Stress and infertility

When you’re in a stressful situation, anxiety and tension have an immediate effect on your body. Your heart rate and breathing speed up, the shoulder muscles tense, your stomach may turn, and you may start to sweat.

These responses, though uncomfortable, are our bodies’ way of putting us on alert and getting ready for action. This is the famous fight-or-flight reaction that occurs when our brains perceive a threat. Ordinarily this stress process stops when the perceived threat ends and the brain then sets off certain calming changes within our systems. However, if the worrying situation continues or if the brain doesn’t recognize that the situation has ended, our stress reaction may continue and become chronic, and our bodies don’t calm down.

This chronic stress is what many infertility patients experience. After all, when you’re in the midst of infertility it does not feel like there is an end in site, so the stress also does not end. Fortunately, there are some tools that people with infertility find particularly helpful in dealing with this stress. (They can also be used by anyone interested in learning to better handle stress.)

The Relaxation Response

The exercises described below elicit the relaxation response — a series of changes that take place in the body and mind as they grow calm. Heart rate, muscle tension, breathing rate, and oxygen consumption fall below resting levels. Normal waking brain waves change to distinctive, usually slower patterns. Harvard Medical School’s Dr. Herbert Benson discovered the relaxation response, and he and his colleagues have created programs that help people elicit this response. In the infertility program, relaxation training is used to reduce physical symptoms such as insomnia and psychological problems like anxiety.

For women with infertility, practicing relaxation can be both body and mind altering. One of the depressing aspects of infertility is that you feel you have no control over your body. It isn’t doing what you always assumed it would and may not react to treatments designed to make it respond. When you begin regularly practicing a relaxation exercise, you may realize for the first time just how tense you are and how angry you are — at your body, your partner, your family, for not understanding; at medical personnel who may be less than compassionate. This is when you can acknowledge how much you’ve been enduring and consciously begin the process of healing.

Although studies have shown that stress can impact the fertility of both men and women, you will need to put aside the idea that you are trying to relax in order to conceive. If you continue to stay focused on pregnancy, it’s likely you will not truly relax. Your purpose in undertaking a program like this is to get your life back.

A number of techniques can be used to evoke the Relaxation Response, including yoga, repetitive prayer, deep breathing, meditation, progressive muscle relaxation, and visual imagery. It is best if you can practice one of these exercises every day. But don’t feel guilty if you can’t — just start using the exercises again when you realize you have forgotten.

Guided Imagery

One relaxation technique is guided imagery. You can use an audiotape to help you through a particular exercise in imagery, or you can develop your own imagery, using the following steps:

Sit comfortably in a quiet place.
Take several slow, deep breaths.
Now picture in your mind’s eye a place that you love, a place where you have been relaxed or you feel you could be relaxed.
Visualize yourself strolling or sitting or standing within this scene, slowly absorbing its views, sounds, and lovely fragrances.
If the scene is outdoors, take in the color of the sky and the shape of the clouds. Look at the green of the trees and grass. If it’s a beach, notice the pattern that waves leave in the sand or the tranquility of a lake’s gentle motion. Watch the birds circling high above.
Now concentrate on the smells: If you’re in a meadow, inhale the scent of sun-warmed grass. If it’s a woods, breathe in deeply the fragrance of moist leaves. Smell the salty, fishy air of the ocean beach or the special rainwater aroma of the lake.
Focus on sounds indoors or outside: the chitter-chatter of a squirrel, the song of a robin or blackbird, the slap of waves against the side of a boat, children playing, soft music, rain falling against the windows.
Concentrate on sensations: the warmth of the sun on your back or rain on your face. If you see yourself walking barefooted across a sun-dappled lawn, feel the tickle of the grass on your feet. Or, if it’s a beach, how the damp sand moves beneath your feet.
Let yourself sink into the sensual aspects of your images. Relish your comfort, your pleasure, your tranquility. If you’re disturbed by anxious thoughts, look at them for a minute, then gently return to the sights, scents, and sensations that surround you.

If you find it difficult to take yourself to an imaginary place, don’t feel troubled. Not everyone can do this readily. Instead, try to find a method that might help transport you. We sometimes suggest that you imagine yourself on a magic carpet that carries you to your peaceful place. Or visualize yourself floating away on your own, like the children in Peter Pan, off to your very own Never-Never Land.

The best way to find a relaxation technique that works for you is to try many different types. Give guided imagery a try, and if that doesn’t feel right, try a yoga or meditation class.

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