Miscarriage & Infertility Therapy
By Kristin Edling
Miscarriage and Infertility, just those few words are impactful and bring about individual thoughts, emotions, and beliefs. They can be downplayed or dismissed; however they should be considered as traumatic events. Similarly to other forms of traumatic events each person who experiences a Miscarriage or Infertility are impacted differently.
Mental Health Concerns Associated With Infertility and Miscarriage
Many women report that they have symptoms that are consistent with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is more commonly known as PTSD. Yes, that is correct the same PTSD diagnosis that soldiers who experience wartime are diagnosed with. With those PTSD symptoms being experienced by many women after a miscarriage or while experiencing infertility there is often a glazing over regarding the mental health treatment by both the physical and psychological health fields as well as society on a macro level. Over 40% of women experience PTSD symptoms following their miscarriage.
Miscarriage, Infertility, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Many of those symptoms of PTSD that are experienced are reexperiencing feelings of loss, an attempt or actual avoidance of situations or experiences that are a reminder of their loss, nightmares, or flashbacks. Often as a rule of thumb to avoid something that is activating of PTSD symptoms avoiding people, places and situations that bring on those symptoms. Approximately half of women report that they have ongoing anxiety and depressive symptoms for about four months following a miscarriage. In terms of grief, women that experience a miscarriage experience grief that is characterized as a major traumatic loss that is sudden and unexpected.
The physical healthcare field has a gap in any form of follow up appointments to ensure physical healing and recovery. After experiencing a miscarriage, regardless of the gestational period, would allow for space to screen for depressive and trauma symptoms postnatal.
Shame and Postnatal Mental Health
The mental health field tends to not allow the therapeutic intervention as to many think it is a space of shame and minimizing the mental health ramifications. This shame often begins with what a pregnant woman “SHOULD” or “SHOULD NOT” be doing during pregnancy. Now granted many of those are medical recommendations and that is not the premise for shame. Shame is built on the stigmatization that a woman should have her pregnancy secretly until she has cleared 12 weeks of gestation. This is not beneficial to trying to avoid postnatal depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms. Healing begins when a person is seen, heard, and validated. When a pregnancy must be kept silent and hidden that can prevent being seen, heard, and validated, especially by those who are the most supportive and closest to us. This shame cycle can have prolonged and potentially lifelong psychological effects.
Therapy and Support for Infertility and Miscarriage
Research that was conducted and concluded in 2013 by the World Health Organization highlighted that there is not a standardized format of psychological support following a miscarriage or throughout Infertility. Identifying distressing symptoms and the development of mental health problems in follow up appointments can be key to potentially future healthy pregnancies. This was noted through the research in 2010 that women that experienced a miscarriage, even when they had a living child, would experience an increased rate of anxiety and distress that is specific to pregnancy.
Therapist for Trauma and Reproductive Issues
As a therapist that works with trauma and reproduction, it is imperative that the Mental Health community begins to recognize and assist in the healing process of those who are experiencing infertility or a miscarriage. The Mental Health community can help by utilizing the language of Reproductive Trauma. This can begin the healing process, as the verbiage of Reproductive Trauma allows people to be seen, heard, and validated. Being seen, heard, and validated is the basis for where all healing begins, so having the recognition that your miscarriage and infertility is seen, heard, and validated.
If you are reading this and have experienced a Miscarriage or Infertility let’s take a moment to acknowledge:
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- Your mind remembers
- Your body remembers
- You carry these experiences with you
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Your mind remembers the feeling of a positive or negative pregnancy test, the anticipated due date, the feeling of injections, the extensive testing to determine what the cause could be, the cost associated with the appointments, the sound of the doctor’s voice telling you that you’re pregnant or have had a ‘failed’ cycle, the anticipated due date.
Your body remembers the coldness of a speculum or exam table, the early waking for appointments, the pain, the contractions.
You carry this with you in the form of the calendar as the biggest reminder or trigger point. When should our next doctor’s appointment have been? The birthdays. The anniversaries. Then there are the questions and the hopes and dreams about your Reproductive Story.
Being seen, heard, and validated be important to the healing process is because we all have a Reproductive Story. As children, many of us have played house and assumed the role of the Mommy or the Daddy, we had imaginary children and cared for them through our play. This play can begin as early as about 18 months old and can continue through childhood. As adolescents or young adults dating and looking for a potential future spouse there is often a conversation of whether or not each person wants children and how many children they would want as a couple. Then fast forward to we have found our person we want to have children with and take a step, such as engagement or marriage, the commonly asked question is asking when you will have a baby.
Reproductive Trauma, Therapy, and Counseling
All of this to be said, we all have a fundamental thought process of what we presume our Reproductive Story will be. So, when there is an alteration to the plan, such as Infertility or Miscarriages, there is often a feeling of bodily betrayal and betrayal of our Reproductive Story. Body Betrayal is when our body feels as if it is a traitor that has betrayed our mind. This betrayal needs to be resolved as it is deeply engrained within the trauma symptomology.
An example of this is you are one day late of your anticipated menstruation, and you get your period or you’re pregnant and begin spotting. These are triggering events to the Depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that many experience in conjunction with Reproductive Trauma. Through therapy we can begin to heal your Reproductive Trauma.
