Any vibe accepted: reclaiming your power during infertility
If you're feeling powerless, voiceless and unsupported on your infertility journey, you're not alone. Assisted reproduction, IVF, childlessness and identity can be a difficult experience to navigate and no matter how much progress we've made as a society it can still feel like you're being overlooked in your search for meaning and understanding.
The impact of difficult experiences
The activation of the nervous system through infertility and IVF can't be underestimated. If you feel safe and seen, your brain becomes specialised in exploration and cooperation. If you feel frightened and invisible, it becomes an expert in managing feelings of fear and abandonment.
This makes it enormously difficult to organise one's traumatic experiences into a coherent account - a narrative with a beginning, middle and end, so sooner or later most survivors come up with their 'cover story' that offers some explanation for their behaviour. As a result, shame becomes the dominant emotion and hiding from the truth the central preoccupation.
Infertility and disenfranchised grief
Reproductive grief and loss can add another layer of complexity, as it is commonly experienced as disenfranchised grief - grief that doesn't fit into society's traditional attitudes towards it. We're conditioned to think grief is a linear process that moves through distinct stages. This provides false comfort that an end date will come, when in fact we grow around our grief as time passes.
Clinical terms for the 'failed' elements of the assisted reproductive process can be rightfully grieved. Your fertility, your embyros, loss of identity, dreams and acknowledgement of your experience are valid. You are free to grieve, but are often not given the space to do so.
A person experiencing infertility can also be bombarded with toxic positivity from well-meaning family, friends or strangers which undermines our grief. So often we’re told to ‘stay positive, ‘think happy thoughts’ or the dreaded ‘at least’ statements. Encouraging someone in a vulnerable state to ‘stay positive’ devalues their need for help and could do more harm than good.
Tiffany Sauber Millacci, PhD sums it up nicely:
“Toxic positivity is not genuine encouragement at the right time. Perhaps we should consider modifying ‘good vibes only’ to ‘any vibe accepted’ when listening to others and considering our own emotions.”
Name it to tame it
What does it mean to take a feeling or experience and literally, put it into words? Words are labels and categories. They are the boxes that organise the scattered content of our minds.
When we talk about our experiences, we are sorting them out, intentionally or otherwise just by putting them into places where they might fit. The very act of doing so makes our most confusing or disturbing experiences more organised, understandable and less scary. Some studies show that putting feelings into words (affect labelling) reduces the strength of certain brain pathways associated with those emotions.
To name it, is to tame it
A safe space to talk things through
Counselling can help by giving you a safe space to explore all feelings, regardless of the cover story you may feel compelled to live by. It provides a safe place to create space for all feelings positive, negative, or unidentifiable.
It's completely natural however to feel a little apprehensive about starting counselling, but it’s important to remember that the experience of infertility can be overwhelming for the nervous system, creating patterns of thoughts and feelings that you may not have had to deal with before.
As a therapist with lived experience in this space you can feel confident that I understand the process and the toll it can take which means you don't need to use valuable therapy time to explaining the ins and outs or acronyms to me.
We’ll explore, reflect and connect your unique experiences and inner resilience to help you move forward using a range of therapeutic techniques like acceptance and commitment therapy, solution-focused therapy, cognitive behavioural therapy and mindfulness to understand and adapt your thoughts, feelings and behaviours with gentle compassion.
Let's work together to untangle those feelings and put you back in control of your story.
