Welcome to IVF this episode 39- The Emotional Rollercoaster

Hello and welcome my friends. 

I’m gonna get straight into todays topic which is something I think that EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US have experienced during our journey. Whether you’re doing fertility treatments or not. The roller-coaster pretty much starts after those first few months that you’ve been trying and it’s not working. Or maybe you’re moving straight to treatments because of a diagnosis or genetic reason- it doesn’t matter when or how but we have probably all said something to the effect of “this is such a roller-coaster”. Man, I’ve been saying that to myself over the past 9 days FOR Sure. I am not immune to this just because I am your coach. I always try to remind you that you have a human brain and so do I. We’re all messy, beautiful humans together. 

The reason that I am on the rollercoaster is because Tomorrow, I go for my beta. 

This is the last day that I will not know if our little embaby implanted. And believe me when I tell you that I have been through all of the emotions the past 9 days. 

Fear

Anxiety

Anger

Resentment

Hopeless

Hopeful

Excited

I mean, you name it, I have felt it vibrate through my body at some point- as we all do. I love to remind you guys that I am no different. Like, I know that I coach on this stuff all day long but I am just as susceptible to the bullshittery of my thoughts as you guys are. 

I’ve texted my bestie, Rach, all throughout the days, nights, and early mornings with texts of absolute dread, crippling fear, gut-wrenching sorrow, and unbridled excitement. All of it.

I’ve been down the DR Google rabbit-hole and symptom spotting like an early pregnancy sleuth.

I’ve wept, I’ve walked the baby section at department stores to feel closer, I’ve convinced myself more times than I can count that I am in fact pregnant, and then conviced myself that I am not. 

I have feared not being pregnant and the grief that will come with that for me and our family, and in some ways I’ve feared being pregnant. Why is that, Emily? You might be asking yourself- well, because anyone who has ever been pregnant for any amount of time you know that once you get that positive, you aren’t all of a sudden absolved of never feeling fear or anxiety again. Oh no, it morphs into something different. Now, you’ll hold your breath when you use the bathroom because you’re afraid you will se blood. You will worry about every single twinge and cramp. It doesn’t stop when you finally get pregnant- it just changes. 

So it is possible to feel a little bit of relief in that moment. Or fear that you might actually be and what that could mean for you. If that’s you, I see you. It’s normal. It’s valid. And it certainly doesn’t mean anything about you or your desire to be and stay pregnant. It’s a thought that we have.

So I’m doing all of this and more. And this is what we often refer to as the Emotional Rollercoaster. The ups and the downs. 

The reason why I wanted to talk about this today, other than it being very topical for me, is that I think a lot of us spend time resisting the downs and maybe even emotionally cushioning the ups but there is another aspect that is hardly ever talked about, in general, but certainly not in reference to infertility and that is the aspect of anticipatory grief. 

Anticipatory grief is defined by the grief that occurs before any great loss. Most often it is talked about, or I should I say when it’s talked about because grief in general is rarely openly discussed, but when it’s talked about it is around terminal or end of life care. 

Many loved ones of terminally ill patients often experience anticipatory grief. 

But that’s not the only time. 

You can experience it when you’re about to leave or dissolve a relationship, changing jobs, relocating and of course, going through a retrieval or transfer. 

During these times of waiting and uncertainty, right waiting after your retrieval to find out how many fertilized and then how many make it to blast. If you’re doing genetic testing then there’s even more waiting. And then of course, the wait from transfer to beta. 

Anticipatory grief is a big part of this. 

Let me give you an example from me just this past week. 

This was probably around the 36* post transfer mark, my husband was out of town and I was watching a show on Netflix. 

All of a sudden I thought, “it didn’t work” and I was OVERCOME with grief. Like heaving sobs- you know that kind of a cry? The kind that comes from your soul.

I was experiencing anticipatory grief. That guttural ache of your soul when you feel like you have lost or are losing something. That’s what happened. I want to say I cried for about 10 minutes. I cried so hard and physically that I fell asleep shortly after. 

But it wasn’t until the next day, until I was on the other side of that grief burst, that I was able to identify and name what had happened. 

Has that ever happened to you? A grief burst. You’re just kind of standing around, or watching TV, maybe doing some shopping and this wave of grief crashes into you? Almost like you’re hit by a bus. That’s called a grief burst. Its completely normal and, I would say, a very expected part of this journey. 

I’m gonna go on a bit of a tangent for a second because I think it’s important to talk about grief and loss within this context- I want to make sure that it’s known that there are no qualifiers on grief. There are no boxes that you have to tick to say, Yup, I am allowed to feel grief.” Grief is an incredibly personal experience. 

I used to tell myself that I wasn’t “allowed” to feel grief about this journey because I have never experienced a miscarriage or pregnancy loss. But that’s not true. There are many forms of loss on this journey. Miscarriage, pregnancy loss, failed cycles, failed transfer, and honestly, the loss of your expectations of being able to have sex and get pregnant. The loss of how you thought this part of your life was going to go. That’s a very real loss too. And it is ok to honor whatever your loss might look like. There’s no right type of loss. We’re all experiencing loss in some form throughout this time. 

Now back to the rollercoaster, Personally, I’m sure I experienced this thought of “it didn’t work” in prior transfers and any of the other waiting that occurs but this was the first time that I really sat down to think about what I was feeling.

I did some journaling.

I identified some of my thoughts and feelings. 

And, most importantly, I didn’t judge myself- that’s the key. And that’s the part that many of you get stuck on- the judgment. I didn’t make it mean anything about me other than I had a thought, “It didn’t work” and experienced an emotional as a result of that thought- which is exactly the way is happens. 

When I thought, “it didn’t work” then I would immediately feel despair. And that’s the best word I can use, because it wasn’t really hopelessness, it was utter despair. Now for you, if you thought that you might experience anger- there’s not right or wrong feeling that is attached to a thought. That’s the beautiful thing about this work, its so individual and specific. 

Then, a day later, hours later, even moments later, I would think “it did work, I’m totally pregnant.” And that thought would feel warm and happy. 

That’s the emotional rollercoaster, right? The up and the down. 

What I want to make sure we REALLY know, like driving this point HOME is that neither one of those thoughts are more or less true than the other. Until beta, until I actually find out the number (and then the second beta because my clinic checks two days later) each of those thoughts, “it worked” and “it didn’t work” are equally true. The important part is how I FEEL when I think those. 

You’ve probably heard me talk about being much less interested in if a thought is TRUE or not, than if the thought SERVES you. And you will always know if a thought serves you by how it makes you feel. 

Now, I know that there are some of us that want to pee on all the sticks during the wait. Full disclosure about me, I’ve never been an at home tester. I think I did it for the first few months we tried, way back in 2012 and then there was a month that I tried ovulation prediction kits- but my ADD made that nearly impossible to stay focused on when I was supposed to test so I’ve never been a big home tester for any of it. But I know that there are many out there that do- and that’s not a problem. 

I think there are a lot of us that have this love/ hate relationships with pregnancy tests. And this plays, I think, into the rollercoaster we experience. I think we kind of look at these things, these tests, as the creator or destroyer of our happiness- not consciously, mind you, but I think subconsciously we absolutely do. It’s almost as if we give the testing strip the power to tell us how we get to feel about ourselves. Right? That’s something I think we all do, and is the reason that I stopped testing as early into the journey as I did. Was that every time I had a negative, I was a complete asshole to myself. Like only having one line on the test strip just proved all of the worst things that I believe about myself and my life. But it’s literally a stip of plastic, fabric and some other things THAT WE PEE ON! Another way this comes up for many of us is the scale. When we step on the scale and we see whatever number that is, it is RARE in our day and age for us to feel sooo good after stepping on the scale. Well, we might for a minute and then all the thoughts about worthiness, good enough-ness and everything else start pouring in. We stand on a scale, the scale shits out a number, and then we beat the crap out of ourselves. 

It’s not the scale, its not the test- those are inanimate objects. The call is coming from inside the house. Inside our brains. 

So how do we manage the “rollercoaster”? 

When my clients talk to me about the emotional rollercoaster, I like to get really specific with them. I think the blanket term of “emotional rollercoaster” only serves to confuse ourselves.

Confuse how we’re feeling- if we refer to it as the emotional rollercoaster without taking time to suss out how we’re actually feeling then of course we’re going to feel out of control. We don’t really know what we’re feeling, we’re probably telling ourselves that we should feel differently, we’re trying to resist the thoughts and feelings that don’t feel comfortable. 

There’s a great children’s book called “The Color Monster” and I would encourage ALLLLLL of you to read it. The premise is that the color monster feels out of control because he isn’t sure how he is feeling. So they separate out his feelings, one in each jar, until he knows what he is feeling. 

I think as adults, we kind of dismiss the importance of understanding what we’re actually feeling. Now there is something to be said about the complexity of emotions you feel as you develop- right when I little kiddo is angry, they’re angry until they feel differently. As an adult you can be angry and grateful- right? It’s not as binary. 

But when we don’t stop to REALLY check in with ourselves then we just keep operating in this confusing panic- we don’t separate out our emotions. 

We can’t address what we can’t see. So, the first step is to stop. Literally stop. We get so used to just powering through whatever it is we’re doing, however we’re feeling, and then we wonder why we are snapping at the people we love, can’t concentrate on things, binge-eat the pantry at night- it’s like we operate in a perpetual state of “damage control”. But it’s not necessary. I know that for many of you, slowing down can feel kind of dangerous. Like you don’t know what you’d be forced to confront should you slow down long enough for all the crap you keep pushing down to surface. 

But I promise you, that crap is going to come up whether you want it to or not. If you don’t acknowledge it, and deal with it, then it’s just going to wait for you, and the moment you let your guard down, just a little, it’s going to come roaring to the surface. And it’s going to be like the force of the Mt. St. Helen’s eruption because you have spent so much time resisting it.

Stopping and checking in with yourself doesn’t have to be this laborious, time-consuming exercise that I think we all imagine it to be. 

This is what I do when I stop and check-in with myself. 

I will sit down, wherever I can get a moments quite and if that’s the bathroom for you, do it!

I sit down, I place my hand over my heart, I take in a few deep breaths. And I speak very lovingly to myself. “Hey love, what’s going on? What’re you feeling right now?”

You might get one emotion, you might get 5. There’s no right or wrong way. 

We just want to start putting those feelings in their individual jars. 

Once you have identified, as much as possible, no one is making you take an oath that this is exactly what you’re feeling. So once you have identified what you’re feeling- the next step is to drop the judgement. 

Because this is what’s going to happen- you’re going to identify that you feel afraid, or anxious, or angry, or something and THEN you’re going to tell yourself that you “shouldn’t” feel that way. That you “should” feel some other way, like hopeful or excited or grateful or something like that. THIS IS NOT HELPFUL. Judgement only creates more suffering. I mean you can set your clock to it. Judgment will Always, always, always make you feel worse than the emotion you’re already feeling. So if you’re feeling afraid and you tell yourself that you “should be feeling excited” well, that thought isn’t going to magically create the feeling of excitement. Nope. You’re still going to feel afraid AND you’re going to pile on heaps of shame because you tell yourself that you should feel differently. Should is always a building block of shame, always. 

Give yourself permission to feel whatever you’re feeling, whenever you’re feeling it. You’re not doing anything wrong. The truth is you probably ARE feeling a little excited. You probably do feel a little grateful. It’s just that those emotions are a little harder for you to access right now, and that’s ok.

And the last step is to allow yourself the time and space to feel your feeling. It doesn’t take a long time, 3-5 minutes. You’re just going to sit there and allow the feeling of fear, or anxiety, or anger, or sadness, to be there. Again, no judgement. There’s no bullying yourself allowed, here. 

I go into great detail on how to do this in the feel better NOW episode of the podcast. 

Give yourself that time. Like you’re giving yourself the gift oof time and space to REALLY show up for yourself. That’s where I want ya’ll’s heads to start going. How can I really show up for myself in this moment? One of my favorite questions to ask myself when I am feeling a particularly strong and uncomfortable emotions is “What is the MOST loving thing I can do for myself, right now?”

That just sifts through all the BS. THAT”S what we’re showing up for- ourselves. 

You have showed up for every damn other person in your life- your spouse or partner, your job, your family, your friends- it is TIME, my beautiful friend, to show up for you. 

You know exactly how to take care of yourself. When my clients tell me that they don’t know how they would handle something happening, I call complete BS- in a very loving way, of course- because they ALWAYS know how to take care of themselves. 

They’ve just spent so long telling themselves “I don’t know” that that becomes a barrier, it’s like a flood barrier to the rest of their brain. When you stop telling yourself, “I don’t know” that’s where the magic is.

The magic is inside each and every one of you- I promise. It’s there. In order to access it, you’ve gotta be willing to stop talking to yourself like an asshole. Once that happens, even navigating the rollercaoster, becomes easier. 

If this is something you’re struggling with, I can help you. 

Go to my website, www.ivfthiscoaching.com and book a free mini-session with me. It’s 30 minutes of straight coaching. You’ll get a chance to see what it’s like to work with me AND you can get help with something you’ve been struggling with- it’s a win win.

Ok, that is what I have for you my friends. 

Have a beautiful week and I’ll talk to you soon.