Episode 64: Transcript

You are listening to episode 64 of the Path to Motherhood podcast.

Welcome to the Path to Motherhood podcast.

I'm your host and fertility life coach, Sarah Brandell.

Join us each week as we walk through navigating your trying to conceive journey.

My mission is to share the skills of managing your mind, processing emotions and living a full life to create a more authentic path to motherhood.

(upbeat music) Hello and welcome to the Path to Motherhood podcast.

I'm Sarah, your host, and I'm super excited to have you all here with me.

It is officially mid-December, which is kind of crazy, I guess in my mind, I'm thinking that this episode I'm recording is for mid-December.

And when I came about thinking, how are we gonna close out the year.

What topics are we gonna cover.

I really thought it was important to cover the topic that we discussed last week and that was about building emotional resilience and really being clear about that and just giving you guys ideas in ways that you can build emotional resilience and honestly buying into the fact that it's a worth doing because it can be so scary to open up to big emotions.

It can feel dangerous, honestly, to be willing to open up to our uncomfortable emotions and allow them to be there.

And it can also feel a little bit like, I don't know, I guess just uncertain.

For me, that was the case.

I didn't really know how to go about doing it when I first got started in this work and got coaching myself.

And so what I thought would be hopeful this week is actually to do a follow-up episode till last week about emotional resilience.

And my goal this time is kind of to like offer myself up.

That's like a case study.

And I say that to say that like, I'm going to walk through some of the areas where I can see that this work, this opening up to the pain, the allowing the pain made this process better.

And I use the word better on purpose because it's not easier, it's not less painful.

I mean, I would argue that it actually probably is, but that's not really the goal.

And so what I mean by that is that when we're practicing an emotionally resilient life and we are prioritizing opening up to our emotions and allowing them to be there authentically and honoring them, it's not that we get to live this life where we just get to be happy all the time.

That's not the case.

And I'm willing to bet that none of you actually want to feel that way.

You are going through tough stuff, infertility, pregnancy loss, disappointment, grief, frustration, financial stress, relationship stress.

And so to think that there would be a way that you would be navigating those things and just be positive, that's unrealistic.

And I don't wanna be that way, right.

Like when I'm walking this journey and I'm experiencing these painful things, I want to experience pain.

I remember working with my coach early on and really processing our pregnancy losses and coming to that conclusion.

Like I had been so resistant to the pain that I had really thought the only way out of it was to just feel happy, just feel positive.

And that was the only thing I really wanted.

And she really helped me to come to terms with the fact that I can't control the world.

I can't control the cards that I'm dealt.

I can't control my experiences.

I can't erase those pregnancy losses.

And I choose to want to honor them.

And part of honoring those losses is grieving them.

That means I am intentionally choosing a painful emotion.

I know I mentioned this last week and I'm harping on it again, but like life is not 100% positivity.

That's not the goal.

It's not.

The goal is to be authentic in our emotions and we will always be dealt 50% negative and 50% positive.

If we choose to numb out and avoid all of the negative, I find that that means it also numbs out and avoids all the positive.

So we have really insignificant emotions is kind of how I would describe it, which makes sense, right.

People will literally describe it as feeling numb.

And then if we choose to open up, open the door of that guest house and let those emotions in and experience them to their fullest, then we will be able to welcome in positivity to its fullest as well.

And I have seen that come true so many times in my own life and so many times in my clients' lives and so I just believe in this work so much that it's worthy to me of two back-to-back episodes talking about this.

And so like I said I really just am going to walk through today some examples of that.

I'm trying to think of where to start.

I think one of the most common places that we all kind of begin this work on is the two week wait.

And that's just because it's such a stressful time.

It's such a heated emotion time.

It comes if you are able to try every month on a monthly basis.

You know, there's reasons that it might not be every single month, but two week waits have a lot of drama around them.

A lot of fear.

People are really terrified of getting their hopes up.

People are really terrified of feeling anxious for the whole two weeks and they just want to fast forward through and get to the answer etc.

And I relate to that because I felt all of those things.

I dreaded them and also was excited for them.

I was afraid to feel any of the emotions.

I had heard all the advice about distracting yourself through the two week wait and scheduling trips and reading books and doing things with friends so you don't have to think about what is the two week wait.

And I just came to realize after going through so many years of infertility that distraction avoidance was not working.

I was still stressed.

I was still anxious.

I was still worried.

I was still freaking out.

I still had anxious thoughts running all day.

I was talking to my husband about should we test, should we not test all the time.

He was finding it really simple to be like, We can't know anything yet.

So why think about it.

And I was like, you're crazy.

And it was driving me crazy.

Literally, I felt like I was going crazy.

And so this was one of those first areas that I thought, look, I've done this for years.

And the way that I'm going about it isn't working.

I'm feeling miserable every single two weeks.

And then I get the period and I'm even more miserable.

And I'm grieving the unsuccessfulness of the two week wait.

I just need a new way to approach this or else I can't keep going through this process.

And so that is when I decided I was gonna try a different way.

And for those of you that don't know, I actually turned this concept into a workbook, the two-week wait workbook, which you can download for free.

And it literally was born out of months and months and months of two week waits with disappointment and just realizing there had to be a better way.

And so what I did was I told myself, "Listen Sarah, you don't have to just be consumed by the negativity, the fear, the doubt, the anxiousness for the entire two weeks.

" Right.

I think that was the fear that I would be that way.

I would be consumed 24/7 for two weeks straight if I opened up to those emotions.

But what I decided was I don't, I don't plan to do that.

That's not really what I'm looking for.

But what if I gave myself the opportunity to just check in just for a few minutes on a regular basis and see what kind of impact that makes on my two week weight.

And so that's exactly what I did.

I decided that every morning, this was just the time that and that made sense for me in a way that I could kind of turn it into a habit, I would just check in and ask myself, "Sara, how are you feeling.

What are you thinking today.

What's going on.

" And sometimes, typically earlier on in the cycle, I would feel excited.

I would feel hopeful.

I would be like, "Maybe this is the one.

" And then a few days in, a weekend, I would start to think, "I don't know, I'm feeling doubt, feeling worry, I'm feeling anxious.

I wish this two weeks was over so I could know the answer.

" And I just would take less than five minutes, honestly some days just two minutes, to literally just check in with myself.

No journaling, no conversing with anybody, just checking in while I was still in bed before I got out of bed.

How am I feeling today.

What's going on for me.

What's coming up.

And this gave me the opportunity to check in with those emotions and open up with those emotions.

in what I consider like a constrained environment, like a container.

So it didn't feel like I was gonna be overwhelmed with them all day long.

It felt like, okay, I can look into this, I can think about this for a few minutes in the morning, and then I can put it back down and I can go about what I need to go about.

And I was apprehensive if that was gonna work, right.

Like I wasn't sure, but I decided to try it.

And I gave it a couple of cycles, I gave it a couple months, and this is what I did.

and very quickly what happened is I recognized, hey, I am actually feeling more hope.

I'm actually feeling more excitement.

I'm actually feeling more calm in these two week waits where I open up to the fear, pain, anxiety, doubt, then when I try to avoid.

And those little moments of just checking in with myself allowed me to check in, say, yes, brain, I hear you, I see you, of course you're worried, of course you're thinking, what if this isn't the cycle.

I'm sorry, I wish that wasn't the case, but of course you're worried about it.

And it would allow my brain to then say, okay, you heard me.

And then I could go about my day and experience life and live my life and experience all the other emotions that life has to offer rather than just be completely distracted by the two week wait all day, every single day.

It became this way for the two week wait to just feel like so much less of a burden.

And honestly, like I was able to get to a point where I didn't fear the two week wait anymore.

I didn't feel so scared to approach the two week wait anymore.

And that was just so nice to be able to develop that.

And so that is one of my favorite skills to share with people.

That's why I turned it into the two week wait workbook because I know it can be such a stressful time.

And I think it's just such a perfect example of this concept of building emotional resilience, of how opening up, even just for a couple minutes a day can truly transform your experience of the process.

So that is the first example.

Another example would be losses.

And I would say that I really didn't start doing coaching work like and what I mean by coaching work is working with a coach myself on infertility and pregnancy loss topics.

So getting support for my own journey until 2021.

So that means that this was after I had gone through my third pregnancy loss.

And I think the burnout and disappointment and grief that I went into post my third loss is really what prompted me to seek support and seek it from someone who I trusted, who was my coach.

And I'm so grateful to her that she was willing to support me at that time.

And I've actually not been through another pregnancy loss per se since then.

Now I've been through disappointments, I've been through failed cycles, lost embryos, and things that are, in my opinion, similar to pregnancy loss in a way.

But I haven't been through an actual pregnancy loss since really putting coaching to work on my infertility journey.

What I would say is that I can look back to, you know, going through my first pregnancy loss and I very much was in extreme fear that first time.

I have said this before, I think I truly believed if I were to stop and let myself feel the pain and the grief of what had just happened and really like acknowledge the fear my brain was offering of you just had a pregnancy loss, maybe this will never happen for you.

I don't think I thought I was capable of experiencing those emotions.

And so I think I really did go directly to distraction mode.

And I did that by getting through the DNC that I had to have and immediately focusing in on the next cycle and trying to conceive the next cycle and just trying to get past that experience.

I think that did me a hindrance because it was almost as if I was trying to trick myself into believing if I can just keep moving and have positive news, then I don't have to grieve this painful process.

But it was still there.

I was carrying that grief, I was carrying that pain through my entire pregnancy with my daughter.

It really took time for me to realize that and open up to that.

And I think fostered more fear in my pregnancy because I had not actually grieved that loss.

Now, this is not to say that grief, you know, is something that you can finish, right.

I don't believe that.

I think it's something that I would still have carrying in me today regardless of what I would have done then.

But I definitely think I could have done more with that first loss.

And then when we started trying for our second, We experienced two more pregnancy losses.

And I think that those ones left me very much almost like paralyzed.

And I think in a way, like I got to that emotional burnout state through those two losses, but I'm grateful that I recognized that.

I saw that myself.

I knew that was happening.

I was already getting coaching in other areas of my life.

I was already like investigating, becoming a coach to support other women.

And I didn't know exactly what area I was gonna support people in.

Maybe I was just gonna be a general life coach.

But having been in that place of so much pain in early 2021 caused me to reach out like I said and get support on this topic.

And I'm so grateful to myself because I did that, right.

I recognized the signs of the burnout and the almost becoming numb to the process and the need to stop, pause, and really check in with myself.

See where I was at, what I was going through, what I was experiencing, and really just take care of myself through this process.

And what I think that that allowed for me to do is one, grieve all three of my losses.

And that process is still happening to this day.

I still think of those losses.

I still wonder what could have been, right.

They're never gonna go away.

The intensity has changed, the frequency has changed, but I'm grateful to have begun that grieving process.

But what I think that that did was that allowed me the willingness to try again, to risk another loss and go out there and try again.

And that is a big deal because a lot of us can get stuck in.

I truly don't think I could survive another loss.

I truly don't think I could survive this pain again.

And therefore I won't try again.

And I am grateful that I didn't get stuck there.

I could have, but I didn't because I did grief because I did go through that process.

And it allowed me to be willing to take the risk.

And so I'm grateful to that.

And then similar concept, the last example I will give you is that there's a lot of frustration that comes up when you get deeper into infertility treatment.

So when you are doing more involved treatments, so especially what I mean is like with the IUIs, but more so with IVF of at least personally with my clinic, having to wait periods of time between cycles, wait for retrievals to happen, wait for things to line up, wait for appointments.

Deciding that I wanted to do IVF and then doing our first transfer, I think was a six month process.

And then when that first transfer failed, I had to wait two more months before the next one.

And when that one failed, I had to wait three more months for the next one.

So there was a lot of waiting in there.

And that waiting was a time where I had to sit with a lot of thoughts and a lot of emotions.

And some of it was just annoyance and frustration of the waiting, right.

And I dealt with that and worked through that.

And I think I've shared in the past that I can see that that is the case because the weight for our last transfer was the least frustrating.

I was the least annoyed and I think that really comes from all of the emotional work that I did over that time.

But one of the biggest fears that I think really tends to come up in these waiting periods when you're really just like so focused on getting to that next cycle, so interested and getting there and so hopeful it's gonna be the one that works is this thought that would come up of what if it doesn't happen.

What if it never works.

And that fear, that thought can do a couple different things for people.

I have seen people become completely paralyzed by that thought to the point that they don't try.

I have seen people make really honestly uneducated poor rushed decisions for their own personal situation because of that thought.

I have seen people like spin out an indecision and just like not make a decision and just waste time because of that thought.

And I think that the year of going through IVF and then a year prior to that of going through IUIs and all of that waiting and having that thought come up time and time and time again and having to have conversations with it and allow it to be there and process all of the pain and frustration and honestly just despair and a common emotion that I identified with this thought was hopelessness.

of just feeling so out of control, so unable to really decide if I was going to be able to make things successful, right.

Because we can't.

This is not all in our control.

Some of it we have to toss up to the universe and see what happens.

I know that I would not have been able to keep going, keep trying, keep taking the next step.

Keep moving on if I didn't navigate the pain that was that thought.

If I didn't have time set aside dedicated to where I checked in with myself when I was having that thought.

And I'm grateful, grateful to myself for having given myself that time.

types of situations like I said it's similar to the grieving of the losses.

They are the experiences, the conversations I had with myself, with my husband, with my journal, with my coach that allowed me the confidence to keep going, to trust that I could try again and if it didn't work out take care of myself through that pain.

And I'm grateful to myself for having done that.

I only am here today expecting our second child because I was willing to keep going, because I was willing to take the risk.

And that comes from allowing the emotions, allowing the pain.

So I really hope some of these examples that I give you just from my own experience give you ideas of where you could start practicing this work in your own journey and see what changes it makes to your experience.

I truly think it can make such a world of difference.

And that's what I have for you this week.

Sometimes I think hearing other people's examples can really just make it better solidified.

And so that's what I wanted to do for you.

And if you are kind of wavering through this and trying to figure this out, message me.

Share what you're going through, share what you're working on, share what you're trying to process and experience in a different light.

I would love to know about it.

And I also would love to support you.

So if you're ready to have your own support person, your own coach on your team guiding you through this process, click apply in the show notes and schedule a consult call so we can talk about getting you on the coaching schedule.

I hope you guys have a great week and I will talk to you all next week.

Hey there, Inspired Mama.

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I would love to get this into the ears of anyone who needs to hear it.

If you are ready to step this work up and not only learn these tools, but to apply them to your unique story, head to the link in the show notes to apply for a free consult call.

I would be honored to help you.

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