How to Stop Obsessing About Fertility
Video
14 min
00:00:00 Fatility struggles are something that can take over your entire life, not just physically but mentally and emotionally to where we never feel like we get a break from it. So today I want to give you some really important strategies for starting to feel a bit more free on your journey, not feeling so consumed by your fertility every single day, every single minute .
00:00:22 I'm Bella Hilton from Studio Fatility and have the privilege to work with women every day through the mental and emotional journey of fertility so they can every day through the mental and emotional journey of fertility so they can feel in control, heal from trauma and to improve their fertility outcomes and success. And I do this because I have first-hand experience on the fertility journey. I went through 10 long years of infertility,
00:00:44 IVF, and four miscarriages to get my beautiful baby boy, but I also have the tools and the training to be able to help women to change their experience. I'm a certified advanced life coach, master NLP practitioner and hypnofutilist and host of the Much Loved Studio Fatility practitioner and hypnofutilist and host of the Much Loved Studio Fatility podcast and I've worked with women all over the world doing this work. Now my story isn't like
00:01:08 anybody else's, just like yours is unique to you but all of us with that common thread, very rough fertility experiences. So today we want to find ways to stop obsessing about becoming pregnant without giving up entirely and improve your day-to-day experience so that you can actually stop thinking about fertility all the time and find some calm and some peace. Now I think
00:01:28 about fertility all the time and find some calm and some peace. Now I think that a lot goes into feeling more grounded, like healing your heart from what you've been through today on your journey, building back self-worth and self-esteem and so much more. But today I want to give you two quick wins that can make a big difference. So step number one today to not feeling so consumed is to
00:01:54 understand a little of how our brain works and why we become so obsessed and that is our focus. that is our focus. So the first thing I needed to do on my journey to change my experience was to change my focus and here is why. Where your focus goes your energy flows. Simply wherever we're putting our attention is the only way we can experience our world or experience that moment. We tend
00:02:21 to get so laser focused on fertility without any balance and that drives the obsessions. So we can't experience our world in any other way. We view everything kind of through a experience our world in any other way. We view everything kind of through a fertility lens. We're trying to find joy and we can't find it anymore. And the things we do on a daily basis, the way we
00:02:42 think, the way we feel about ourselves and our lives, the way we feel about our fertility, the miscarriage we're still paying from, the Google searches, the ping on sticks, etc. These are the things we do daily that reinforce that focus. It's like the 24/7 Infertility News channel which is News channel which is constantly on in our brains with doctors telling you proper sentences and
00:03:06 Google searches, returning grim outcomes and a whole bunch of other things telling you that it 'll never happen. How can you feel good and find hope with that in that environment? It's like putting yourself in a bubble and literally you can't, joy can't get in. So in order to start to find out joy or calm or peace, we need to change our day to day. We need to give our brains
00:03:27 calm or peace, we need to change our day to day. We need to give our brains that balance. We need to look at what is taking our focus and how we can change it. Now in a moment I 'm going to ask you to look around your room. The three seconds are known as all the blue things. Okay, three, two, one and go. Look around your room, two, one and stop and focus back on me. Now tell me without
00:03:52 looking one red thing in the room. It's likely you can't do it. Why? Because I told you to focus on blue and you told your brain to focus only on blue. This is how our brains are blue and you told your brain to focus only on blue. This is how our brains are looking for joy right now. We're noticing all the blue things being our fertility journey and wondering why we aren't able to conjure up a red thing. Peace, happiness, joy, laughter. So let
00:04:18 's ask a different question to get us started. This is step number two. What is keeping me so focused on my fertility that is not actually helping me and causing me a lot of anxiety, anguish and that is not actually helping me and causing me a lot of anxiety, anguish and overwhelming feelings. Now I can hear it. Those of you who are thinking, "But Bella, I have to focus on my fertility if I
00:04:39 want to get pregnant." And you absolutely do. But this is about finding balance . And we aren't always our own best friends when we're going through fertility. And often our environments are not set up to help us win because we've never been taught how to do this. And focusing all your attention on your fertility will ensure that other parts of your life atrophy attention on your fertility will ensure that other parts of your life atrophy
00:05:02 fall apart. For example, if the only thing you talk about in your relationship with your significant other is about your fertility or it's a major portion, your relationship will suffer because that is all your relationship becomes about the negatives that you're going through. If you constantly tinge every meal with thoughts of, "Are you eating the right foods?" then you'll
00:05:27 develop a bad relationship to food and panic every time you eat. If you can't talk about relationship to food and panic every time you eat. If you can't talk about anything other than fertility, so you have nothing to discuss with friends because your whole world is about your fertility, then your friendships will diminish. If you can't do anything without first running it
00:05:45 through a fertility lens, then that will be the only way you can experience your world or any moment. And if that isn't going well, you're going to feel pretty awful and feel like no one understands you and like your life is falling apart because it pretty much is. So how do we you and like your life is falling apart because it pretty much is. So how do we expand our focus just a little bit to help us find some balance? Well, one of the things you can
00:06:08 do with some things is to let go of the busy work. And what I call busy work is the tangible things that we latch onto and that we've fallen into the habit of doing but actually keep us stuck entirely in our fertility and actually cause us more anxiety and anguish than do any help, our fertility and actually cause us more anxiety and anguish than do any help, you know, help us in
00:06:31 any way. The things that have become bad habits and this will be different for everyone because what empowers one person may not empower another. So listen to my stories with that in mind when you're looking for the things for yourself that create the busy work. I just do obsess ively track my basal body temperature, BBT. Beat up on myself if I hadn't had the right amount of sleep and then
00:06:54 spend more and more time each day staring at these charts to try and analyze them and see patterns. them and see patterns. I wanted them to leap off the page and speak to me and tell me what was wrong, only they wouldn't do it. Not only that, I had no one working with me to tell me what they mean or how I could improve anything. I saw the dip for my ovulation, I saw the rise for my progesterone
00:07:17 but that was about it. This daily habit did not empower me. It showed me that it ovulated but other than that it kept me stuck. Similarly, I used to also Google things a lot and then go down these stuck. Similarly, I used to also Google things a lot and then go down these forum rabbit holes. This was before Facebook groups were a thing, before Facebook was a thing. So that would probably
00:07:39 be the equivalent today and these forums would act as support networks but actually they were extremely negative. Usually they had no one monitoring them that knew what they were doing or no one at all and they actually gave me absolutely no clarity or certainly about my own situation what I was meant to do. They did not help me, they kept me stuck in negative what I was meant to do. They did not help me, they kept me stuck in negative
00:08:02 stories and they kept me stuck. Now you need to figure out the things that are not giving you any room to find calm. They are the things that drain your energy and your ability to focus on anything else. For example, I had a client who had endometriosis and had gone through a very traumatic experience with her first pregnancy that didn't last and when she came to me and had been
00:08:25 a year since that time and she just wasn't conceiving again. Now the first thing we needed that time and she just wasn't conceiving again. Now the first thing we needed to do with her was to help her heal from that traumatic experience. It's hard to have trust or hope when we're carrying around that trauma but once we did that we said about also changing her focus and her daily thoughts
00:08:44 and habits. Her daily habits were born out of fear and her habits were reinforcing her fears. Once we started mitigating her fears and therefore her thoughts we started to let go of some of the daily habits that we identified for her were not serving her. For her that was daily habits that we identified for her were not serving her. For her that was tracking things like everything because for her we realized this tracking her BBT her cervical
00:09:10 mucus when she had sex, her period in depth and things like that just created this busy work for her that left no room for her brain to find any calm. Instead we worked out that she knew when she ovulated she was having plenty of sex. She didn't need to write anything down and track it down all those things and she leaned more into trust in herself, in her body and in her
00:09:29 things and she leaned more into trust in herself, in her body and in her intuition. She was actually delighted that someone told her it was okay to stop all that stuff and she got pregnant within two months. Now when I myself let go of the need to be perfect and try everything and stop tracking everything and lean into trust and intuition on my journey did I get pregnant
00:09:53 in two months? No. I'm not saying that's the answer to conception. I'm saying it's the answer to giving your brain more room for calm and helps with fertility because it is to giving your brain more room for calm and helps with fertility because it is very impactful. It helps us calm stress, calm down our nervous system but also when I change my focus to me and enjoying my life through looking at my mindset, my emotions, my self-worth
00:10:19 that was big for me. What my life was about, what else it was about, what was working for me, what was just causing me anxiety and I did what was necessary. I was feeling so much better that I was anxiety and I did what was necessary. I was feeling so much better that I was then able to make much better decisions that served me best on my fertility journey while I was still enjoying my
00:10:40 life which helped me get pregnant a lot sooner. Now we all do the busy work and follow all the latest things in fertility obsessively for two reasons. Number one to get pregnant, no brainer, number two to end what feels like this endless pain inside. But what if the path that ending path that ending the pain inside was also the path to getting pregnant sooner or making better
00:11:04 decisions for yourself? What if the path to doing what we can control and letting go of what we can't also meant we enjoyed our life, calm down our nervous system? Like I said, helped us make better decisions on the path to conceiving, helped us stay on the journey if we need more time to figure it all out. We're able to advocate more for ourselves, felt empowered, re-established
00:11:28 friendships, had better relationships and communication with our partner, would navigate had better relationships and communication with our partner, would navigate through the world more seamlessly, would that be worth it? In order to do that to find our calm, to find our peace, something needs to change and we need to set up our environments and our daily habits that
00:11:48 actually support us. Now just because I've mentioned BBT as disempowering to me when I did it, doesn't mean it is for you. It's never the actual thing that causes stress. Tracking your temperature Tracking your temperature is in a stressful exercise, being on a stick isn't a stressful exercise. But if that thing is bringing chaos to your brain right now, it's an activity that needs to go. So
00:12:12 it's not the thing, it's how it impacts us and the anxiety and anguish that it causes us. So for some, like I said, BBT tracking is stressful and isn't helping in any way. For some, it's empowering and that's great. And even still for some, it might have been really useful and empowering great. And even still for some, it might have been really useful and empowering in the beginning
00:12:33 because it helped with information. But now is no longer providing more information, is just creating busy work and not empowering anymore. Similarly, if we're testing for pregnancy six days out of every month and this causes you great anxiety, then you need to stop doing it or testing out your trigger shot for IVF because like I said, it's not the actual thing. But it
00:12:57 usually creates so much anguish and anxiety that we're just waiting for the usually creates so much anguish and anxiety that we're just waiting for the next time that we can do it again, rather than breathing through the urge to do it and doing something more empowering for ourselves. So today and from this point forward, let's concentrate on what we can do right now. Let's set up your environment to help you win. So the activity for
00:13:18 this video will be answering three questions. Number one, what is keeping you from feeling better and letting go of it? Where is your focus? Is your relationship super strained? Have you not healed Where is your focus? Is your relationship super strained? Have you not healed from a miscarriage? Do you need to see somebody? Are you obsessing about being perfect with supplements and charting?
00:13:39 Are you googling things every day? Are you sitting in really negative Facebook groups that masquerade as fertility support groups? For example, what are the things that are taking your focus that can often tell you what you might need to do next? But number two, what are you doing daily? That is not allowing your room to think about anything else. What are those That is not allowing your room to think about anything else. What are those
00:14:02 things? And number three, what will you commit to doing or stop doing this week to help you find more balance? [silence]
