Accepting it is Tough
An unsuccessful IVF cycle can be devastating. So often striving towards a goal of getting pregnant with such focus and dedication can mean we fail to recognise the struggle the journey can be. We can fail to acknowledge how tough this can be physically and emotionally.
Most people underestimate the level of stress that this journey can create, even before getting to the IVF stage. A Harvard Medical School study demonstrated that the stress levels of women experiencing infertility were equivalent to those with AIDS, cancer and heart disease. And no one tells them just to relax!
Understanding What You Are Feeling
The text I got from my wife had no meaning until I gave it meaning. The competitor moving in across the street means nothing, until I give it meaning. The down turn in the housing market means nothing, until I create a meaning for it. Feelings that prevent me from having peace of mind and hope for the future are caused by thoughts and not by circumstances.
Events cannot cause feelings they just don't have that power. It's not how our mind works. The biological computer that is our mind processes thoughts. That's it. Thoughts. We live in the experience of our thinking, nothing else. Our feelings don't know anything about our circumstances and they definitely don't know anything about the future because the future doesn't exist, except in our thinking.
However feels like it is coming from the circumstances. That is the illusion of thought and feelings. In the same way it appears that the earth is flat and it seems like the sun goes down at night. We misinterpret a lot until we understand how things really work. Until we understand we are only ever feeling our thinking we shall be chasing our tail of thinking and getting more and more caught up in the rollercoaster of emotions.
Pain Passes Because Thought Moves on.
We look at a situation through a set of thinking, a state of mind. It is like looking at a situation through a long cardboard tube. We see a perspective.
Imagine there is a vertical stack of tubes. We may be looking at the situation through the lowest tube, the lowest level of consciousness. We think that is 'reality', unaware that we have the capability of seeing and experiencing the situation through any other level of consciousness at any given moment.
This is why sometimes things feel better than others even when our circumstances haven't changed.
Thinking comes and it goes by it's nature. You couldn't hold on to a feeling (even anger at your partner!) for ever even if you wanted to. They say time heals all wounds. Time doesn't healing anything because we are only ever feeling our thinking. It is the changes in our thinking over time that changes our experience.
Predicting the Future
Our thinking has a habit of telling us what something means for our future. After a failed IVF is easy to get caught into the story of what that means for your future, about whether you will ever have children, will you ever find true happiness and fulfilment.
The thing is, nothing can predict the future not even your thinking. You have no idea what is going to happen the next five minutes let alone next month or next year. Our thinking plays an imaginary movie of the future in our mind that so plausible and believable we forget it's a movie, that it's made up. Any thought that is not in the present moment is pure fantasy. We often think of fantasy as unrealistic things like people flying. However any thought that is not in the present moment is pure fantasy.
Come back to the here and now, that's where you'll find peace of mind, perspective and clarity about what is next for you.
It's Not Your Fault
Often after an IVF failure clients can tend to blame themselves for it not working. They think that perhaps if they had looked after themselves more or taken more supplements or this/that/the other things may be different. Our thinking likes reasons for things.
The truth is fertility is an art as well as a science. If it were a pure science you wouldn't be reading this as the scientists would have it cracked 100% by now.
The doctors often learn something about your body on each cycle so may have some recommendations for future treatment, other than that stop looking for reasons, it doesn't serve you as you tend to lose perspective when you go down that route. You end up chasing your thinking tail.
What Next?
When something like a failed IVF cycle stirs up your thinking and sends you down the emotional rollercoaster it can be hard to decide what the next step might be. When it comes to complex problems you cannot think your way to clarity because it is thinking prevent you having clarity in the first place.
Solutions to complex problems or decisions come in moments of quiet. When we have a quiet mind you access your intuition and instinct which is a much better guidance mechanism to life than your thinking.
My advice would be allow space. Some space to focus on Project You, a break from Project Baby. Some space for you body and mind to heal and restore. Some space to hear your inner wisdom which is wrapped in a blanked of innate wellbeing. You will find some resources to support your Project You on my website www.thefertilemind.net