How to Cope With Infertility Treatment

When you undergo infertility treatments, you face a host of physical and practical challenges, including tiring procedures and making time for doctors’ appointments. It’s not uncommon to experience profound stress throughout this trying and overwhelming process.

“Infertility represents a life crisis, and for many people, it’s the most stressful event they’ve ever encountered,” says Janetti Marotta, Ph.D., former mind-body coordinator at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation’s Fertility Program, who supports people through fertility challenges. “Infertility impacts the most important areas of our lives: our relationships, our careers, our finances—even our sense of self.”

But more than anything, Marotta says, infertility signals a loss of control. And unlike other life endeavors, stepping up your efforts doesn’t necessarily lead to success. In fact, “when you use the coping mechanism of control to deal with a situation of immense uncertainty, the harder you try, the more broken you feel,” she says. “Rather than experiencing infertility as a medical condition, many people view it as a personal failure.”

How a Mind-Body Approach Helps

Mind-body medicine empowers you to identify and separate out what you can control from what you can’t. This, in turn, helps to mitigate stress and encourages you to take better care of yourself. “Rather than stress having you in its grip, you learn to have stress in your grip—and then let it go,” Marotta says. “Optimal medical care requires optimal self-care.”

Adding mind-body practices on top of infertility treatment pressures might sound overwhelming. But in reality, you’ll generate additional energy for facing the challenges. “The investment you make in caring for yourself is minuscule compared to the rewards you will reap,” Marotta says.

A cornerstone of mind-body medicine is mindfulness. “Mindfulness means being aware of the present moment without judging your thoughts, emotions, physical feelings or surroundings as ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’” Marotta says. “Rather than getting lost in rehashing the past or rehearsing the future, mindfulness places you in the present moment—where your strength resides and where it’s possible to choose your response.”

By squelching self-judgments, mindfulness reframes infertility as an opportunity. “By choosing mindfulness to travel the twists and turns of this roller-coaster ride,” Marotta says, “you’re choosing to reclaim your life.”

Try these three simple, do-anywhere mindfulness practices to help you deal with strains that often accompany infertility treatment.

Breathe With Your Diaphragm

Consciously take two or three slow, deep, long “belly breaths” to turn off your body’s stress response and turn on your relaxation response, Marotta says. Invite each breath to slow and deepen on its own, and focus on how your belly inflates as you inhale and deflates as you exhale.

Over the next two to three minutes, feel the breath’s current run through your body. “Ride upon the breath wave—breath by breath, moment by moment,” she says.

Relax Without Judgment

When you feel symptoms of anxiety or depression coming on, consciously pause, slow down and deepen your breathing. As you take belly breaths, notice your thoughts, but resist judging or acting upon them; notice your emotions, but don’t try to change them. Take stock of your physical sensations, and focus your attention there. Is there tension or tightness in your neck, jaw, chest and hands?

“With neutral attention, loosen your jaw and slowly circle your neck in one direction, then the other, and then massage your hands,” Marotta says. “While doing so, imagine breathing from your heart. On the in-breath, visualize the heart opening, widening and expanding; on the out-breath, visualize the heart softening, soothing and relaxing.” Once you’ve reached this relaxed, open awareness, take it with you to move through your day.

Capture the Moment

“Open up your senses to capture and enlarge the present moment,” Marotta says. For example, while washing dishes, feel the suds and warmth of the water, and notice how the plate looks as it transforms from dirty to clean. When walking through your neighborhood, feel your feet touching the ground and notice the sky, trees and houses surrounding you.

“Rather than simply getting yourself from here to there, you become fully present,” Marotta says. “This will help you shift focus from what's wrong to what’s not wrong so you can say ‘yes’ to life.”