Perfectionism and Fertility

Perfectionism and Fertility

Perfectionism is one of those habits that skates the line between helpful and deeply problematic. From a general view, this habit creates a lot of amazing outcomes. But when you get close up, perfectionism is interwoven with anxiety, worry, and fear.

Fear that you’re not doing enough.
Fear that you’re not being enough.
Fear that you’re not enough period.

This fear creates a constant danger signal in your body which in turn puts your cells in fear mode (instead of growth mode), floods your abdomen with hormones/sugar that disrupts your ovaries, and much more – all of which creates another layer of complexity over the functioning of your reproductive system..

This fear also makes the day-to-day experience of infertility that much worse:

• Measuring everything happening during your cycle as right or wrong
• Pressure is on you and your body to make a baby
• Comparison to other people and their ability to conceive vs your ability to conceive
• Opportunity to “fail” each and every month AND prove you aren’t enough, each and every month

So what do you do about it?

First of all, it isn’t about saying “Oh well, I guess I don’t care. ” or, “Oh well, it just is what it is.” This isn’t about lowering standards.

This is about finding a new way to address the fear, worry, and anxiety that created the perfectionist traits.

From a fertility perspective, here are a few keys:

• Find a new language to describe what is going on with your fertility. What if instead of thinking about something being WRONG with your body, you acknowledged that not getting pregnant is your body’s way of telling you that there is something out of balance?
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  Say out loud: There is something WRONG with me. And then say: There is something out of balance in my body. The first sentence immediately creates a danger signal. The second sentence creates a sense of curiosity, “I wonder what could put me back in balance.”
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• Challenge your thoughts. Does a cycle that doesn’t go as expected automatically mean that you will never have another good cycle? Does your fertility change simply because you have had one more birthday; meaning, one day you’re 38 and the next day you’re 39, is your body on calendar watch? etc.
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• What if you responded to your body with compassion and forgiveness rather than more pushing to be “better”?
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• What is one layer of a belief that you could accept, allow, or let go to *remember* that you are whole and complete whether you have a baby or not?

Take some time to sit with these questions – think of them as journal prompts.

This isn’t an easy topic, nor do you need to “fix” it all in order to have a healthy pregnancy and baby. And, the more that you are able to start to shift out of the perfectionism habit, the fewer danger signals in your body, the more energetic and physical resources your body has to conceive.

If this is a stumbling block for you, this is the type of deep work that I do with my clients. Let’s set up a time to talk about the support available.