infertility: a road to the mind

(in) Fertility. A road to mind!

You started a fertility treatment.

Full of hope and ready to beat the statistics…

The anxiety about the results skyrockets as the deadline for the positive result approaches. 11 -15 days of agony.

Few hours of heart beating until the first test gives the result.

Desperation and pain, when it shows negative. Your mind is wrecked: “why it went wrong? It was something I did or I didn’t? The chosen doctor was a wrong choice? Maybe was the embryologist?

Was I too anxious? Too quiet?”

You need answers. And the next minute, you are ready to go for another cycle…

For the majority of couples fertility treatment starts suddenly without any psychological and mental preparation, since all the focus goes on the body.

Terms like natural cycle, egg (or sperm donation), in vitro fertilization all of a sudden get attached to the everyday conversation.

The pain for the “failure of the body”, the agony, the possible anger and the anxiety get pushed at the edge of the mind.

The sexual life can be compromised, the secrecy that can accompany this treatment is a huge burden. Step by step the couple may start a cycle that unconsciously but steadily erodes the everyday life in all levels. All discussions turn around the “situation”. The woman’s life gradually obtains only one dimension: this of the fertility issue. And the man’s life gets easily overturned, trying to find resources in the work or the hobbies.

If the result is positive a new cycle of anxiety can augment because of fears (will everything go Ok?). If the couple has experienced earlier a miscarriage the fear gets multiplied. If the result is negative, the couple and especially the woman may go through a mourning and depression period.

But more often than not, those mourning feelings don’t have an outlet because the next treatment preparation may be around the corner. The woman’s life revolves more intensely around “The only issue that matters”.

Anxiety often leads to eating foods that do not help the body, hinders movement and exercise, and reduces the laugh.

For every unlike result or miscarriage more fear, anxiety, pain, anger, sorrow adds in.

These emotions, thoughts and behaviors can have an accumulative negative influence on the results of IVF treatment, if they go undetected and untreated.

Unfortunately, in most cases, the couple and the doctor think that there is no time to deal with the thoughts and feelings. The important field is the body and the medical history. Psychological and mental support are offered only when the woman is so devastated, that she is not able to respond to the medical treatment. And in many of those cases she is offered pharmaceutical help in order to relax.

Conception and pregnancy are all about joy, happiness, fulfillment, relaxation, endorphins (the hormones of joy and happiness), calmness. They are all about body harmony and welcome of the pregnancy.

But when the negative emotions that often start residing in mind and soul from the moment of the diagnosis, get untreated, the couple is trying to produce a child in the middle of mourning. And the more the time and the efforts, the heavier the difficult emotions.

In addition, before even a therapy starts 30% of infertility cases are often without a strong medical diagnosis.

What can be done then?

Preparation before medical treatment is the secret.

The systematic, gradual, focused psychological and mental preparation produces miracles on body, literally maximizing the medical possibilities.

Beliefs and emotions are in reality chemical and electrical signals into our body.

Positive beliefs, thoughts and feelings create neurological, endocrinal and chemical paths into the body that literally uplift the whole cellular and histological function. (On the contrary, negative beliefs, thoughts and emotions result in a decrease to cellular function).

Consequently, when we start a medical therapy “well primed and prepared” our whole system can create the best possible –and even miraculous) results. But what is this preparation?

The preparation consists of (re ) discovering the strength, power and unlimited possibilities that are housed into our body. Because our body is a miraculous organism. Given the opportunity, it can unleash this power , be healed and be radiantly healthy.

The therapist’s and the doctor’s role is to facilitate the body to find its own strength and possibilities.

We do have to remember that in Greece the country of Asklepieus and Hippokrates, therapy and treatment was a holistic experience. In Asklepia , the healing medical places, the people had to undergo first an emotional , mental , spiritual and body healing and reformation and then to undergo the actual medical action (if ever needed!).

So in order to have a functional body we have first to respect it and be harmonized with radiant positive thoughts and feelings.

Our body needs the support and obeys the quality of feelings and thoughts.

Changing the feelings and thoughts we change the function.

Because fertility starts from the mind!

Antigone Oreopoulou, B.Sc., M.Sc.,M.A. Biologist, Psychotherapist