Couples Counselling for Fertility Issues with Dianna Giles
Couples often seek therapy when they are experiencing significant distress related to their fertility experience. Often their mental health is vulnerable and relationship issues are beginning to emerge. Extended family, friendships and workplaces may be experiencing compassion fatigue or struggling to be on the journey with this family. Individuals and couples are often beginning to socially isolate with a sense of knowing that others around them will not understand their perspective.
We all have lovely ideals and expectations around creating a family & having a child, which includes how long it will take to conceive and often with an assumption that this may include one early pregnancy loss. However, when one’s fertility is challenged, so too are our ideals, expectations, beliefs & values. This may be the first time a couple has had to contemplate ‘things being out of their control’, or ‘things not going according to plan’. For many couples it can be overwhelming, anxiety provoking and debilitating.
To understand a couple’s story, it requires an understanding of 3 main themes:
1. Grief and Loss
2. The cycle Hope and Hopelessness
3. Exposure to traumatic events
For more information, you can read about these themes here: Grief Themes
Each member of the couple will cope differently in this process due to differing perspectives, roles, and responsibilities. Couples often enter a life together with shared experiences, shared goals, and shared values. When fertility becomes elongated, the relationship dynamic may change, and the couple may experience a sense of an absence of mutual support. This can have an impact on their level of intimacy and on their sexual relationship. Many couples report that trying to create a family can over time create more distance.
Couple counselling is designed to encourage the couple to develop a new level of understanding of how Grief and Loss, Hope and Hopelessness and exposure to Traumatic events has begun to intrude upon their relationship; and perhaps chipped away at it overtime with often a laundry list of unmet need, unresolved issues and the unspoken.
My aim in working with couples who are navigating challenges within their fertility journey is to create a safe space to explore these complex and multilayered components by:
Creating space for each member of the couple to share their unique story and challenges they face.
Supporting the couple to develop an understanding of Grief and Loss and the impact upon their individual coping and couple relationship.
Allowing the couple to begin to re-connect with their partner by re-defining roles, responsibilities, expectations and including shared decision-making
Creating space in their communication for vulnerability, fear, hope & hopelessness to re-establish trust in the relationship
Re-creating steps toward connection, intimacy, and self-care
And together, re-creating a new narrative with shared meaning, shared goals within a new framework of relationship resilience.
If this post has resonated with you and you would like to begin in your own healing, please prioritise your health and relationship by beginning your therapy today.