Welcome to IVF this episode 42- How it was supposed to go

Hello my beautiful friends. I hope you’re all doing so well. 

I’m so excited to bring you today’s topic but first, I wanted to remind everyone that hasn’t yet checked out my anxiety mini course, to do so. 

Anxiety is probably the #1 emotion that my clients and prospective client’s talk to me about. Anxiety affects roughly 18% of the adult US population. And that’s just the US, we have a lot of international listeners that are also impacted by anxiety.

In 15 minutes, I talk to you about how anxiety is created and the basic framework for changing your relationship with it- which is where the magic is. We’re not going to get rid of anxiety. It’s necessary. We’ve had anxiety throughout the entire human evolution. It’s how we stayed alive. 

But it’s not the villainized thing that most of us think of it as. Most of us tell our anxiety that we hate it, we tell our anxiety that we want it to go away, to leave us alone. But I want to show you, that’s not the case. Your anxiety is trying to tell you something. Usually that you’re afraid. It’s like a giant dashboard indicator light that there’s something going on for you. 

When we treat our anxiety like this villain, then we give it so much more power. We tell it that it’s stronger than we are. But it’s not. It’s an emotion. It’s a vibration in our body. It is in the resistance of anxiety that we feel it more intensely. It’s in the resistance of it that creates more of it. And that’s what I want to give you in that free mini class. 

You can check it out on my website www.ivfthiscoaching.com and it’s on the home page. Scroll about halfway down. You sign up and it’s delivered right to your email box. 

Ok, so I mentioned resistance when I was talking about anxiety and resistance is actually the topic for today. With a little different twist. 

So the title of the episode is “how it was supposed to go”

All of us have this story about how our family journey was supposed to go. 

Maybe you and your partner were supposed to just have sex and get pregnant. 

Maybe you planned on having a partner, but you’re going it alone. 

Maybe you and your partner had planned to use donor material or surrogacy but even that hasn’t gone to plan. 

Now the reason this topic is so important for us to cover is because that belief, “how it was supposed to go” creates a lot of suffering. 

This, is what I call, arguing with reality. You’ve probably heard me use that term before and I talk about it a lot with my clients. 

Arguing with reality, is a phrase coined by one of my favorite authors and teachers, Byron Katie. She typically is referred to as “Katie” so that is how I will also refer to her. Her journey started in the late 80’s, she’s an American author who experienced a period of enlightenment after a series of really traumatic and trying times. And at, what she describes was her lowest, she was staying at a halfway house, away from her husband and children, and she had this revelation around how suffering is created and how it can end. And so Katies work is based on “4 questions” which really inspired my coach, Brooke Castillo, and the body of work that she has created. Brooke talks about one day, she was listening to one of Katie’s books on tape (that’s how long ago it was) and Katie said that your thoughts are optional. Brooke talks about pulling her car over because her brain kind of exploded at that idea. 

So Byron Katie’s work, a book that I would recommend EVERYONE to read is “Loving What Is”.

Which is like case study after case study with conversation between her and people she has met on her book tours and teachings. 

But all of Katie’s work talks about INVITING reality. AGREEING with what the reality is. 

So let’s talk about what arguing with reality actually is- it is when we try to deny, push away, or refuse to accept the truth of what is in the present moment. 

For example- This isn’t how this was supposed to go

I shouldn’t have to do YYX

We shouldn’t have to XYZ

 We shouldn’t even be in this position

This isn’t supposed to be happening

This should be different

Maybe with your partner you think, “they should just” 

Anything like that are hallmark examples of what arguing with reality looks like. 

Now, it is arguing with reality because it pre-supposes that whatever is happening isn’t supposed to be happening, even though it is happening. 

Now, as Byron Katie says, When you argue with reality you lose, but only 100% of the time. 

It is in the denying, the avoiding, the pushing away, or refusing to accept that makes it SOOO uncomfortable for us. 

So, we have the anger, frustration, discomfort, the PAIN associated with the lost expectation for us. Which is what we’re really talking about. Right? How it was supposed to go, is an expectation that you had on a particular course of events in your life. 

So anytime our expectations are not met, even when we try to tell ourselves that we have “NO” expectations, there is pain. Some unmet expectations is a mild annoyance, you expected your co-worker to take care of something that they did not or it can be MASSIVE unmet expectations- like infertility. 

So let’s go down that path, this breach of expectation this unmet expectation and we are now confronted with the term “infertility”. No this is true whether or not we’re dealing with primary infertility, secondary infertility, unknown infertility, male factor or female factor- it’s all a breach or unmet expectation. 

So we’ve already got pain, grief, and loss for that. 

Then we pile on the anger, frustration, resentment (all forms of pain) on top by arguing and saying things like- this should be happening, it worked last time, it should work this time, we’ve never done anything wrong, It’s not suppose to be like this because we’re super healthy, I mean there are HUNDREDS of examples that I can offer to you that create MORE pain and MORE suffering. Like you’re layering on pain and suffering- like the worst parfait fo pain and suffering EVER. Layer after Layer. 

Now, let me be super clear about something. I curated my own parfait of crap month after month, those first few years of our journey. Every time I got my period, every time I was in the TWW, every time I talked to ANYONE about it, Every time I head or saw a birth or pregnancy announcement. Every. Damn. Time. 

I remember, one of the biggest thoughts, one of the most painful thoughts that I had during this time was that we did everything right and this is why we shouldn’t be in this situation. Right, my husband was finishing and then finished his PhD, I at that time had finished my first masters degree. We bought a house, we had good/stable jobs and still we were dealing with this. This was so painful because I was arguing with what was happening, saying that it shouldn’t be happening, and then I was adding on this heaping layer of victimhood because that thought “we did everything right” the subtext of that thought is that we’re being punished even thought we “did everything right” and maybe that’s how you’re feeling too. 

This belief, right if we strip it down to it’s basic core, was that it truly impeded me from finding any joy in the life I was currently living. 

And I mean THAT’S everything. That’s what we’re talking about. The pain and the suffering, it keeps you from sucking every ounce of joy, laughter, and love from your life because you stay locked into this cycle of arguing and creating more of it, and arguing some more. It doesn’t stop. 

It’s almost as if it doesn’t matter how we “think” our life should be. And I’m not saying that as a way to invalidate our experience, our pain, our grief, our journey. That’s not what I mean. I mean that if you look at it through the lens of arguing with reality, then it really doesn’t matter how we think our life “should be” because whatever that is, is often in stark contrast to how our life actually is. It’s all an expectation that is based in our thinking. 

Why do we hold onto these stories? These stories of how we think our lives are supposed to go. 

Well, I think we hold on so tightly to these stories because we truly do believe that if our lives would have gone the way they were “supposed” to go then we would get to feel better. We would get to feel differently. 

I held onto this for a very long time. If I got to be pregnant, if I got to bring home that baby, if I got to be a mother, then I would get to feel differently. Then I would get to be happy. 

Which is true but also, not true. 

When we believe that we will feel differently later, after we get this thing that we want: new job, house, married, a vacation, or a baby (and there are a million different examples that are shown everyday)- then we will get to feel whatever the emotion is that we are chasing. 

Contentment, calm, happiness, joy, confidence, settled, insert whatever emotion- that’s what we are chasing. 

But we forget that life is always 50/50.

You’ve probably heard me talk about this on the podcast before but if not, what I mean is that if you had a big circle that represented your emotional experience of life 50%^ of that circle (meaning 50% of the time) would be positive or comfortable emotions (happiness, joy, calm, all those emotions that we chase) and 50% of the circle (50% of the time) would be negative or uncomfortable emotions (anger, resentment, grief, anxiety- whatever it is the emotion that you are running away from). 

Now, I do want to throw one small caveat in here- there are emotions that we might routinely experience that are unpleasant. So why do we feel those (the ones that are coming to me are anger, frustration, anxiety, discontent)- we might feel those more often, than not, not because they are comfortable emotions but because they are FAMILIAR emotions. Anxiety, for so many of us, is a very familiar feeling. I know exactly how it feels in my body. I know, pretty much, what I can expect when it comes for a visit. It’s not that these emotions are comfortable- I don’t know anyone that would describe anxiety as comfortable- but they are familiar. Based on how we think about things, especially if you’ve never worked with a coach or have questioned the things that you think about, your unconscious and habitual thought patterns might be more likely to create those familiar albeit uncomfortable emotions. 

But back to 50/50

When we feel this pull this urgency to not be where to are, to be somewhere else, to have that thing that we want because we think we will feel better once we have it- we forget that life is always 50/50. 

Life is 50/50 in the waiting. And 50/50 once we get what we want. 

But this is not how we have been conditioned to think. This is actually very counter to our culture of achievement. Of capitalism. Of accumulation. 

But think about when you got the job you wanted. Maybe it was a promotion from within or maybe you applied to another company and it was a promotion like that. 

You get the job, Yay! You feel so proud of yourself (understandably so) but you probably also feel anxious. Maybe some imposter syndrome comes in and rears its ugly head. Maybe you feel resentful of your old company because they didn’t try to retain you. So many potential scenarios here. But you’re not exclusively feeling excitement or pride. That excitement and pride also has elements of anxiety- 50/50.

We always expect that we will only feel one emotion. But we don’t. In fact, as grown adults I don’t think that any of us feel just one emotion at a given time. I think we constantly have what’s called cognitive dissonance- holding two opposing thoughts or feelings, simultaneously. 

That is part of having that fully formed pre-frontal cortex. 

We get to experience the range and the contrast of emotions. 

One of my very favorite movies is Disney’s Inside Out- if you’ve never seen it, I implore you to watch it. It is a beautiful, shining example of how our emotions interplay with each other. How we need them. If you’ve seen it, I would invite you to watch it again. I have probably seen it a dozen times. Particularly pay attention to the differences between the emotions of the adults in the movie vs the kiddos- its quite remarkable. 

Anyway, we expect we will feel one way which is usually a very positive emotion. And Yet, when the 50/50 of life confronts us it’s like all the alarm bells go off in our heads that something’s gone wrong or that we’ve done something wrong. 

But it’s just being human. 

One of my previous clients, we still exchange emails. I absolutely adore her. But she just finished what she has decided is her last IVF round. She’s gone through multiple rounds without success. And after she got the results of her last beta, and was emailing me about it, she said she felt this mix of sadness and relief. That she wasn’t expecting to feel the relief. Now, we’ve already worked together, she is very aware of her thoughts so she went on to explain how it made sense that she was feeling relief but mostly how it wasn’t something she anticipated. She didn’t have to do anymore shots, anymore symptom spotting, anymore drs appointment. That she could focus on grieving and living again. And I think that is so beautiful and such a wonderful example of 50/50. She expected to only be sad. But there was relief there too. 

So, when we convince ourselves that we will get to feel better or differently, once we have that baby it’s almost like were planning in fantasy land. We’re not taking into consideration that yes, we will get to feel amazing and blessed, should we get pregnant but we will also probably experience some or a lot of anxiety. 

We fantasize about being pregnant and the round belly and the joy with that, but we don’t take into consideration how physically hard pregnancy is. 

We fantasize about the snuggles, and the giggles, and the clothes, and the holidays, and all of the things but we don’t fantasize about diaper blow outs, or colic, or being bone-breakingly tired. 

Now, this isn’t to say that we shouldn’t fantasize about those warm and fuzzy things. Sometimes, I think those fantasies were all that would keep me going throughout our journey. 

But when we believe the lie that our brain tells us, that we will get to feel better on the other side, we are setting ourselves up for pain. Because, when we do invariably experience that negative 50/50 of life- we tend to think that we’ve done something wrong, or that there is something wrong with us. But it’s not true. We are human. We just weren’t looking at the whole chessboard. 

So, here are the two big takewayas from today. 

When you find yourself telling the story of how it should have been. Stop yourself. Notice how that story makes you feel. Does it feel heavy and uncomfortable? Does it feel angry and frustrated? Probably something like that. 

Take a moment and offer your brain the thought, “This is where we are. I wanted it to happen like that but it didn’t and this is where we are.” How does that feel? Maybe a little lighter? Look we’re not going to get you to a place of feeling amazing about being on this journey- that’s not the goal. The goal is to not create more suffering around it. 

You could also try changing it to something like, “I wish this would have happened like that.” Does that feel different? It may or may not. 

It’s the difference between standing out in the rain and shouting “it shouldn’t be raining right now” and “oh, it’s raining right now.” How do we know it actually SHOULD be raining right now? Because it is. Everyone in your immediate vicinity can see that it is raining. Why tell yourself it shouldn’t be?

It’s the same with your journey. How do we know that this is the path you’re supposed to be on? Because it is the path that you are on. Trying to argue against it will only lead to suffering. 

And the last thing, is when you find yourself believing that you will get to feel differently, get to feel better when- I want you to remind yourself that it’s the same here as it is there. The same 50/50 in the waiting, exists in the doing and the getting. Now, does that mean we get complacent and not have any goals- hell no. We will still fight like hell for our lives and our families. But it just means we aren’t buying into the illusion that life will somehow be 100% better over there. There Is no magic switch that is flipped. There is nothing miraculous that happens to your emotions when you get what you want. Because once the newness of that thing wears off, you’re then left with how you have always talked to yourself. 

The goal is to change THAT conversation. Make that conversation loving and compassionate and grace-filled. That’s how we change. That’s how we begin to feel better. 

Ok, that is what I have for you my beautiful friends. If you need help with any of the things I talked about today, I’ve got you. Go to my website www.ivfthiscoaching.com or my social media links @ivfthiscoaching and set up a free mini-session and we’ll do some coaching. 

Have a wonderful week my friends, I’ll talk to you again soon.