identify as somebody who really doesn't want to let go of control, who really wants to try to keep it all together. Maybe it feels scary to change. Maybe if you accept help from someone and you worry that the dynamic of that relationship might shift and then you'll owe them and so that feels hard. 

I’m thinking of one of my clients, I won’t say her name but I’m thinking of one of my clients and I know because we’ve coached on it so many times, just it’s come up in different places for her that all these people in her world keep offering her the opportunity to get help. I mean they're offering to come to her house and to bring her food and get her a weekend out or a night out. And it’s really hard to accept for her because she makes it mean so many things. 

Her brain makes it mean so many things that she shouldn't. She should never take a break. She should put everything related to IVF first. She should be able to handle it. That it’s greedy, that it’s selfish, all of these judgments. So if you are struggling to receive, what I want you to hear is that there could be a lot of reasons, you're not alone and it makes sense. So let’s talk about why it makes sense. 

How did all of these reasons get into your brain in the first place? Don’t you ever wonder that? Why do I feel guilty when I think about putting myself higher on the list? Why do I feel uncomfortable when I think about other people offering to help and burdening them? Why do I tell myself that I should be able to handle it? And here are some reasons, see what ones relate to you. 

First of all, and it’s all socialization, it’s all social conditioning. We don't realize how much our conditioning impacts the way we move through the world, the way we see the world. And by that I mean what did we learn from our culture? What did we learn from the society that we live in? What did we learn from our family? What did we learn from movies? What did we learn from television? What did we learn from books? What did we learn from our faith institutions? It’s all different for everyone. We've all been conditioned differently because we've all had different life experiences. 

But it's really worth considering how we have been shaped in such a way that makes it hard or harder for us to receive the help and the support and the love, the assistance, the good stuff, the pleasure that we would like to receive now. So here are some ways that I see it. 

Second of all, gender roles. Often we have been taught as women we’re supposed to be caregivers and nurturers, which means most of us are prioritizing other people's needs above our own, our pursuit of children, our family, our friends. We make their needs matter more than us because we have been conditioned to believe that we are supposed to be caregiving. We are supposed to nurture. We have also been taught to value self-sacrifice, especially as women. 

But it literally makes us feel so guilty for receiving help. it is not selfish to take care of ourselves, meaning it's not selfish in a bad way. This whole label of being selfish, it makes me a little crazy. Who said it is not okay for us to be selfish? Who said we have to put everybody’s needs above ours? Who said we’re supposed to sacrifice everything for everyone? And when we buy into that, which I get why we do because we're literally marinating in it, it makes us feel bad when we actually do receive help. 

Some of us have bought into the strong woman stereotype that we’re supposed to be able to handle everything on our own. Maybe we saw our mother do that, but we believed it's ideal if you’re strong and you handle it all on your own. Think about how that can impact your ability to receive help because then we worry that now we’re going to be weak or somehow we’re incapable. But guess what you all we cannot do it all alone. I mean listen, I don’t want to do it all alone, it’s better when we don’t. Maybe you can squeak by but you won’t be enjoying life. 

What would it be like if we just gave ourselves permission to drop the strong woman nonsense and decided that strong women ask for help? That’s possible. I think society often stigmatizes grief- and if you’re familiar at all with my work, you know I talk about grief within the context of infertility and IVF A LOT. We have rules in our society around how grief is supposed to go, most of them completely unhelpful and highly inaccurate. And we’re supposed to somehow, something magical happens at the year mark, we’re supposed to be better. We’re supposed to have moved on. We think that grief is linear. We think that it comes in stages. 

We think that we’re supposed to reach this place where we're done with grief. So of course, if we have been taught that and of course, if other people around us believe that, then when that is not our lived experience, which I promise you it almost never is. And I’ve coached hundreds of women and I can tell you, you are not alone, you are not broken. What we hear about grief does not match how we experience grief. But if we think we're the only ones then guess what we do? We isolate. We aren’t honest. We’re reluctant to accept help. 

We don’t want to tell people that it's hard because we think they think we should be better by now. We think we should be better by now because we were conditioned to believe inaccurate things about grief. And the more I think about it the more mad I get. This is one of my goals. I hope that the ripple effect of the work that I do is that more people will be grief literate and then more people will slowly over time, we will shift the experience that people have in grief, especially within the context of infertility.  

Depending on our culture, in some cultures accepting help, asking for help is seen as inappropriate. Expressing how we feel is seen as inappropriate. So depending on the culture and in some faith traditions as well, we learn different things. It might go against the norm of a particular culture. And some of you might be yelling at your phone as you listen to the podcast and being like, “Hey, I don't have anybody who is even offering.” And that’s common too. Sometimes, again, we’re people's worst nightmare and we kind of become a little invisible sometimes. Infertility and IVF can be a very uncomfortable topic for people, whether its’ bc they are uninformed or have their own cultural, religious, or prudish reasons. And I’m not using prude as a pejorative, but more as a description. 

People go about their normal lives. We aren’t saying that we need help. They think we’re fine and the offers aren’t being made at a certain point. So that is no commentary on you. That doesn’t mean anything bad about you but sometimes we’re just not even being asked. And for all of the reasons that I have already discussed, we are uncomfortable asking. So hopefully those ring true for some of you and your experiences. 

Alright now, I want to give you three ways that you can increase your ability to receive, you can learn to receive:

One is when you go to plan your week, however you do your planning, plan your pleasure first because if you're like most IVF’ers your pleasure isn't even getting put in the plan, let alone first. You are an afterthought at best. Most, if not all, of your effort and attention is likely directed towards getting pregnant. And by pleasure I don't just mean manicures and pedicures, please. I mean things that actually bring you joy, I mean things that you do for you, that you might define as selfish but they feel good and you like them and they are rejuvenative and you want them and you plan them first. So that's number one. 

Number two, I want you to pick one thing that you’ve been telling yourself you should be able to handle or something that you’ve felt really uncomfortable asking for help. And I want you to ask for help, one thing this week. Come up with it right now, what is it? It’s uncomfortable. You keep telling yourself you should. I can’t even tell you for how long I told myself I should be able to handle all the house cleaning. I could handle it but should. No, not helping me. I finally hired a housekeeper. One of the best things I’ve ever done. We’ve had one for several years, around the time we did our first IVF cycle- one of the best things I ever did for my home, my brain, and my marriage.

So pick one thing you’ve been telling yourself you should be able to handle or you feel uncomfortable asking for help and ask. And here's what I want you to hear. It's not going to feel comfortable, that's okay. Ask somebody to meet you for coffee just to talk. Say yes to somebody when they offer you something. Put yourself in the place of receiving, let it be uncomfortable and receive it anyway. The only thing that’s really happening is that you feel discomfort. Maybe you feel guilty. Maybe you feel worried. Maybe you feel awkward. It’s going to pass. It is not a reason to not receive. So pick that thing, ask for help, let it feel uncomfortable, receive it anyway. 

And number three is I want you to decide to invest in yourself. I want you to decide, this is a decision you get to make, that you are going to learn how to receive, that it is going to become easier for you. And decide to make that happen by investing in yourself. There are a myriad of ways that you can do that. Investing in yourself might just be doing the other two things that I told you and doing them every week and making that a priority. Now, I’m going to suggest you to hire me as your coach and let’s blow the crap out of your life. 

But it doesn't even have to be that big. You decide, I'm going to learn the skill of receiving. I am going to invest in myself, whether that is time, whether that is money, whether that is the therapist that you've been putting off, or the group support that you’ve been putting off. It's something, it is an investment that you make in yourself. I hope it will be with me if that’s appropriate for you. You are worth investing in. You invest in yourself and you allow yourself to receive the benefits of that investment. 

And maybe it’s reading a book. It can be many things but it is like saying, screw you, social conditioning, I matter. I matter. I am worth investing in. Not because it will make me a better parent, which it probably will. Not because it will make me more productive, which it probably will. Not because it makes me more valuable because that's impossible, your value is already fully intact. But because your satisfaction with life matters. And when you invest in yourself it increases and you matter and so does your happiness. 

So I don't care how you do it. I don’t care if maybe you just every week you plan your pleasure, you ask for something that makes you uncomfortable and you receive it. And you just decide, I’m going to do that until I get really really good at it. How you invest in yourself is way less important to me than that you invest in yourself because again, who knows? You might decide to do that group therapy thing and then it serves a purpose for a while and then later it’s not the thing you need. And then you evolve and you choose another way of investing in yourself. 

The point isn’t how we do it. The point is that we make a commitment to doing it and that we see ourselves as worthy of doing it and letting ourselves receive. 

And that is something you deserve. 

Ok, that is what I have for you today. I hope you have a great week, and I’ll talk to you soon.