Antenatal Wellbeing
Infertility Diagnosis and Fertility Treatment - Stress & Anxiety
Infertility diagnosis and needing fertility treatment can be extremely stressful and distressing. Coping with infertility and going through IVF treatment can be a strain on your emotional well-being. So, it’s important that you find ways to look after yourself and feel that you have the right support system around you.
Women and men can feel a lot of conflicting emotions during IVF treatment that can raise anxiety levels and cause inner turmoil. It is important to understand, however, that there are ways to deal with these emotions before they overwhelm you. Emotions may range between sadness, anger, guilt and a profound sense of failure. So it is really important to get support and find the right strategies for coping as well as finding ways to care for yourself and keeping a healthy perspective.
Using the HG model, I can help you find ways to reduce the stress and anxiety you are feeling and provide you with opportunities to rest and relax. I can make bespoke relaxation audios for you to use so you can use your imagination to support you positively through your fertility experience. I can provide a space so that all those negative emotions such as fear, anger or frustration can be expressed within a supported therapeutic environment that will be secure and understanding in its one-to-one structure.’
What is Perinatal Mental Health
Perinatal mental health refers to your mental health during pregnancy and the postnatal years after, sometimes many years after. This could also include emotional difficulties you encountered before pregnancy such as infertility diagnosis or fertility treatment or perhaps sadly, pregnancy loss. You may have struggled with anxiety and low mood before you decided to become pregnant. Perhaps you had an event that had a big impact on your emotional wellbeing. Sometimes these past events can feel difficult to manage and filter when you become pregnant and so start to make you feel upset again.
You could be experiencing a wide range of feelings some of which might only have a limiting effect on your life, or some which could be making your day-to-day functioning really challenging. Recognising these feelings can be difficult when you’re not feeling your best or when the expectations are that you feel should be really, really happy. It could mean therefore, that asking for support from health professionals such as midwives or GPs is hard. If you’re experiencing intrusive and frightening thoughts for example, you should not delay asking for that important support.
Your mental wellbeing during this perinatal time is so important. If you do experience problems related to thoughts, feelings or behaviour, it’s imperative that you have trustworthy professionals to hand who are trained to support you through this tricky period. I am a skilful and experienced therapist and will help you overcome those difficulties.
Pregnancy - Stress , Anxiety and Low Mood
You may be exhausted, overwhelmed and feel very emotional, even hopeless. Maybe things feel like they’re too much to handle, or that your emotions are running higher than you usually experience. Perhaps you are worried something bad might happen, or that everything is feeling out of control. Your body is changing and you can’t recognise yourself any more. It might feel like a struggle to get out of bed and do day-to-day tasks. It’s a tiring time and getting plenty of sleep is difficult, but if you’re really struggling to get out of bed each day or small tasks are feeling especially difficult to do, it could be time to get some support. Most parents can feel worried about their unborn baby, but if the worry is taking over your rational thinking, consumes all your thoughts, or you think things might be spiralling out of control, it could be time to talk. If you’re experiencing scary, intrusive thoughts about yourself or your baby or even those around you, it’s important to seek help immediately.
Tokophobia
You may feel extremely fearful of childbirth. Worrying about giving birth is normal, but if that fear is causing you to feel so overwhelmingly upset and brings with it nightmares and catastrophic thoughts that intrude on your day creating a feeling of terror when you think about birth, you may need some support to find ways to manage this fear. This all-consuming sense of doom that takes over your thinking and your activities of daily living is called Tokophobia.
With HG Therapy and my Hypno Birthing Training I can help you manage this intense fear and teach you techniques that will help you put this phobia in its box so it cannot distract and bully you anymore.
Loss
This is such an evocative and sensitive area of the care that I offer. An unbearable, unthinkable place of sadness coated in inextricable pain and sadness of loss can be too much for us to bear or endure. Maybe you feel angry, full of self- loathing, or do you feel you need to blame others and vent your anger at them. Or do you just feel numb and detached from what happened and that the only way to process it is to keep yourself busy and distracted. All very understandable responses. I completely understand this.
No matter the context, the number of weeks or months, or even how many years ago you experienced your loss, your loss is your loss and it doesn’t need justifying. I will support you to find ways to carry your grief so life feels more comfortable.
