Easing the Emotional Strain of Infertility

There's a famous saying: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” This is such a remarkable reminder that all of us will experience pain at some point in our lives. It is part of the very fabric of being human! What we do with that pain, however, can be transformational.

So what in the world does that mean?

We have the fundamental choice of how to relate to pain. Here's another way to think about it — often we allow ourselves to be like an emotional yoyo on a string, stressing out and believing that going up and down is good or bad.

What if we could become the person holding the string just watching the yoyo go up and down? Life will still have its ups and downs; that's never going to change. But we now have the perspective, and emotional freedom, to not let those things control our feelings.

Picture yourself at your fertility doctor’s office and receiving some discouraging news. If you’re like most people, you will immediately start judging that information as good or bad and adjusting your emotions based on those judgments.

Imagine if you could hear fertility news as exactly what it is: words. We could actually reduce the amount of suffering those words may have caused us in the past and in the present. Happily, the more we are able to think of discouraging news this way, the less the stress of infertility will affect our health and our ability to conceive.

You can use your breath as a tool to help reduce the amount of suffering you experience related to your fertility issues and struggles to conceive. A few deep breaths give us the space to quit judging and to regain emotional perspective.

Try it a few times. The next time your period starts, take a few deep breaths and try not to judge your period as good or bad—or as an indicator of your chances of ever conceiving. Judge it as just what it is: Your period.

Taking a couple deep breaths here or there isn't going to change your experience immediately, but over time this helpful method can allow us to gain a permanent shift in perspective that is emotionally healthy and liberating.

Coming to terms with stress, and finding ways to improve how we relate to and experience it, is a necessary part of dealing with infertility — and it can dramatically increase your chances of getting pregnant. That's why Conceivable's custom mindfulness techniques for limiting stress are such a big part of our fertility enhancement program. Check out the rest of the program here: