WRITING YOUR WAY TO EMOTIONAL HEALTH!
By Louise Sattler, Psychologist
Life can be full of challenges with some requiring great strength, endurance, confidence and courage. This is exceptionally true when faced with infertility.
As we enter the new year it may be time to resolve to start the year proactively – especially if have experienced infertility but are hoping to bring a baby in to your life by the time the calendar flips to 2015.
The first step is the hardest. Admitting you need answers as to why you are unable to become pregnant and then asking for help by fertility specialists.
Step 2 is also fraught with anxiety – the testing phase of infertility. Bloodwork, ultrasounds, semen analysis… all so “clinical”, yet necessary.
Step 3 may be sitting down with the fertility specialists, including our doctors at HRC Fertility – Pasadena, to discuss options and plans. What do you want to do? What can be done? What is NOT an option?
There are many permutations as to what can occur in the decision making tree. Is IUI or IVF the answer? Adoption? Surrogacy?
SO MUCH INFORMATION!
SO MANY EMOTIONS!
Feelings are meant to be expressed not bottled up.
Step 4 is to release your feelings and give yourself empowerment to your infertility by picking up a pen and a simple notebook (or a computer) to journal and blog yourself to emotional health.
How to start? Unlike your 9th grade English class, there is no teacher marking your papers for grammatical correctness or content. You write what you think, what you feel, your wishes, your dreams and much more.
Prefer to journal with art and not words? That is fine, too! Whatever it takes to make sense of this time of your life- do it!
What about starting a blog? While a journal is between you and yourself (unless you choose to share), a blog is usually a more public forum. WORDPRESS and BLOGGER are both blog sites that easily can help you upload a blog. User friendly with multimedia options, such as YouTube videos, blogs can be a way to not only help yourself, but educate and help others. There are privacy options if you wish to keep this information private – but keep in mind that technology is not perfect – so “buyer beware”.
Here is a link to many resources for fertility blogging. Please keep in mind that the thoughts and views belong to these writers and you are entitled to your own!
Take power over your situation and start 2014 with a pen or computer as part of your “infertility” team! Good luck!
About the author: Louise Sattler is a Psychologist residing in California. She often blogs about emotional, health and safety issues at www.LouiseSattler.me