Therapy for Infertility and Fertility Challenges

Infertility can be a complex and distressing experience, affecting not only your physical health but also your emotional well-being, relationships, and overall quality of life. Therapy provides a place for you to express your feelings, process your emotions, and manage the various stressors that accompany infertility and fertility treatments.

Here are some of the areas that I’ve found that therapy around infertility can help you:

1.     Emotional Support: There are SO many emotions that can come along infertility. Sadness, frustration, anger, guilt, anxiety, rage, and depression. Therapy is time just for you each week where you can openly talk about your feelings without having to take care of anyone else. We’ll pay special attention to any negative thought patterns that might be unhelpful and experiment with more helpful ways to talk to yourself.

2.     Communication and Relationships: The stress and uncertainty of infertility can strain relationships, leading to misunderstandings and conflicts and feelings of isolation. In therapy, we can talk about how to express your needs, navigate difficult conversations, and support your partner.

3.     Decision-Making: There are so many decisions to make when going through fertility treatments and/or deciding where to go next when it comes to building your family. We can talk about options, timing, potential outcomes, and all of the fear and feelings that this brings up for you.

4.     Managing Expectations: Fertility treatments can be emotionally draining and unpredictable. We can talk about how to manage expectations by having a realistic understanding of the process, potential outcomes, and the emotional ups and downs that you may experience.

6.     Grief and Loss: For many, infertility represents a loss of a dream or a vision of your future and what you thought your family-building experience would be like. We make plenty of space to process these feelings allowing you to grieve and gradually move forward. Examples of losses may include: a diagnosis of infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, termination for medical reasons (TFMR), a failed embryo transfer, moving onto donor gametes, etc.

7.     Self-Care: Treatments can become all-consuming. We can talk about what it looks like to take care of yourself during this time so you that can still feel like a person.

8.     Building Resilience: How do you support yourself and focus on what you do have control over? By prioritizing your own self-care and tending to your own experience, you might find that you’re better equipped to handle the challenges that come with fertility treatments.

9.     Post-Treatment Support: Therapy can, but doesn’t necessarily need to end once fertility treatments are complete. You may want continued support during the post-treatment phase, whether it involves pregnancy, post-partum, adoption, or adjusting to a life without biological children.