You get a message from a friend. The one that got married last year. The one you know well enough to know she wants children, and she knows a little about your fertility struggles. You’ve not seen her for a while and suddenly, out of the blue, she invites you for lunch. Not a night out like normal but a lunch. Instantly your mind jumps forward. She’s going to announce her pregnancy. A tidal wave of emotion passes through you… and not the ones you’d like. Instead of happiness it’s anger – why her and not you. Instead of excitement it’s shame – shame that you’ve been trying for so long and still nothing. Instead of joy it’s guilt. Guilty that you can’t be positive and hate yourself for it (and if you’re honest her a little bit now too). And all of this rushes through your mind before you’ve even read to the bottom of the message.
Sound familiar?!
Let me guess, as well as all of this you also have that voice in your head chastising you silently but continuously “why can’t you just be positive”.
While trying to conceive, it’s all too common to hear the advice: “Just stay positive!” While normally well-meaning, this suggestion leaves us feeling overwhelmed and furious. In truth, it’s unrealistic. We all know it, and still expect it of ourselves and others.
Being in this constant seesaw is disempowering. It leaves us feeling exhausted and even more broken than before. We worry, not only about conception, but also about being grouchy / negative. As a result, we start to distance ourselves from people and events that used to make us happy. Is it really any wonder we get stuck in a perpetual fog under these conditions?!
A healthy dose of realism tells us that maintaining a constant state of positivity alongside the rollercoaster of emotions that comes with trying to conceive, healing from a miscarriage, or navigating the complexities of pregnancy after infertility is hard to say the least.
But there is a middle ground that is comfortable, healthy and even empowering.
As a fertility coach, I firmly believe that self-belief is far more critical than a forced or fake positivity. True self-belief comes from a deep inner core and once it grows, it can’t help but shape our responses to the challenges we face.
In this blog post, I will explore why self-belief is the foundation of resilience during your fertility journey and how embracing this mindset can lead to profound transformations.
The Illusion of Constant Positivity
In a world that often prioritises positivity, many feel pressured to wear a mask of happiness, even when they’re struggling. The truth is no one can be positive all the time. In fact, research shows that 80% of individuals experience negative thoughts daily. It’s perfectly natural to feel overwhelmed, anxious, or fearful during difficult times.
Social media is rife with “here’s how to be positive” messaging. It looks easy and those that say it appear to always be in this positive frame of mind. Even if we know social media shows part of the picture, we’re still led to believe a constant positive state of mind is what we need and should aspire to have. After all, isn’t that what’ll help us feel better about ourselves and ultimately help us reach the goal we’re looking for? (please don’t stop reading here – This blog will show you a better way, and one that puts you in the driver’s seat).
This societal pressure to maintain an upbeat outlook increases feelings of inadequacy. When you’re bombarded with messages telling you to think positively, it’s easy to believe that experiencing negative emotions makes you somehow less deserving of your dreams. Or because there’s something fundamentally wrong with you. This narrative can lead to frustration, self-judgment, and a sense of isolation—none of which foster genuine healing or growth. All of which add to the already strong feeling of being broken. In fact, at this point it can be tricky to see where that really comes from.
The Psychological Mechanisms at Play
To truly understand the power of self-belief, we must first explore the subconscious mind’s role in shaping our thoughts and behaviours. Our subconscious is a reservoir of beliefs formed from our past experiences, particularly those in childhood. Even the best childhoods can create lasting beliefs that can get distorted and shape our view of the world. The most innocuous thing, another child snatching a toy for example, can have a lasting impression. This inner core is a huge influence on our self-perception and emotional response. We learn a pattern of behaviour that plays out again and again. After time this becomes habit. There can be some comfort in habits, and they almost become our safe space, even when we recognise they’re not helpful. This is why it can be so difficult to break certain habits, regardless of our conscious mind telling us otherwise. (“Hello” to the “I know it’s stupid to think like this” thoughts!). Our beliefs about ourselves and the world around us comes from our subconscious, deep inner core.
When faced with challenging situations, the subconscious mind often reverts to the familiar patterns – potentially of doubt and fear. Our experiences also feed into the negative mindset. Previous cycles, losses, hurt all show us evidence of why we think we should stay in that more ‘realistic’ or negative mindset. We tell ourselves to be careful, our mind looks for safety, so we dare not even be in a positive frame of mind.
Through all of this, our conscious mind tells us to be positive. Positivity on the other hand often comes from our conscious mind and this disparity creates a seesaw effect—bouncing back and forth between what we think and what we believe. This seesaw effect leaves you feeling overwhelmed. When overwhelmed we feel exhausted. When exhausted its like we can’t see the wood for the trees, and we panic.
The iceberg is a great graphic to show exactly this. All of the ice under the water represents your subconscious mind, the ice above the water represents your conscious mind. At the subconscious level are the beliefs, values, habits, intuition, emotions, imagination. At the conscious level is the will power, decisions, analysis. Only 5% of what we do and say is truly based on our conscious mind, a huge 95% based on our subconscious. As a result, what’s held at our subconscious mind will always win out. Deciding to be positive (conscious) while believing we’re broken and failing (subconscious) is understandable causing us distress and an internal struggle.
Emotional dysregulation, often characterised by fluctuating feelings, can impact not only your mental health but also your physical well-being, including your fertility. Chronic stress, for instance, has been shown to affect hormonal balance, which plays a crucial role in reproductive health. Fertility aside, what’s this doing to your mental health, your relationships and sense of self.
Imagine how much calmer, lighter, freer you’d feel when off the positive vs negative seesaw.
The Impact of Self-Belief on Fertility
So, how does self-belief fit into this equation? Self-belief is rooted in self-acceptance and an understanding that you are deserving of love, support, and success. Something many of us lack on a fertility journey. Building these reserves dramatically changes everything. That shift in our belief system one way, or another does have an impact. Think simply of the placebo effect. There’s overwhelming research and studies evidencing that a single belief shift can have a physiological response in our bodies.
From my personal and professional experience, this message gets misconstrued, and people interpret it to mean that we must imagine the baby in order to get pregnant. I’m calling BS on that. I did it and the loss was incredibly painful. I see ladies try to do it and become self-critical because they can’t, or it doesn’t work. There’s a very clear reason why this “doesn’t work” which we’ll come on to later.
For now, let’s explore a real-life example of how a belief can share reality…
Suzy is shy and doesn’t like big events. She’s invited to one and her mind goes back to the last where she felt awkward and ignored. She reluctantly agrees but as the day gets closer her anxiety rises. Even when she tries to be positive, her mind pulls her back with “remember what happened last time” and she stays stuck in the discomfort. When the day comes, she gets ready with trepidation. The anxiety spikes as she ‘knows’ how nervous these things make her. By the time she arrives at the event, her nerves are palpable. She walks in, head lowers and shift slowly to the side of the room. Looking out there’s a sea of people who seemingly ignore her. But they’re not ignoring her, they barely see her in the corner. As Suzy feels ignored, she becomes even more self-conscious. She tells herself “See, I knew this would happen”. She leaves having barely spoken to anyone reiterating the belief that she doesn’t like these events. Spot the vicious circle.
Let’s switch that…
Sarah gets the invite and is instantly looking forward to it. As she gets ready, she’s buzzing, imaging the people she’ll meet and potential conversations. When Sarah arrives at the event, she takes off her coat, surveys the room and walks in, grabs a drink and starts chatting to the person next to her. Her experience is completely different.
While being an introvert or extrovert will shift how we experience such events, I invite you to consider how significantly different the outcome was for each and how that cascaded from the original belief vs the event itself.
All too often we focus on being positive and miss out the impact of our internal beliefs.
It’s one thing to imagine a baby and a wholly different thing to believe your body is capable. One is reliant on an outside influence, the other is deep within you.
When navigating fertility challenges, healing from loss or even embracing pregnancy later, nurturing a strong sense of self-worth or self-belief creates a more positive landscape.
Here’s some examples of how that might look:
- Truly believing that the failed cycles, or miscarriages, were not your fault (rather than just telling yourself that – I heard you saying, ‘I know that’!)
- Recognising that you are on this journey therefore believing your body is capable, rather than being angry with it
- Allowing yourself to believe in your pregnancy for today, based on the present rather than the past
Practical Strategies to Rebuild Self-Belief:
- Meditation/Hypnosis: Both practices talk to your subconscious mind and are one of the most powerful techniques for changing belief patterns at a deep level.
- Awareness: Take a hard look at yourself, at all the parts of you that are working without you even thinking about it. Your heart, lungs etc. Allow yourself to begin the process of appreciating and loving those different parts of you, and the whole of you including your reproductive organs
- Journaling: Instead of a “dear diary” allow yourself to brain dump whatever is on your mind. Without judgement or fear allow the words to tumble out of you. This practice will help increase awareness and an opportunity to reframe those thought patterns.
Remember that self-belief is a skill that can be developed over time. Embrace the process and allow yourself to grow. We all have wobbly times and days where we feel knocked. The difference is knowing those times will be short lived and trusting we have the tools to move out of that state.
That knowledge along become empowering.
Moving from Positivity to Self-Belief
Accepting negative emotions is not only okay; it’s essential. That said, there’s a difference between 1) recognising it and sitting with it because you don’t know how to get out of it and 2) because you want to stay there. Let’s face it, sometimes we want to sit and have a good cry, other times we don’t!
Understanding the WHY and knowing the HOW when it comes to processing your emotions is everything. Once we practice those things, we begin to feel more in control. As we feel more in control, we feel more empowered. When we’re empowered, we no longer feel broken. The domino effect is huge.
From this place, whether we stay in the negative becomes more of a choice… knowing this helps us feel more in control, and so it goes on.
Having a bank of strategies can’t help but build our emotional resilience. The very thing we need whilst tying to conceive, heal from loss and, dare I say it, at the next stages too.
The backbone to this is to stop striving for perpetual positivity, acknowledge that it’s entirely human to feel sadness, frustration, and anxiety. Instead, have an undercurrent of continuous self-belief. As this can run alongside everything else.
Transitioning from forced positivity to nurturing self-belief requires compassion for yourself. Recognise and accept your emotions, knowing that they are valid. Allow yourself to feel without judgement; this is the foundation upon which genuine self-belief is built.
Take Danielle for example. She came to me after a particularly bad miscarriage and numerous failed IVF cycles. She was barely surviving herself. The old version of her seemed light years away. That old version who was busy each weekend, social, buzzing with energy and happiness was now home most of the time in a state of despair. Her friends treated her differently and her focus at work was suffering. She was desperate to be that old positive her again. Together we worked on healing from what she’d been through. Changing that internal narrative from bullying her to supporting her. We rebuilt her self-belief from the ground up. Within 2 short months, everything shifted. She started socialising again, her friends noticed she was back. When a pregnant friend asked to meet her for lunch, she said yes without flinching. Something that would have been incomprehensible before.
At doctors appointments she was able to better engage in the conversations, instead of feeling like she was in fight or flight. She felt more in control than ever, more empowered, safer. Her work focus improved so she started enjoying it more. She’s going through a new cycle prepared, ready and unafraid.
What a shift in a short space of time.
Conclusion
In conclusion, while positivity may seem like an attractive goal, it is self-belief that truly supports us during our fertility journeys, and beyond. By embracing our emotions and understanding the psychological mechanisms at play, we can cultivate a sense of resilience that will serve us well.
You are not alone in your journey, and it’s natural to experience ups and downs. As you navigate this path, I encourage you to prioritise self-belief and engage in practices that foster it.
If you’re struggling to rebuild your self-belief and would like support, I invite you to book a free consultation with me. Together, we can explore strategies tailored to your unique journey and work towards cultivating the self-belief you deserve. Click the link here to find a time that suits you
There’s also a free guide available for you to download right away. This gives practical suggestions of how you can move away from feeling stuck, all up in your head right away. Click here to access