How to Make Room for Your Emotions During IVF

(5 minute read)

Whether you’re just starting to dip your toe into the IVF process or you’re in your third year of IVF, you’ll notice there are many emotions surfacing during this marathon of a time. 

Excitement. Worry. Anticipation. Disappointment. Anger. Confusion. Grief. Fear. Acceptance. Jealousy. Self-hatred. Betrayal. Exhaustion. Defeat. Hope. Pain. Caution. 

…..just to name a potential few. 

There’s so much to experience in just one facet of your life, albeit a major one. It’s enough to make you want to crawl under the covers and stay there. 

How to Cope With Your IVF Emotions

So what do you do with all of these feelings? Oh, and not to mention, you may be feeling all of this while working, raising kids, maintaining relationships, running errands, mourning the loss of a loved one, or just trying to hold onto your basic routines. 

It’s so tempting to tuck these feelings under the rug. Avoid them. Get lost in the doom scroll or latest Netflix binge. Distract. Ignore. Numb. Or maybe start judging yourself for having these feelings at all. 

What if there’s another way to relate to these emotions? 

What if, instead of pushing these feelings away, we made room for them instead?

Illustration by: Louise Gardner / ACT Auntie.  https://contextualscience.org/act_aunties_island_images_louise_gardner

How to Make Room for Your Emotions

We start making room for our emotions by accepting that they’re here. 

Let’s break down acceptance. Acceptance doesn’t mean you like the feeling. It doesn’t mean you agree with the feeling. It means you acknowledge that this is the feeling and it’s here. It is what it is right now. This is what I’m feeling right now. 

But acceptance is HARD. Especially during IVF. 

It’s hard to accept that they weren’t able to retrieve any quality eggs. 

It’s hard to accept that barely any of the eggs from your retrieval were mature enough, fertilized, or made it to a 5-day blastocyst. 

It’s hard to accept that the transfer didn’t turn into a pregnancy. 

It’s hard to accept that pregnancy didn’t turn into a healthy birth. 

It’s hard to accept a failed IVF cycle. 

It’s beyond difficult to accept the disappointment, grief, confusion, and heartbreak that come with any of this.

To be clear: I’m not saying, “Just accept those sad feelings and get on with your journey.” Acceptance is an active, intentional process. And it takes time (so much time) and concentrated effort. My favorite visual for acceptance is illustrator, Louise Gardner’s, depiction of “The 3 A’s of Acceptance.” 

Illustration by: Louise Gardner / ACT Auntie.  https://contextualscience.org/act_aunties_island_images_louise_gardner

1.  Acknowledge the Feeling

First, we can practice acknowledging that this spiky, painful feeling is here, knocking on our door. We do this by naming it. By identifying it. “I’m feeling jealous.” “I’m feeling anxious.” 

(Notice the difference between “I’m feeling jealous” and “I am jealous.” Adding the word, feeling, reminds us that this feeling is a state—not a trait. Not an identity). 

When you acknowledge your emotions, try to get as granular as you can. Instead of, “I’m feeling down,” see if you can get more specific: “I’m feeling disappointed.” 

2. Allow the Feeling to be There

Instead of quickly slamming the door in the emotion’s face, can we practice opening the door and letting the emotion just be present with us? This may be quite uncomfortable. But more often than not, allowing the emotion to simply be there, as it is, makes the scary feeling we’ve been avoiding a lot less terrifying. 

Remind yourself: you’re allowed to feel this. You’re human. And humans are feeling beings who think, not thinking beings who feel. We organize our lives, learning, and memories around emotions. 

Remind yourself: this feeling won’t hurt me. It’s just a feeling. No feeling is final. It will come and go, like a thunderstorm passing through. I’ve yet to meet the person who let themselves feel sad and then never felt anything else for the rest of their life. 

3.  Accommodate the Feeling

Like Louise’s illustration, can you nurture the emotion a little? Can you befriend it? This might look like practicing self-compassion for having the emotion, not judging yourself for having it.

Instead of, “I’m so ridiculous for feeling disappointed about this. So many of my friends have had way worse experiences during IVF.” 

Try, “I’m allowed to feel disappointment right now. This is a real low in the process. It’s natural to feel defeated by how unpredictable IVF can be.” 

Why make room for my feelings during IVF? 

Because there are often a lot of them. And if you don’t give yourself permission to feel them, you’re denying yourself your humanity. 

That might sound quite direct, but it’s true. You’re a human going through a very emotionally taxing process. It’s not only emotionally taxing because of all of the situations you’re facing but also because of the hormones that your body is being pumped with. Do yourself a solid, and let yourself feel the feels. 

Once you can make space for your emotions, you can choose what actions to take next. If all of your energy goes toward fighting your emotions, you won’t have the bandwidth to decide what steps you actually want to take.

A Note about ACT

Many of the concepts discussed here (making room for our emotions, practicing acceptance) are core principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). If this blog post resonates with you, and you’re interested in learning more about how to live a meaningful life while going through IVF, reach out to book a session. You don’t have to go through it alone. 

With care,
Chrissy