Part 1: Guilt - the elephant in the room
Infertility plunges almost everyone affected into a great emotional chaos, which sometimes changes day by day. This includes feelings such as disappointment, anger, despair and many more. The first part of this series will deal with the elephant among emotions: guilt.
Feelings of guilt play a major role in infertility. Looking at it from the outside, you would quickly ask yourself why you would think about guilt? Although this is a rationally justified question, feelings of guilt are more widespread among those affected than one would realise.
Feelings of guilt can take different forms. These include feelings of guilt because you may be the partner whose medical restrictions are preventing conception, for example because of sperm quality, blocked fallopian tubes or other clearly definable conditions. Knowing that you are the cause of the other person's childlessness is an agonising and devouring feeling. Just as you can't do anything about the fact that you have poor sperm quality, for example, you can't do anything to change this (with a few exceptions to optimisation, of course). This creates a feeling of being at the mercy of others, because you would like it to be so different.
But some feelings of guilt are also more diffuse. You feel guilty that you can't succeed, that you're not good enough or that you're not doing enough to have children. This can also manifest itself in thinking that you don't deserve to have a baby, for example because you are already very lucky in other areas of your life or have been very successful.
It should be noted that, on reflection, many of these thoughts seem irrational, but it is a normal reaction of every person affected to look for reasons in the event of persistent failure. When rational explanations have been exhausted, it is natural to resort to less rational answers.
Guilt also plays a role in relation to one's own body. You blame your body for not functioning as it should. As there is not much you can do or not do to get pregnant, you want to unload your frustration on someone and this can be your own body.
In a broader sense, feelings of guilt also often play a role in relation to other family members. In addition to your partner, you may also feel guilty towards the grandparents if you can't give them a grandchild. You feel guilty towards your circle of friends because you can't keep up and slowly become an outsider when everyone else has children. Then it's easy to fall into the trap of ‘apologizing’ because you want to give an answer to explain to other people why something isn't the same for you as it is for them. What's the point? Who says you owe something to someone else?
In the vast majority of cases, however, guilt is associated with some form of failure because the baby just won't work out.
Our social concept of guilt comes from the legal context. If you make a mistake, you are (usually) to blame and can be punished for it, or you owe the other person something in the sense of compensation. However, there are grounds for exemption from guilt if it is clear that the person concerned is not responsible for their actions.
In the case of infertility, you can't speak of action at all, because there is nothing you can do to change the outcome. The concept of guilt is therefore even less appropriate because you can't choose the situation. I can be to blame for something where I have a choice to do it one way or another. If I make the wrong decision, I may be to blame if I should have known better. Ultimately, guilt is a means of assessing consequences and taking responsibility if an outcome occurs in a certain way.
However, this concept does not apply at all to infertility. That's why I like to give my clients the following food for thought:
Guilt can only concern you, if you had an active choice.
You already do much more than others have to do, so why should you be guilty?
Give yourself a quick pat on the back for everything you do.
You and your body are a team. Guilt drags you both down - with mutual empowerment you can only win.
Everyone deserves 100% happiness - in every area of life.
Why apologise? To stay with the guilt: You do not owe any explanation to anyone.
But what guilt definitely is: a troll! It comes and goes, sometimes it creeps around you and tries to get on top of you. Often we can't banish it to the moon completely, but we can get out our guns and shoot it far away again with our good arguments. Maybe it will come back again, but we are well prepared and stand up to it.
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