Fertility Road Issue 44 May/June 2018

MIND
Infertility is tough. Really tough. People just
don’t understand what it’s like unless they have
experienced it. A Harvard University study
demonstrated that the stress levels of women
experiencing infertility were equivalent to those
with AIDS, cancer and heart disease. Now you can
imagine why being told to relax makes you want
to punch someone!
It’s because no-one really understands it can
be a very lonely journey. Friends and family
mean well, but actually, they often say the
most unhelpful things because they just don’t
understand. So stop expecting them to. They
mean well. Everything they say and do is
motivated by love but they are limited by their
own understanding and life experience.
Even partners don’t often understand what it’s like
for us. I know this can be truer for women more
than men. My wife said to me eight years into our
journey she didn’t feel understood. She felt lonely
on the journey. I was shocked as I went to all the
appointments. She explained she had no idea what
was going on in my head. How I felt about things.
Women connect emotionally. They want to be
seen, felt, heard - understood. And they want to
understand their partner. When I was living in my
head she had nothing to go on, she had no idea
what I was feeling and it left her feeling lonely.
Stop running from the pain, anger and fear.
Accept it’s tough.
However, acceptance doesn’t mean giving up.
I thought I had to stay strong and hopeful
otherwise it would never happen. I believed
losing hope and falling apart would mean defeat
and I was not ready for that. I couldn’t imagine
life without children and didn’t feel ready to start
the journey of acceptance if it meant giving up.
Accepting it is difficult doesn’t mean you
are accepting defeat - far from it. Accepting
the reality of any situation is key to creating
something new. When running a marathon the
runner can accept the pain, how difficult it is, but
it doesn’t mean they are giving up.
During our infertility journey, I felt disillusioned
about life. I felt angry and fearful about never
being happy. I was in a job I didn’t really enjoy
but it paid well and was convenient. I was
ignoring the disillusionment about my job and
if I am honest other things in my life including
our relationship. Keeping my head in the sand
kept me from doing anything about it. It was
familiar, I had worked in the same company all
my working life and I was scared of changing;
what happens if I move and the new job is worse?
As I began exploring this, accepting my feelings,
it enabled me to begin the process of creating
something different and finding something I
love doing.
It was the same with our fertility. I was not accepting
the pain, anger and fear that was inside me.
Allow whatever shows up to show up. What if
you didn’t need to be scared of any experience?
Feelings are thought in the moment. They do
not know anything about our circumstances now
or in the future. The more we understand where
our feeling is coming from, our thought, not our
circumstances we don’t need to be scared of them.
The more you resist your feelings (by resenting
them, wishing you didn’t have them or trying the
change them) the stronger they get.
Acceptance is the WD40 of change. Once you
allow what is to be you can begin to move on
from it.
Acceptance is not accepting failure. It is not
accepting things will never change. Acceptance
accepting what is today, knowing that nothing
can predict the future so it doesn’t mean it is
going to never change.
Acceptance is not fighting reality because you
think it needs to be different, or ‘should’ be
different. Acceptance is recognising you have
everything you need at this moment to be OK.
Nothing can predict the future, come back to
the here and now, that’s where you are. That’s
where you find everything you need to be at this
moment. We are only not OK when our minds
take us out into our imaginary future, that is
plausible and realistic but still, fantasy because
nothing can predict the future.
Belief
When I talk about belief I don’t mean positive
thinking and affirmations. This is about
recognising what it is you believe, what is your
thinking telling you about you, your life, whether
you will have a baby or not. What are the stories
you tell yourself? This is about recognising we
live in the experience of thought. 100% of our
experience comes from thought.
Not just our emotions, every physical experience
we have comes from thought. Even physical pain.
The pain may be caused by a medical situation
like a broken bone or infection in our tooth but
our experience of that pain is caused by thought.
Sometimes it’s agony, sometimes we are not
aware of it but the source is constant.
We live in the experience of what our thinking is
telling us at any given moment.
So great, that means if we change our thinking right
we get a better experience? Good luck with that
one! We cannot control our thinking. We are not
thinking beings we are beings that have thought.
Our thought is spontaneous and we have no
control over it. But don’t worry, this doesn’t
36 | fertilityroad.com
| fertilityroadmag | follow us @fertilityroad