It is probable that you are reading this as you are interested in finding out more about how hypnotherapy for infertility can help your chances of conception. It’s likely that you have been researching your fertility journey for some time and found out how some of the more traditional approaches can help.
It is known that being at a healthy weight, and avoiding unhealthy habits like smoking and excess drinking can all help to improve your chances of conception. As does taking regular exercise and sleeping well. If you have been medically assessed, adopted a healthy and active lifestyle and have still not been successful, then your difficulty could well be related to your present stress levels.
Can hypnotherapy help me conceive?
Using hypnotherapy for infertility can complement your current practices and help your body to adopt the right conditions to conceive. It offers a proven way of reducing stress, benefiting both your body and mind.
Whilst there are some differences in the stated timeline, infertility is generally described as when you are trying to conceive but are not able to. The World Health Organisation defines it as an inability to become pregnant after 12 months of trying. If you have been trying for this amount of time without success, then that in itself can cause your stress levels to rise significantly.
Over time this will no doubt have a damaging effect on both your mental and physical health and wellbeing. If you add into this equation all the normal stress that you are subjected to on a daily basis, then it’s easy to see how your stress levels can rise and then stay elevated. Hypnosis for fertility is not a medical treatment. It helps to overcome fertility issues naturally by reducing the amount of stress your mind are body are under.
Feeling anxious?
We can all feel anxious at specific times in our lives, anxiety is what we feel when we are worried, tense or afraid. It’s actually just your body’s natural stress response. It can sometimes be quite useful. If we are preparing for a presentation or job interview a certain amount of anxiety can help us to focus and be more alert.
It has been present throughout our evolution as humans as a way of helping us to survive. When your body perceives you to be under threat, you will unconsciously create an overload of stress hormones. These will then have the effect of increasing your heart and breathing rate to help you fight or flee from your threat.
If your body is thinking of survival it will prioritise sending blood to your muscles at the expense of other areas. Parts of your body not concerned with your survival, such as your reproductive system, will suffer as a result. If your body perceives itself to be under attack, then your uterus and ovaries will receive less blood. This impairs their functioning.
Obviously, this is not a huge problem if these are isolated incidents. However, if you find yourself constantly living with stress then it’s easy to see how your chances of becoming pregnant lessen.
Excess stress hormones
In our modern world, it’s unusual for our lives to feel physically threatened. We therefore usually have little use for the stress hormones we create. They would have been very beneficial if we needed to run from a sabre-toothed tiger or summon up the strength to fight a foe, but due to the way our existence has changed, we don’t have a great use for them.
Many things can cause us to increase our anxiety including; work pressures, relationship problems or financial insecurity. This all means we can produce an abundance of stress hormones and have no outlet for them. You may associate this build-up with feeling jittery, on edge and the feeling unable to fully switch off and relax.
Effects of insomnia on fertility
A build-up of stress hormones can also have a negative effect on your sleeping patterns. When you are anxious it may well feel that your mind is constantly racing, making relaxation difficult. Staying asleep for an extended period of time is also difficult. Under conditions of stress, your body will tend to wake you up at around 3-4 o’clock in the morning.
It can’t process the amount of stress that you have accumulated. Your brain’s only option is to wake you up.
We all know how vital sleep is for both our physical and mental health and wellbeing. A regular sleep pattern improves the functioning of all of your body’s systems including your reproductive one. Sleep deprivation amongst both men and women is being increasingly reported as being one of the causes of infertility.
The negative effects of stress
For you to have the best chances to conceive you need to achieve homeostasis. It is very possible that at the moment your body doesn’t provide the right conditions to grow and develop a foetus. If you are stressed then your brain will go into a kind of survival mode. Its only concern is for your safety. It can’t think past looking out for your survival.
This is where using hypnotherapy for infertility can be very beneficial. It can positively alter the chemical balance in your brain, improving your chances of conception.
The stress hormone adrenaline also negatively affects fertility by inhibiting the production of progesterone. This hormone is essential for building and lining the uterus. High-stress levels are also known to adversely affect the chances of conception by increasing levels of prolactin. Prolactin is released during breastfeeding to inhibit fertility. This reduces the chances of falling pregnant whilst still caring for an infant.
So it’s very clear to see that anxiety can have a detrimental effect on your chances of conception. If you suffer from prolonged periods of stress, then you will build up an excess of stress hormones.
Stress can affect the human body in many ways. Among other things you may find you have difficulty sleeping, difficulty thinking clearly, and difficulty focusing. You may also find you have a loss of sex drive, suffer from regular migraines and become easily agitated.
I always feel stressed
None of the above symptoms needs to be permanent. You weren’t born with stress and anxiety; they are a product of the way that you are currently thinking. When you worry and think negatively about a situation you will create anxiety. It is very common for anxiety suffers to catastrophize about the future. If you have been trying to conceive but have been unsuccessful then you may worry about when or if it will ever happen.
This in turn creates more anxiety which as we know may actually decrease your chances of getting pregnant.
When we are stressed we are often told to calm down and remove ourselves from the situation. This can work in certain situations such as if we’ve had an argument with someone. However, it’s just not possible to remove yourself from all anxiety creating situations. What you can do however is to reframe the way you think. This will ensure that you don’t focus your attention on the more negative aspects of your life.
Your emotional and intellectual mind
When you are anxious you think with an emotional, negative part of your brain. This part will always see things from the worst possible perspective. When you think from this part of your brain it is very easy to catastrophize. You think that everything will go wrong. If you’re anxious you are not able to think intellectually or logically, this part of your brain is shut down.
You have engaged your survival mode, logic doesn’t get a look in. As far as your brain is concerned you need to act now.
The emotional primitive part of our brain has evolved with us over time. When you are thinking from your primitive brain it will see each negative event as a threat. You may have just made a small mistake at work that you could easily rectify but instantly the catastrophizing starts. Before you know it you’ve convinced yourself you’re going to get the sack.
Logic v emotion
Your brain has reacted in the same way as if you’re running away from a sabre-toothed tiger fearing for your life. The same stress hormones will have been released into your body.
Let’s imagine that instead of reacting to the situation above with emotion, you were able to react with logic. You made the mistake but because you had intellectual control over the situation you were able to work out a solution. In this case, as you reacted calmly you didn’t release any stress hormones.
Anxiety is only created when you worry and think negatively. When you think positively you don’t create anxiety. Instead of releasing damaging stress hormones, you release serotonin. Serotonin can help to elevate our mood, improve our self-confidence and self-esteem and help us to cope with whatever life throws at us. More importantly, it helps to balance out the stress hormones that you have been creating. This helps you to achieve homeostasis.
How does Solution Focused Hypnotherapy for Infertility work?
Hypnotherapy for fertility offers a holistic approach to mental health and well-being improvement. Having its basis in neuroscience makes it particularly effective when dealing with anxiety. The methods used replicate the way your brain works when it’s functioning well.
Using hypnosis for fertility lowers your anxiety levels, reduces the production of fertility inhibiting hormones and increases your levels of serotonin. This helps your body to achieve homeostasis. Your body achieves the right conditions for falling pregnant, thereby significantly improving your chances of conception.
With Solution Focused Hypnotherapy for infertility, we don’t spend time discussing your condition or analysing the past. There is no one particular reason why you are currently feeling stressed. There is always a multitude of reasons. I very much take the approach that you only need to make small changes to make a big difference.
Forward-thinking
We will spend time each session discussing the aspects of your future that you feel you would like to change. With Solution Focused Hypnotherapy we always look forward. You will be encouraged to visualise and discuss what your best hopes are for the future. We then use hypnosis to help you work towards attaining this wonderful picture built up in your mind.
Under hypnosis, you switch off the area of your brain that’s the centre of your stress response. As a result, you don’t produce any stress hormones. This allows you to access other areas of your brain that will enable you to reflect on your hopes and build up new positive pathways and connections in your brain.
By building up new positive pathways and by lowering your production of stress hormones you are able to think from the intellectual part of your brain. This enables you to react to situations with logic rather than emotion.
Hypnotherapy for IVF treatment
Perhaps you are interested in hypnotherapy as you’re currently undergoing IVF or similar fertility treatment and have heard that hypnosis can significantly increase the chances of conception. Indeed a study in 2004 of 185 women revealed that using hypnosis doubled the successful implantation rate. The increased success rate was found to be due to the relaxed state that the women were in at the time of embryo transfer.
When the women were not in a relaxed trance state, the stress of the procedure crested small contractions in the uterus, preventing the successful implantation of the fertilised egg. The methods and techniques taught to you during our hypnotherapy sessions can help you quickly lower your anxiety levels. You will be provided with your own download that you can use during your IVF procedure.
Author: Ian Murton HPD DSFH AfSFH Reg NCH Reg CNHC Reg is an award-winning Solution Focused Hypnotherapist running sessions via Zoom from his home on the Bedfordshire/ Hertfordshire border.
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