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Could your stress levels be impacting your fertility?
Are you stressed because you are having trouble conceiving? Absolutely!
Are you having trouble conceiving because of stress? Ah, yep, very likely.
Have you been told “just relax and it will happen”? Arrrgghh! of course you have – as if you haven’t tried to relax, right?!
What are some of the things that might be causing you stress?
Facing a future without a family
Trying to be heard and understood by friends and family
Carrying to full term when you have experienced miscarriage after miscarriage
Another failed round of IVF and the toll it takes on your mind and your body
Sex becoming robotic and routine
Taking more time off work for tests, treatment, appointments, grief and loss
The money you have worked so hard for being sucked up by expensive fertility treatments.
And the list goes on and on! Sound familiar?
So, does stress cause infertility?
The short answer is yes. Stress activates our stress response – technically called our sympathetic nervous system – or what you probably know as the fight, flight or freeze response.
Yeah, but infertility is a physical thing, right? What is the stress response and why does it matter to me when I’m trying to conceive?
The stress response is a mental and a physical thing. It was designed to help us conserve our internal resources to face a current threat, like being eaten by a tiger. Originally this was to keep humans safe from predators, but nowadays the predators are pressures. For most people it’s pressures like work stressors or relationship stressors. When you add infertility your stress levels reach another planet!
Infertility and the stress of not being able to conceive or carry to full-term are major threats to how you see the rest of your life. Your stress response is activated 24/7 and that decreases your chances of conceiving and carrying full-term.
Did you know that distress is the most common reason women cease fertility treatment? It all becomes way too much to handle. Too much day-in and day-out. And of course if you drop out of treatment where to then?
You need to Unlock Your Fertility Through Mindful Moments
While a nice relaxing bath is fab, you need more than the odd bubble bath to relax your whole nervous system, right?
Research on the MindBody Program for Fertility shows that women who continue through the program have a huge reduction in their levels of anxiety, depression and stress – right down to their core. This is partly because we use mindfulness and meditation – along with other techniques and strategies – to calm that stressed central nervous system both emotionally and physically. Being a part of the MindBody Program for Fertility you are more likely – if you are in treatment – to stay in it longer and you are definitely more likely to achieve your dream of parenthood.
I see my support of women experiencing infertility as a way of partnering with them to decrease their stress levels, whether they are the cause or the result of their infertility journey. Whether you are in treatment or not, we are able to Unlock Your Fertility Through Mindful Moments.
We can’t remove the stress of this important life journey for you, but you can interact with it differently. What we can do is walk it with you, so you don’t get overwhelmed, stuck and taken down by the stress that is your fertility journey.
Unlocking Your Fertility Through Mindful Moments supports you to let go of the damaging stress response and elicit what is known as the relaxation response (more on this later) and this will give you the best chance of getting through the struggle that is your fertility journey.
Wondering whether infertility is the new PTSD? Or would you like to learn more about how I can support you through your infertility journey? Click here for a chat and we can get you started.