Infertility Depression and Anxiety
Infertility can take a major emotional toll, often leading to depression, anxiety, grief, anger, feelings of worthlessness, isolation, and relationship stress in one or both partners. Up to half or more of individuals struggling with infertility experience clinical anxiety or depression. The desire to have children is profound and not being able to achieve that goal is devastating. Additionally, the treatments themselves - with the endless tests, medications, procedures, failed attempts, and financial costs - exacerbate the anguish, uncertainty, and loss of control.
Understanding the array of difficult emotions surrounding infertility helps validate how painful this experience can be. Additionally, being aware of constructive coping strategies empowers couples to proactively care for their mental health on the journey to build their family.
Causes of Infertility Mental Health Issues
Both the inability to conceive naturally and undergoing intense fertility treatments can lead to emotional upheaval from a mix of factors:
Grief and Loss
Many describe infertility grief as a series of losses - loss of a dream, loss of control, loss of a “normal” pregnancy journey. Recurrent pregnancy loss multiplies the devastation of grieving what might have been. Empty arms and a yearning heart intensify the natural desire to nurture one’s biological child.
Identity Crisis
Feelings of failure and worthlessness frequently accompany infertility struggles. Since an early age, social conditioning equates womanhood with the ability to bear children. The stigma of barrenness can lead to a profound identity crisis, haunting a woman’s sense of femininity and purpose. Men also report feeling like “less of a man” when challenged with fertility impairment.
Stress from Treatment
The medical journey seeking the chance to conceive adds exhaustive physical demands, time strain, complex information to digest, financial pressure exceeding $60k on average, and emotional anguish from slim odds of success to an already depleted and grieving couple. The invasiveness surrounding tests and procedures takes a toll, often accompanied by difficult side effects from potent medications. Managing high hopes then utter devastation with each failure debilitates even the strongest resolves.
Loss of Control
The profound inability to control one’s reproduction despite excruciating efforts contradicts the independent and empowered paradigm most adults in western cultures expect to live. Continually putting one’s body and emotional health in the hands of doctors leaves many individuals feeling frustrated and powerless. Failed attempts and bewildering setbacks scatter any sense of command over one’s fertility journey.
Relationship Stress
Struggling with infertility frequently strains emotional and sexual intimacy in relationships. Partners grieve differently and misdirect their pain onto each other. The demanding treatments drain energy needed to nurture the marriage. With sex confined to scheduled baby-making encounters, couples lose the ability to spontaneously connect physically. Loss of libido and erectile dysfunction are common side effects from the hormone alterations and emotional duress. The majority of couples report struggling relationally while battling infertility.
Isolation and Loneliness
Friends and family members often withdraw emotionally and physically during someone’s infertility journey. After occasional gestures of sympathy and support early on, most people do not know how to respond to years of treatment failures and anguish. They change conversation topics involving children to avoid awkwardness. As others experience pregnancies and expand their families, the void of isolation swells. Even well-meaning questions about having kids sting after years of unsuccessful tries. Many couples describe feeling utterly alone in their infertility suffering.
Depression Symptoms
Infertility depression exhibits in various forms:
- Persistent sadness, frequent crying, despair
- Withdrawing from or lashing out at loved ones
- Having trouble concentrating, remembering details, and making decisions
- Fatigue, sleeping too much or too little
- Loss of interest in enjoyable activities, hobbies, sex
- Appetite changes - eating too much or too little
- Feelings of worthlessness, shame, or being a failure
- Thoughts of death, suicidal ideation for some
Anxiety Symptoms
Infertility anxiety manifests many ways:
- Feeling tense, nervous, restless much of the time
- Sense of impending danger, panic, or doom
- Increased irritability, angry outbursts
- Difficulty concentrating due to worrying
- Avoiding pregnancy announcements, baby showers, family events with children
- Oversensitive to comments, questions, or media surrounding having children
- Dreading tests, procedures, medications, appointments
- Muscle tension, headaches, fatigue from anxiety
- Insomnia, difficult falling or staying asleep
Tips for Coping with Infertility Mental Health Issues
1. Seek Professional Help
Therapy provides perhaps the most powerful source of coping with infertility depression and anxiety. Couples counseling equips partners to grieve together in a healthy way. Individual counseling targets each person’s struggles. Many resolve to begin mental health treatment only to drop off once conceiving justifies the infertility trauma in their minds. However, the pain runs deep for most and continues haunting individuals and relationships for years. Committing to the full therapeutic process leads to emotional restoration.
2. Find Support Groups
Connecting with others walking through similar suffering alleviates isolation and normalizes complicated grief. Local infertility support groups provide sympathizing and empowering communities. National organizations like Resolve offer online forums connecting people across the world. Hearing stories worse than yours relieves self-blame while inspiring you not to give up hope.
3. Express Your Feelings
Journaling, writing poetry, painting, singing - lean into any creative outlet resonating with you to process the grief each new challenge surfaces. Some prefer expressing themselves aloud to a friend or support group. Opening up honestly purges painful emotions needing healthy release versus remaining suppressed inside. Even displaying anger at the injustice of infertility proves cathartic for many.
4. Embrace Escapism Activities
Distracting yourself with immersive activities prevents consuming ruminations from dragging your mental state deeper down. Losing yourself in projects around the house restores empowerment. Planning trips refreshes something to look forward to through treatment delays and setbacks. Watching engrossing shows transports our minds away momentarily. Saying yes to social invites counters the tendency to isolate.
5. Simplify and Take Control Where Possible
Assess aspects of life draining precious mental resources and shed unnecessary burdens. Outsource tasks to buy back time enjoying simpler pleasures. Meal prep to limit decisions and costs. Quit supplemental obligations wasting energy. Clean out clutter clearing mental distraction. Follow clinic instructions precisely to reinforce control where possible. Say no to added therapies with marginal upside to diminish exhaustion.
6. Strengthen Your Marriage
Pursue intimacy unrelated to having a baby - date nights, weekends away, cooking together, long walks holding hands. Discuss your innermost feelings without blaming each other. Reminisce over what initially sparked your relationship. Express affection through handwritten notes, surprise treats, sincere compliments. Couples therapy equips you to comfort rather than wound. The infertility journey either breaks couples emotionally, physically, and financially, or forges an unbreakable bond if they fight to keep their intimacy alive.
7. Find Reasons for Gratitude
Counter each disappointment and failed treatment by intentionally recognizing something positive in life. Write a list of people and blessings for which you are still grateful. Help someone else as struggling to serve others renews purpose and hope. Infertility does not define your life nor nullify all the good still surrounding you - embrace that truth.
8. Take Breaks From Treatment
Healing emotionally takes time between procedures or cycles. Set boundaries around not constantly pursuing the next recommended pathway. Discuss what duration or milestones warrant pausing treatment to regain strength and clarity. Use breaks to nourish other life priorities, health conditions, relationships in need of nurturing. Honor your emotions and physical limits insisting on the space needed before ramping up attempts again.
9. Stay Attached to Hope
The darkness tries convincing you that the pain will last forever, no treatment option remains, surrendering your dream may release you. Yet thousands who once believed the same later held their miracle babies. Despite discouraging odds, improbable exceptions exist. Allow yourself ongoing moments of envisioning that you will defy statistics and experience the joy you so profoundly deserve. Maintain connection with even improbable hope.
10. Plan for Emotional Health Alongside Physical Treatment
Too often the daunting physical and logistical demands of pursuing a baby shadow the critical mental health components of the journey. Yet nurturing your inner resilience proves equally vital for persevering to become parents. Discuss an emotional health plan with your support system as you would a medical treatment plan with doctors. Pursuing mental wellness intentionally empowers you to cope with the unpredictable road ahead.
With compassionate support, vulnerability about struggles, counseling to process grief, surrendering constant control, embracing simple joys, and clinging to possibilities, you equip yourself to endure theroller coaster of infertility. By acknowledging the wide swath of difficult emotions as normal while proactively strengthening your inner resilience, you can minimize depression and anxiety inevitable on the quest to start a family. With both clinical and emotional support, the optimism remains that after the storms of infertility, your beautiful rainbo