How To Build Safety When Coping with Medical Trauma During Your Fertility Journey

Image from Pexels by Nadezhda Morayak 6/24/24

Embarking on the journey of adding to your family is no small task. It can be even more challenging if you face fertility challenges or are part of a marginalized community such as being a person of color, inhabiting a fat body, or being queer. Conception support is typically focused on young, white, heterosexual, able-bodied couples. Facing challenges in getting or staying pregnant, direct or indirect discrimination or lack of tailored services can all contribute to a cumulation of medical trauma. Fertility planning, conception, and gestation are all life circumstances that can also bring up trauma from the past, including poor previous experiences with the medical system, body or relationship traumas. This blog post addresses ways you can work on building safety within your body and relationships to build resiliency during your fertility journey.

Basics of Trauma

Before you dive into ways to build safety, it’s important that you understand that trauma is subjective, and your nervous systems are constantly surveying the land for signals of danger. Trauma is also cumulative, which is why people with intersectional marginalized identifies are at higher risk of dealing with the impacts of trauma. What your nervous system perceives as a threat can come from outside your body in your environment and can also come from inside your system. Internal threats can be the ways you speak to yourself, uncomfortable physical sensations, thoughts, or emotions you don’t want to feel. What’s important when thinking about building safety is that different things work for different people. What is addressed ahead are some ideas but know that it’s important you experiment to find what works for your unique needs.

Building Safety within Your Environment

Make a Plan

When navigating your fertility journey, whenever you’re facing a milestone or event, it’s important to plan your day around that event. For example, if you are going into the doctor’s office for a procedure, be mindful of what time of day you schedule, knowing your needs. Perhaps you don’t like afternoon appointments because you spend the entire first half of the day anxious and stressed, in that case, you’d try to schedule your appointment as early in the day as possible. Have a plan for after the event as well. Ideally, choose an activity that provides comfort and soothing to your system. You may ask yourself if being with others versus being alone is better for you at that time. If you decide to be around people, be very specific in who you’re around and why and possibly have a discussion with them beforehand about the plan, including what you need from them to be supportive.

Building Safety within Your Body

Body Care

Before addressing any other interventions, it’s important you review your sleep, eating and drinking habits. Your body can’t function efficiently if it’s not getting adequate sleep, liquids and nutrition. This is a great place to start.

 Outdoors

Another great way to build safety is by going outdoors. Research shows nature is integral in keeping humans grounded, producing awe, and calming the nervous system. Think about incorporating regular time in nature with movement or stillness.

Image from Pexels by Sarah Chai 6/24/24

Engage Your Senses

Your five senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch. You can utilize each sense to build safety. Not only can you utilize your senses to shift your focus to the present moment by identifying things in your area, but you can utilize each sense for soothing. Identify a sight that you find calming, a sound you find soothing, a smell you find comforting, a taste you can savor or a safe touch that grounds you.

Breath

Targeting your breath is the most direct way to manipulate your nervous system. There are endless ways to attend, observe and shift your breathing. A great place to start is to deepen your inhale and exhale. It’s important to breathe deeply into your belly rather than your chest, which can induce anxiety and panic. Breathing deeply triggers your nervous system to calm down and reduce your heart rate. Focus on the inhale and exhale of your breath, even for a few seconds.

Hold Yourself

It might sound funny, but a strategy you can use to comfort yourself is by giving yourself a hug. Of course, you can ask another person to hold or hug you as well, but you can do it with your arms! As humans, we respond to this kind of touch.

Tapping

Tapping is a self soothing strategy that uses pressure points. There are some great videos and instructions online. https://www.thetappingsolution.com

Building Safety within Your Mind

You’ve addressed building safety in your environment, your body, and now we’ll discuss the mind. The mind tends to be the trickiest piece for people when it comes to building safety. This is because you have an unthinkable number of thoughts per millisecond and your brain must sift through what’s important. Sometimes thought hook you in and get you stuck.

Change the Story

All humans create narratives out of life circumstances. This is normal, but not always helpful. I encourage you to ask yourself if there’s another way you can look at the situation, you don’t have to agree with it, but what would be another way you could look at it?

Mantras

A mantra can be anything you want it to be. It can help focus you on what’s important, and when you say it out loud, it can stimulate your vagus nerve, which works to keep you calm. A loving kindness meditation can be a helpful place to start.

“May I be happy, may I be healthy, may I be safe, may I live with ease.”

Make it specific to you, I once had someone who’d experienced multiple pregnancy losses create a mantra saying, “I’m pregnant until I know otherwise” and would say that if they felt anxiety increase.

 Recognize the Present Moment

You might think a mantra is too forceful or overly positive. That’s fine. Let’s start where you are and where you want to be. Write down the qualities you want to personify. For example, “I am beginning (to build safety).” Or “It is possible (for me to feel peace).” It’s okay if you’re not THERE yet but recognize your efforts.

Image from Pexels by Karolina Grabowska 6/24/24

Guided Imagery

The human imagination is vast and you can use that to your advantage. Build a safe place in your mind that you can go to at any time. Get as detailed as possible and identify what you see, touch, taste, smell and hear. Spend time in this place when you feel the need to ground and soothe yourself.

Practice Defusion

Thoughts, emotions and sensations can become overwhelming when you become fused to them, instead of being something you experience, the experience becomes you. There are many techniques you can use to work on creating space between you and your experience so you can build observational skills increasing of reacting to your experiences. A great way to start is by identifying what you’re thinking or feeling and name it. Example: “I notice I’m experiencing fear.” “Oh there’s that thought again (negative self talk).” Another technique is to say you can’t do something while doing it. Example: “I can’t enter that doctor’s office” as you walk into your appointment.

Schedule a Consultation with your Seattle Medical Trauma Therapist

Although everyone’s fertility journey looks different, research shows us that rate of depression, anxiety and grief commonly increase during this time. Know that there are ways to build safety, get support and build your resiliency during this time. If you’d like to learn more, grief, anxiety or trauma, check out my specialty pages below or reach out and schedule a free consultation today!

Learn more about Chelsea’s specialties: grief, anxiety, infertility, pregnancy loss, chronic illness, menopause, medical trauma

Learn more about Chelsea

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