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

I am really excited to talk with you all about sucking at infertility! 

I was talking with a. client the other day and the conversation was around infertility in general. And we talked about a lot of things but she said, “why is infertility so hard for us?” and I just replied, “Because we suck at it.” And while both of us laughed in that moment, I really got to thinking, yes, we truly do suck at infertility. 

Not that any of us WANT to be like good at infertility but it’s mostly around the suffering that is experienced by so many of us around infertility. And so I wanted to outline a few reasons as to WHY we suck at infertility. 

So, without further ado- here are the top 5 ways that we suck at infertility. They are in no particular order and I just stopped at 5 in the interest of time but I could go ON and ON. 

Reason number 1 why we suck is because we whole-heartedly believe that there is a specific order for family creation, which pretty much just consists of have sex, make baby, have baby, and raise baby. And of course, this is very heteronormative language but even let’s say you’re undergoing intrauterine insemination, then the expected outcome is one, MAYBE two inseminations and boom, baby, birth, raising. Like we have this seared into our brains that there is only one path to baby. Of course, this is reinforced over centuries and in our everyday culture because this is how we have seen it played out time and time again. And then there’s the complicating factor of secondary. Infertility because we maybe had that belief reinforced by own our journeys and then we are trying to have it again and we’re having difficulty. 

So we have historical reference, culture, socialization, and maybe our own journey’s telling us that this is the way it SHOULD be happening. And of course, whenever we believe that something should be a certain way and there is any deviation then it’s like this is terrible, I’m terrible, I’m trash, all of that drama. It is very easy to get committee to this belief that it should be a certain way. So when it’s not, its awful. 

Instead, even just looking at the data,  in the US 1 in 8 couples, and 1 in 6 couples worldwide struggle with infertility- those are NOT little numbers. The World Health Organization’s report on infertility states that approximately 48 million couples or 186 million individuals globally, experience infertility. And Yet we still have this internalized and cultural narrative that this is the only way it can and should be. Is it the experience of the majority, yes. Does that make it the ONLY experience, no! It just makes it the experience of the majority. Now there is a difference of expecting something to go a certain way and rolling with the punches vs expecting it to go a certain way and then using THAT against yourself, and that’s what I am referring to. It’s what we make it mean- that we’re terrible, or worthless, or whatever. That’s the part that makes the suffering unbearable at times. 

Ok, I gotta speed this up to get through them all.

Ok, number 2 why we suck at infertility. And this goes with number 1 but we think there is a right and a wrong way to do infertility or fertility treatments. I cannot even begin to tell you how many times I have talked with clients about how I’m not doing this or not taking that, not exercising enough, exercising too much, avoiding alcohol, avoiding caffeine, avoiding carbs but then I binge on alcohol or caffeine or carbs because I get to a point where I say “eff it.” I’m not taking enough supplements, I’m not taking the right ones, I need to get rid of all the plastic in my house, all of the fragrances, I have to be stress-free. I have to do acupuncture, I have to do energy healing- the list is ENDLESS. And it’s this intense black and white thinking of this is the ONLY way to get pregnant or for these things to be considered the “right” things to do, well, just like the  first thing we suck at, when we make something the ONLY or the “Right” way, then any deviation of that expectation we then Interpret as a failure, which, more often than not we interpret ourselves as failing. And this is certainly not a shot at ANY of those things, by themselves they can be enormously beneficial, but, again, it’s when we use these things or the absence of these things against ourselves. Let’s say you believe that acupuncture is essential for a successful IVF round, you’ve read all about it, you’ve had that belief reinforced by people that you’ve spoken to within the infertility community but maybe you don’t have the ability to get to regular acupuncture appointments, either logistically or financially. Well if you believe that is the secret sauce and it’s not feasible for you, then you’re probably going to feel like you’re failing and that’s where these things can become like shackles on us. Choking down fistfuls of supplements everyday and then you forget a day and all of a sudden it’s a crisis bc you didn’t do it EVERY day, that’s the opposite of the piece of mind that you are hoping to get by doing the “right” things. 

Number 3, we think something magical will happen when we get pregnant or have that baby. I talked about this in the episode “A baby won’t solve for..” but we have this belief that once we get pregnant or once we get to hold that baby then we will get to feel at peace, without pain, or stress, or self-hatred. But that’s not how brains work. But our emotions are not created by our circumstances, and I talk a lot about this on the podcast. Our thoughts create our feelings so if I am thinking, I’m a piece of crap because I can’t get pregnant, then when I get pregnant that thought is probably going to morph into well, I’m probably going to lose this pregnancy bc I am a piece of crap. And that thought will just keep recycling based on the circumstances- because that’s how our brains work. Think of your brain like a conveyor belt at a factory that only builds a few different things. The factory default settings just keep pumping out those things. There’s no drama, it’s just a habit. That’s how your brain works with unconscious thoughts. There’s no drama in the brain, it’s just sending up the thought “I’m a piece of trash” and then we just flatly agree with it, without question. So when we have this belief that something magical will happen when I get pregnant or whatever, and nothing magical does happen (and of course I am talking about in your brain, not that magical creature in your belly) then all of a sudden we are like well what the hell is wrong with me that I now have this thing that I’ve always wanted and I still don’t feel better. Or I thought I would feel better, or however that comes to you. Nothing magical happens. Our brains are our brains regardless of the situation. You want to feel better overall, stop letting the asshole in your brain run amock. 

Thought work is never done, because there is never a point in your life where you don’t have unconscious thoughts that are inherently negative. It’s just not going to happen. Life doesn’t stop so there is always the potential for pain, a potential for anxiety. I find it fascinating and it happens in every human experience but it of course also happens during infertility or fertility treatments that as humans there is a part of us that does not want pain, that does not want anything that we would classify as negative. And so, we’re always looking for greener grass. We’re always looking for the exit ramp. We’re always looking for something better instead of just choosing to stay present with what is because what is, is all we ever have. 

What is, is all we ever have but we’re always trying to escape it in pursuit of something better. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with pursuing goals. I love goals. But to say that life will be better somewhere else is to kind of miss the point. And I think we really just have the wrong goal. I was talking to a client about this the other day about accepting what is, and acceptance doesn’t mean LIKING what is. And what a lot of us are trying to do is change what is because we think we can’t enjoy our life as it is. And that’s to completely miss the point.

Number 4, our approach to family building has changed over time. And what I mean is that family building for the entirety of mans existence has been have unprotected penis in vagina sex and make a baby. So that’s like 2 or 300,000 years. The first recorded IUI occurred in the 1700’s. The first sperm bank was built in the mid-west, I think in the 50’s, the first successful IVF baby was born in 1978. In the course of recorded time, fertility treatments are still relatively new. Especially the more modern approaches. And since our brains have evolved over these 300,000 years, to our unconscious brain, these are still considered “new technologies.” It takes our culture and society a LONG time to accept things that fall outside of what is expected to be “traditional” even though that’s completely subjective itself. So our approach has changed a lot. And since it’s still not a widely discussed topic, the less experience we have of it being in our cultural vernacular, the less familiar we are with it, the less familiar we are with it the less comfortable we are going to feel when discussing it. The less comfort we feel about discussing it, the less it is discussed overall, and thus the cycle continues and continues. 

Ok, number 5, we focus only on the outcome- the baby or babies. The emotional experience of infertility is a very unique and personal experience but what is almost universal is the hyper-focus on the getting of the baby that so much of yourself can be lost in that pursuit. We have the faux-spirational world of social media, toxic positivity, emotional illiteracy and emotional childhood, all of these things make for an incredibly overwhelming experience because when we come to a place or any point where we are experiencing big feelings, we tend to shut them down, or try to as quickly as possible, then you’ve got that asshole brain churning out lie after lie and you’ve not managing any of your brain. You tell yourself that you cannot plan things, that everything is uncertain, all of this stuff. We tend to neglect our mental health in this pursuit because we think it takes too much time, effort, or money that we don’t feel we can sacrifice. Which of course is a lie our brains offer us to have us stay stuck. Taking care of ourselves, whatever that looks like a daily 20 min walk, therapy, coaching, journaling, whatever it is, does take effort. It doesn’t take much effort to lay around and scroll social media, watch Netflix, get lost in online shopping, but those things don’t actually make you feel better. They numb more than anything. So, yes, it does take some effort to feel better. Not much effort to continue to feel terrible. 

So those are the top 5 but I do want to include this one that I think is VERY universal. We think our feelings are problems and we’re never taught how to allow them. We think any negative emotions, which emotions aren’t inherently positive or negative it’s just the moral judgement that we assign to them, but we think they are problems. And we think we need to solve for them. So we have no idea what to do with the uncomfortable ones because no one has told us otherwise. This is what I call emotional illiteracy. We have difficulty naming our emotions and we have difficulty tolerating ones that feel uncomfortable long enough to allow them to be there and actually process them through. 

When we think feelings are problems and then we feel uncomfortable, we interpret that as something we’re not supposed to be feeling but c’mon, that’s really expected during an infertility journey. You’re going to have “negative” feelings- like you can count on it. 

Because we believe feelings are problems, then we don’t know how to feel good when someone else is feeling bad. It makes us uncomfortable. Which is where cliché’s and platitudes come from. The It’ll happen when it happens, or just relax are normal and natural reflexes to someone witnessing an uncomfortable feeling and kind of reflecting that out bc they don’t know what to do with it. So this comes up for everyone, both those having an uncomfortable emotion and those witnessing someone having an uncomfortable emotion. 

That’s why we dread things like baby showers, gender reveals, sometimes family or friend gatherings bc there will be lots of opportunities for us to have thoughts and feelings and in turn, a lot of opportunities for people to witness us having big thoughts and feelings and them saying something that you might feel is insensitive or outright asinine. It all stems for our cultures inability to tolerate feeling negative emotions. 

And this is why one of the first things we work on during my 1:1 practice and one of the most common things I cover in my complimentary mini sessions is that feelings are NOT problems. They are experiences, they are data, they are telling you something is going on for you- that’s all. And then we get to work on understanding how to process those emotions. 

So, if that or anything that I covered today is something you would like to work on, go to my website www.ivfthiscoachibng.com or my SM profile link and schedule a mini-session and we can talk about it. 

Ok my beautiful friends that is what I have for you. I hope you have a wonderful week and I will talk to you soon.