Stress and fertility: prepping your mind and emotions

On this page

1. Overview
2. The mind versus the emotions
3. Anxiety and the fertility cycle
4. Why talking about it matters
5. Stepping back from your thoughts
6. The physiology of stress
7. Vision boards
8. Being positive: affirmations and breathing
9. Related pages

Overview

We talk a lot about the body and fertility, but the mind and emotions can play an equally important role. The mind has evolved to keep us alive — it’s our greatest survival tool. It helps us plan and problem-solve, which helped us survive thousands of years ago in the wild. It doesn’t like surprises — they make it agitated, which manifests as anxiety. It likes life to be predictable, which makes it feel secure, and for this reason it likes control. In today’s world, our minds are overused. Most people focus their minds on controlling the future — education, career, pensions.

The mind versus the emotions

Our emotions live in the now. They react to what we believe about our life. Our emotions are constantly bubbling at the surface, mixing with thoughts and stored traumas held within the body from our past. Emotions lie at the heart of trying for a baby — wanting a baby reveals a very deep-rooted emotional need.

In Chinese medicine, each internal organ is associated with a particular emotion:

• Emotional upset, frustration and anger affect the Liver.
• Worrying damages the Spleen.
• Fear weakens the Kidneys.
• Anxiety damages the Heart.

Anxiety and the fertility cycle

Emotions can be high and low during the menstrual cycle when trying naturally. A lot of women feel emotionally low when their period starts because they are not pregnant. They then pick themselves up and think positively towards ovulation: ‘It will be this cycle!’ Once ovulation has occurred, feelings of anxiety and doubt creep in — ‘Am I, aren’t I pregnant?’ — leading up to the end of the cycle.

Having fertility challenges causes a lot of anxiety. Anxiety, like stress, is a negative emotion that serves little positive purpose and simply drains the body of important energy and blood reserves, making it weaker, which damages fertility. The more anxious we are, the more we ‘spend’ energy — and the worse our fertility becomes.

Often people will say, ‘Just relax and let it happen.’ If only relaxing was that easy! Most people find it hard to relax in today’s modern world. Instead of trying to force yourself to relax and tame your emotions, which is very difficult, I recommend you have fun instead. Watching comedies, going out for lunch or dinner, to the cinema, shopping with friends — all help to distract you from stress and bring joy back. Joy is the opposite of anxiety. Happiness helps the body to relax, helps the flow of energy and blood, regulates hormones, and improves fertility. Research has shown that acupuncture treatment can reduce infertility-related stress.

Research has finally proven what Eastern philosophies have known for centuries — these stresses and emotions can be passed on to our children through our genes (epigenetic inheritance). This acts as an emotional disability the child inherits and is burdened to resolve in order to have a happy life. Resolving negative emotions before conceiving your baby gives your child a head start.

Why talking about it matters

When trying to conceive, most people start taking supplements to nourish their body, overlooking their mind and emotions. If the mind and emotions are left unchecked, they consume energy and blood, making the body weaker, which can reduce levels of leptin and damage hormone regulation — even though you may be taking supplements for energy and blood.

It’s often harder to prep the mind and emotions because we tend to be unaware of them. Talking about how we feel or what our fears are, forms part of the way we prep the mind. This can be with friends, family, online forums, your doctor, your acupuncturist, or a trained fertility coach or counsellor. Once the negative emotion is talked about, aired and given space, it dissolves and stops draining your body of vital energy and blood.

Stepping back from your thoughts

You are not your mind. You are the awareness that sits behind the mind. By taking a step back mentally and watching what you’re thinking, you can identify thoughts that could be blocking you from having a baby. Negative thought patterns, worrying and anxiety are all ‘diseases of the mind’ that initiate hormonal changes in the physical body which can cause infertility.

Taking a step back from your thoughts takes time and practice. Just as you exercise your muscles at the gym, you need to do the same with your mind — but instead of making it bigger, like a muscle, you need to make it smaller. This can be achieved through:

• Meditation
• Mindfulness
• Yoga
• T’ai chi or qi gong
• Walking in Nature

Once you create that space, you can identify any negative thought patterns and trace them back to where they originate. A negative thought about your infertility may be rooted in a belief that you are not ‘good enough’ to be a parent, or feel emotionally or financially unready. Your mind is like a garden — what you plant (think) is what you grow (feel). Removing negative thoughts and beliefs is like removing weeds.

The physiology of stress

Stress is one of the greatest causes of infertility. It creates frustration, resentment and anger, which increase levels of cortisol — affecting the normal balance of fertility hormones. This in turn affects the Liver, causing an irregular menstrual cycle.

Prolonged stress (more than a few hours) weakens the body. The body has three levels of stress response:

1. Alarm phase — the body’s initial fight-or-flight response.
2. Resistance phase — sustained stress where most people now live.
3. Exhaustion phase — collapse and depletion.

The resistance phase causes an increase in adrenal hormone release (glucocorticoids), which increases energy demands and reduces reserves of lipids and leptin. Lipids are made up of fats and oils and are Yin in nature — they form the foundations of good health and fertility. It’s therefore important to have a diet rich in essential fatty acids (oily fish, flaxseed) to maintain lipid levels and offset stress. High protein alone is not enough — omega-3s are equally important.

Prolonged stress can affect your immune system: increased cortisol levels reduce TH2 cells, which are important in supporting an implanting embryo. Chronic stress causes the prolonged release of cortisol, against which white blood cells mount a counter-regulatory response by down-regulating their cortisol receptors. This reduces their capacity to respond to anti-inflammatory signals and allows cytokine-mediated inflammatory processes to flourish — increasing TH1 cells. Higher TH1 levels can prevent the embryo from implanting into the uterus wall.

Acupuncture is very good at reducing stress by regulating cortisol and the hypothalamus, both of which regulate fertility hormones and the menstrual cycle. The combination of having acupuncture and lying on the treatment couch encourages people to relax. Together with heat and relaxing music, the person is sent into a deep state of relaxation — the body lets go of the resistance phase and has a chance to heal itself back into balance.

When trying for a baby, most women are proactive: they do their research and try everything. But trying too hard causes stress and anxiety, which increases stress hormones, causes an irregular menstrual cycle and uses up energy that could have been used for fertility. Try everything in this book, but only up to a point where it doesn’t cause you stress. Beyond that, it becomes a hindrance. When that happens — surrender, let your hair down and have fun. Energy and blood flow better when you’re happy.

Vision boards

A vision board is where you put positive images on a board for you to look at each day. For fertility, this might include:

• A positive pregnancy test
• A baby
• You and your partner holding a baby
• A cot or buggy

Looking at these images each day allows you to bring them into your life, to accept them as part of your reality. Vision boards are also a useful way of seeing inside yourself and finding emotional blocks. If you look at your vision board and don’t believe it, trace this negative thought back to where it originates from and confront it.

What we think is determined by how we feel about ourselves and what we believe. If we think we aren’t good enough or that we’re a failure, then the body will listen to this and make it so. In Chinese medical terms, believing you’re a failure lowers your energy levels, reduces the creation of energy and blood, stagnates Liver Qi (causing blood stasis), which leads to an irregular and painful menstruation — and damages Kidney Qi, affecting egg and sperm quality.

Being positive: affirmations and breathing

Negative thought patterns generally come from a negative belief we have about ourselves — ‘I’m not good enough’ or ‘I don’t deserve it’. These beliefs are rooted in fear, not in self-love. To change this, use positive affirmations:

• ‘I love myself’
• ‘I am pregnant’
• ‘I surrender’ (if you’re stressed)

Take five minutes to practise. Take a breath in and say ‘I’; breath out and say one of the affirmations above — for example ‘am pregnant’. Breath is a useful affirmation tool: the in-breath is a state of wanting to be alive here on this planet, while the out-breath forms the surrender to the belief of what you are saying.

Research has shown that women who are negative about their fertility are more likely to fail. Reduce your exposure to negative influences:

• Don’t spend time with negative people.
• Don’t watch horror movies or negative documentaries.
• Don’t watch or read negative news.
• Instead: watch comedies, positive news, or read light-hearted novels.

Related pages

• Prepping your body for fertility (Ch 7)
• Optimising your environment for fertility (Ch 9)
• Acupuncture for anxiety
• Acupuncture for insomnia
• Fertility coaching

My Fertility Guide