Fertility Counselling & Support
Dealing with fertility issues is a complex and emotionally taxing journey that affects both men and women. While medical interventions can play a significant role in addressing the physical aspects of infertility, counselling offers essential support for the emotional and psychological challenges that accompany fertility struggles.
The benefits of counselling are far-reaching, including: emotional support, coping strategies, improved communication, and empowerment. As individuals and couples navigate the profound emotional toll of infertility, counselling provides a guiding light, offering hope, resilience, and a path toward emotional healing on their journey to parenthood.
The Emotional Challenges of Infertility
The emotional toll of fertility issues is profound and multifaceted. Individuals and couples facing infertility can experience a range of intense emotions, including:
- Stress & Anxiety: The uncertainty of fertility treatments, the financial burden, and the pressure to conceive can lead to elevated stress and anxiety levels.
- Disappointment & Desperation: Repeated disappointments can lead to feelings of helplessness and desperation, which stresses your system and negatively affects your fertility. The Rapid Therapy that we offer can significantly reduce the disappointment and desperation that are synonymous with fertility issues.
- Depression: Prolonged fertility challenges can contribute to depression, which can further hinder the chances of successful conception.
- Isolation: Infertility can lead to feelings of isolation and loneliness, as individuals and couples may withdraw from social circles to cope with their struggles.
- Loss & Grief: Failed attempts at conception, miscarriages, and feelings of loss associated with unfulfilled dreams of parenthood can develop to deep grief.
- Strained Relationships: The strain of fertility issues can put significant pressure on relationships, which can lead to strained communication and conflict.
The friendly team at Fertility Therapies can support you through all of the above. We provide a safe space, not only for you to share your feelings, but to explore them, find some relief from them, and maybe even heal the underlying cause.
The Role of Counselling in Fertility
Fertility counselling provides a safe and supportive space for individuals and couples to navigate the emotional complexities of infertility. Fertility issues affect everyone differently, so the counselling we offer will be tailored to your specific needs. Here are some of the emotional challenges we can help you through in your fertility counselling sessions, either individually or together with your partner (couples counselling):
- Emotional Support: The most apparent benefit of fertility counselling is the emotional support it offers. We provide a non-judgmental space for you to express your feelings, fears and frustrations. Simply unburdening your emotions in this way can be invaluable.
- Therapeutic Counselling: For those of you who want to go deeper into your emotional wounds or negative thought patterns, therapeutic counselling can be very healing. You can read more about Therapeutic Counselling at the bottom of this page.
- Coping Strategies: Counselling can help you with new ways to manage stress, anxiety and grief more effectively, which can help you to navigate your fertility journey with greater resilience.
- Better Communication: Fertility issues can strain relationships, and counselling provides a space for open and constructive dialogue, which can improve communication, understanding and support.
- Reducing Isolation: Ongoing fertility issues can leave people feeling very isolated. Talking to someone about this can be both comforting and therapeutic.
- Grief Processing: Dealing with the grief of failed fertility treatments or miscarriage is essential for emotional healing and can be an important aspect of your fertility journey.
- Improving Mental Health: For those experiencing depression or anxiety in response to their fertility issues, counselling can be an essential component of their mental health treatment plan.
- Empowerment: Counselling can empower you to take a more proactive role in your fertility journey, and regain your sense of control.
- Increased Positivity: Through counselling, individuals and couples can develop perspective and a sense of hope, which can be pivotal in navigating the ups and downs of your fertility journey.
- Guidance: Counselling can provide information and guidance on various aspects of fertility, helping individuals and couples to make informed decisions about their path to parenthood.
- Holistic Approach: Counselling and energy healing are a powerful combination when it comes to processing the emotional aspects of infertility.
What is a Fertility Counselling Session Like?
Fertility counselling sessions are 60 minutes long and are conducted via video call (Zoom or WhatsApp). If you have read the information on this webpage, you may already have some idea of what you hope to achieve from your counselling sessions. A fertility counselling session usually begins with you sharing your current challenges, and we’ll explore things from there…
Even though fertility issues are relatively common, they affect everyone in different ways and to different degrees. For this reason, fertility counselling sessions are highly individualised. Our personalised approach means your counselling sessions will be specifically tailored to your unique needs, to help you though whatever challenges you are personally facing, current and/or historic (e.g. trauma).
Lee is an experienced counsellor, trained in Holistic Counselling and Fertility Counselling, so he conducts most of the counselling sessions in our Fertility Therapy Programs. Victoria is currently studying for her counselling qualifications and is a compassionate listener, so you can opt to have your sessions with her if you just need a sympathetic ear. However, to make the most of your fertility therapy program, it’s best to explore your emotions and beliefs more deeply, because that’s when the “magic” (psychological healing) usually happens.
Therapeutic Counselling for Fertility Issues
Fertility counselling isn’t just about providing emotional support; it’s also about addressing the complex emotional and psychological aspects of infertility. Working through difficult, stuck emotions helps to free up your entire system, which can have significant benefits for those facing fertility challenges.
When you’re in a dark place, you might think you’ve been buried, but actually you’ve been planted…
Because life’s greatest challenges are our greatest opportunities for growth!
Fertility isn’t just about the physical body. We are highly complex creatures, and every aspect of our being (mind, heart, energy and body) intimately interacts with every other aspect. If one aspect goes out of balance, it can knock our entire system out of balance, so mental, emotional, energetic and physical imbalances can all adversely affect fertility. It is, therefore, quite likely that there is an emotional or psychological component to your fertility issues. Emotional wounds, deficient feelings, limiting beliefs, guilt and shame can all knock our system out of balance and contribute to fertility issues.
A fertility counselling session usually begins with you sharing the psychological challenges you are currently facing. Most people do this from their head, but that’s not where our emotions reside – our active emotions are in our heart, and our repressed emotions are usually stuffed down into our belly. Telling your counsellor what you already know can be cathartic, but that’s the extent of its usefulness. Staying in your head during counselling doesn’t help you to go deeper… to unpack your emotions, and heal the underlying causes. This was scientifically proven in the 1960s by Eugene Gendlin. So, sensing down into your body (somatic sensing) is one of the most important aspects of a therapeutic counselling session. Lee is trained in many different therapeutic approaches, but the ones he most commonly uses are outlined below:
- Somatic Sensing: We all have the ability to sense down into our body and know what we are feeling from moment to moment, but for most of us that ability has long been forgotten. As we tried to avoid the hurt, disappointment and helplessness we experienced at difficult times in our childhood, we suppressed those “wounded parts” of us so they wouldn’t overwhelm our entire system. Back then, we didn’t have the capacity to fully feel or process difficult experiences, but now, as adults, we do. Sensing down into our body in the present moment helps us to reconnect with these “wounded parts” that underly almost all of our current psychological issues. The problem is that other “parts” of us try to stop us from reconnecting with these “wounded parts” in case they overwhelm us again, which leads us nicely onto the next therapeutic approach that Lee uses…
- Parts-Work: You have probably heard the term “inner child”? Well, we don’t just have one inner child, we have lots of them. Right now, these young “parts” of us are holding onto unprocessed wounds from our past. Wounding happens when our capacity for processing our experiences becomes overwhelmed. This was a common occurrence in our childhood because our consciousness wasn’t developed enough or experienced enough to process challenging, unpleasant or traumatic situations. Parts-work involves our mature adult awareness talking to our “inner children” (wounded parts and protective parts) and wounded parts, and helping them to release the wounds and burdens they have been carrying for so many years.
- Empathic Healing: Lee has a natural empathic ability which allows him to sense energetic emotional blockages in other people. This allows him to feel into his client’s issues, and assist with their healing and transformation in ways most other counsellors and healers can’t. It’s a natural ability that we all possess to some degree, but Lee’s has become very sensitive through years of clearing and refining his own consciousness, and lots of practise with other people.
This holistic approach to counselling has proven very effective at helping people to free themselves from their limiting beliefs and deficient feelings. Reducing one’s emotional and psychological burden can help to improve fertility.