Relax? The Truth About Stress and Infertility By Guest Blogger Helen Adrienne

While the map laid out in Nicola Menke’s article “Trouble starting a family? See a doctor – and relax” under Health News on Monsters and Critics http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/health/news/article_1659651.php/Trouble-starting-a-family-See-a-doctor-and-relax) offers basic advice about a medical workup to determine why you’ve not conceived, the inference (you’re not getting pregnant because of your psychological state and you need to relax) is unfair.

First of all, a failure to conceive will cause anxiety, not necessarily the other way around. But if there is a psychological reason that you are not conceiving, it would be out of conscious awareness. Therefore to infer blame is counterproductive. Furthermore, whether others are insinuating that you are implicated in your infertility or whether you are accusing yourself, what is often left out of the story is that when unconscious processes or beliefs are exposed, the issue can be resolved. If psychotherapeutic support is recommended, it is presented without this reason to be hopeful. Instead, it feels as if you are somehow physically and mentally defective.

If no physical obstacle to pregnancy can be found, it may seem natural to suspect a psychological one, but it is not logical. The mind/body connection is infinitely complicated. The last thing you need is to feel judged. There could be either an obscure physical diagnosis or an emotional detail (or both) that may not be known but which explains the situation.

Once you are struggling with conception, it doesn’t mean you “created” your infertility. One thing about the title is true: there is no down side to learning to relax. It can help. You need your body to be in a state of receptivity. If you are on the edge of your chair with worry, your body, logically, is in a state of tension. Given the reality of infertility, this cannot be helped. There’s too much at stake. But you can actively reverse the physiology of stress. By so doing, you can feel back in control of your life again. My book On Fertile Ground: Healing Infertility can serve as one of your tools to help reclaim control.

Helen Adrienne’s heart has been in private practice since 1979 both as a general therapist, working with individuals and couples on a multitude of issues, and as a specialist providing mental health services to reproductive and gynecologic patients. Helen maintains offices in New York City and Bergen County, New Jersey. She also conducts mind/body stress reduction classes at NYU Fertility Center for patients and educates mental health professionals on the parameters of infertility at national and international conferences. She has authored many articles on infertility. Helen’s book, On Fertile Ground: Healing Infertility, is written for infertility patients and those who want to understand them.