Infertility can put a devastating strain on your emotional well-being, relationships, and self- image.
Navigating the uncertain outcomes of fertility treatments, serious decision-making, and overwhelming side effects to treatments, is incredibly stressful.
As a psychologist, I cannot take away the source of the pain, but I can provide support and help you manage the emotional challenges.
Stress is not inherently bad
Stress is around for a reason. Stress can push us to achieve, respond to a crisis, and plan ahead.
The majority of the stress we experience on a daily basis is not of the healthy variety, however.
Many of my clients describe how specific worries and fears related to infertility crop up in their lives.
In some cases, they suddenly find themselves having frequent, exhausting fights with their husbands.
For others, relationships with colleagues become strained; work feels like an insufferable burden, and even normal, everyday interactions become fractious and irritating.
Infertility and stress
For most of us, stress impacts overall health and aggravates our underlying challenges. Study after study shows that chronic stress can impair everything, including the immune system, sleeping patterns, and concentration.
When you need your reproductive system firing on all cylinders, stress might be causing it to run at half-speed. More prosaically, everyone knows that an atmosphere of tension and discord at home is just not how babies get made.
Learning to manage stress can be an important part of negotiating this hurdle.
Tools to break the negative feedback loop
The good news is that this negative feedback loop can be turned into a positive one.
Learning how to make stress work for you and not against you takes time, but the benefits will last your whole life.
Even without mastering stress, you can get lucky. The next test could be positive and your stress will start melting away… but something is likely to bring stress right back into your life. It might be negotiating maternity leave, it might be finding a babysitter, or it might just be your beautiful – but demanding – baby boy or girl.
Coping with infertility stress can help you build resilience
In therapy, we will work together to develop skills and tools that you can use to make long-lasting, tangible improvements in your life.
Despite your struggles, you can add lifelong meaning and enrichment to your life.
You don’t have to face the emotional and medical challenges that infertility presents all alone. I would be privileged to help you get through this with strength and growth.
Please feel free to reach out to me so that we can see how I can be of help.
Get in Touch
Click here to make an appointment with Dr. Shira Kaufman Danzig, Licensed Clinical Psychologist