Answer from:
Can infertility or sub-fertility rather, be psychological?
Let me start by saying this –
Sub-fertility is a biological phenomenon with psychological issues and a psychological state with biological consequences.
And at the heart of this question lies the MIND – BODY connection.
The connection between MIND and BODY is extensively researched and well documented. The evidence is overwhelming
A couple of examples:
There are many studies proving mental rehearsal can be equally effective as physical practice – like the Harvard Medical School experiment of Dr Pascual Leone and his team, who noticed similar neurological stimulation and performance between people mentally practicing the piano and those doing it physically.
Or Placebo studies, where a control group is given a ‘monkey’ pill instead of the real thing and they still notice improvement in their symptoms…
As we said before – our Mind cannot tell between what is real and what is not!
And yes, the statement that Sub-fertility can be psychological may sound scary to some. It means our psychology can negatively influence our desired outcome.
However, I invite you to examine another possibility –
What if our psychology could influence our outcome in a positive way! How cool would that be?
And it happens –
that is the power and effect of the MINDSET: our state and way of thinking, feeling and being when we enter a challenging situation, defines to a great extent our OUTCOME.
So just consider how much strength and resilience you could muster should you choose to make your psychology and your mindset your ALLY rather than a saboteur?
Just think!
Answer from:
This is a really tricky question to answer because, unfortunately, the jury is still out. Some studies have shown that stress does impact infertility and we often know through popular culture that how stressed we are does have an impact on our bodies, but some of the studies have shown not and so the jury is still out in terms of whether infertility’s psychological reasons can actually cause infertility.
In my own practice, I have seen in the minority of cases that it can be psychological when we have a previous trauma or serious relationship issues. Often it’s related to something else going on or had gone on in someone’s life that has had an impact on there, and the other thing is around miscarriage. I often find women very fearful of getting pregnant again because they’re fearful of the same thing happening again and the pain which is, of course, very normal and natural. In those respects sometimes the psychological aspects can really impact infertility but in the majority of cases it is around that stress, worry, and depression is one factor within infertility. Infertility is often multi-factorial. It can be a variety of things whether it be a potential diagnosis that you may have but it may also be around diet or movement or your environment so there are so many different factors that can cause infertility or just many factors all adding up together. So, if you’re looking into this, it does tell me that you are looking and needing some more support in this area and know that there is so much support out there for you. I encourage you to reach out for the kind of support that you need.
Answer from:
It’s a very interesting subject because for many women in their lives they are quite used to being in control of what happens to them and they are very good at achieving the outcomes that they want and the goals that they have set for themselves. They’ve learned probably from a long time ago as a child that if you make your effort you will achieve your goal: all you have to do is put in the right effort in the right way and you will you will succeed and so like when they do their exams at school they work hard they study hard they apply themselves and sure enough they get good grades in their exams maybe they might go on to university and you just have to really take it seriously you study hard, you apply yourself and you can come out with a good qualification a good degree at the end. You then want a good job and so you know you do your research for the company that you’re applying to and you make yourself a good presentation and you make yourself familiar so that when you do your interview you perform really well and then you get the job that you want. Maybe in the meantime you find the man of your dreams and you want to marry him and so you plan and prepare this fantastic wedding and the perfect day and you prepare and organize. You know control everything so that it all goes really well on the day and then maybe you have a promotion coming up and so you work really hard and you do all the things you’ve got to do. By the time women are in there like maybe late 20s early 30s they have learned that they can control the outcomes of their endeavour. They can make what they want to happen. Then they decide they want to have a baby and they try. They first of all try and they can see all their friends after two or three or four or six months or start falling pregnant and they think well you know that’s going to be me any minute now and then of course it doesn’t happen. Time passes and the months go by and it’s not happening and it’s not happening. Then they start to be like: hang on a minute. The next thing that happens is google and they go into google and they start to find out what can I do and what can I do to get myself pregnant. As I understand it there’s an absolute avalanche of information of what you should and shouldn’t do, what you should or shouldn’t eat, what you should or shouldn’t drink, what supplements you should or shouldn’t take, what you should do and not do in terms of exercise I mean. By all accounts there’s just a wealth of information out there for women who want to do the absolute best they can to get themselves pregnant. They apply the same rules to this that they’ve applied to everything else and why wouldn’t they it’s kind of blindingly obvious so of course you just apply yourself and you can get this baby… so off they go and very intensively very proactively with a great deal of very conscientiously they do everything they need to do to get pregnant. Then it doesn’t work and the shock is just absolutely. They ‘re like I don’t get it! I don’t understand! How I did everything! I did everything I could and it’s still not working! …and then it begins to dawn and then if it dawns or whether I you know whether I discuss with them that this is something you finally come across something in your life in your existence that you have no actually no control over you cannot make a baby happen through your effort it’s not like anything else you’ve done before and it’s very very shocking. Really shocking because it’s that most women who are effective and, you know, ambitious and they a lot of people will save their self confessed control freaks. They like to plan, they like to organize and they are used to making things happen and most women that I speak to this applies to them and then suddenly here they are in this world.It doesn’t matter what they do, how hard they work, how much effort they make, how they apply the so-called rules as it were that are going to make them pregnant, make this baby it doesn’t matter how hard they try, they can’t make it happen. It’s a bit of a kind of a huge jolt of reality jolt. I don’t even know how to describe it to realize that my god you know this isn’t something I am in control of and to be honest with you I don’t think anybody is. There isn’t a single fertility specialist in the world that can tell someone yes you’ll definitely get pregnant on this cycle or you’ll definitely get pregnant on that embryo transfer or you definitely – nobody can because it seems to be I don’t know what: down to mother nature or biology or chance…I don’t even know what and of course that’s not to say women shouldn’t eat well and be healthy and not drink and not smoke and do all those good things and of course you want to feel you did your best but I do know it can cause a huge amount of distress to women who try so hard and then they feel really guilty because they think they’ve done something wrong or they didn’t do it well enough or they didn’t try hard enough or they could they must have done something wrong so there can be a bit of self-blame as well so it’s a very complicated area this notion of being in control or not of getting pregnant
