I do not want to buy any presents. I do not want to get together with your family. I do not want to get together with my family. I do not want to shove myself full of fattening food when I feel like a kielbasa from these hormones. I do not want to see my nieces and nephews. I do not want to set up any damn tree or menorah. I do not want to go to any parties….
Sound familiar? These are a few feelings that are normal if you are at any stage of diagnosis or treatment for difficulty in trying to conceive. All these feelings and their intensity at this time of year can boil down to a predominant issue: It is emotionally costly to participate in forced gaiety. At holiday time, the world conspires to expect everyone to be on a high.
What are your options? You can buck up so you can show up – a “fake it ‘til you make it” approach? Or you can decline to participate and enlist understanding from your family, choosing to enjoy the holiday as a couple in a way that feels special.
It can get tricky, however, if you and your partner are not on the same page. Infertility provokes, …I daresay demands…emotional growth. You are doing and feeling okay one minute, but the potential to be blindsided the next minute by so many things, great and small, is infinite, especially if your coping styles diverge.
The holiday season can be deadly. And yet, holiday challenges are opportunities for growth – growth in the way you manage the challenges of this season individually, and as a couple. The good news is that the growth will go with you into future challenges.
It is one thing that the diagnosis and treatment of infertility send most normal people on an emotional trip into the ionosphere. It is another when the holidays can fling couples into a different solar system altogether, given the emotional demands of forced gaiety. And then there is the sight of other people’s children.
So how can you manage ‘the twelve days of Christmas’ with more ease than you might expect?
Ask yourself if the message in this upcoming anecdote can serve you:
Recently, I received a panicked phone call from a patient who was in a frenzy. She felt a huge pressure to face the holiday season with equanimity. I invited her to sit in front of a clock that had a second-hand, and to allow herself to breathe deeply and slowly for 60 seconds. I would be quiet on my end. At the end of one minute, she reported shock at how much better she felt. She had stopped shaking and felt ready to reconnect to her inner strength and resources.
It is easy to forget that we always have a built-in palliative mechanism with us–our breath. If you can remember that at least one deep breath is always an option, it can move you from feeling overwhelmed to feeling empowered to avoid getting pulled into a sad place.
At holiday times, the emotional demands of treatment, plus routine everyday concerns and expectations can leave you feeling that time is very unkind – every hour seeming like a day, every day seeming like a year. When you need Herculean strength not to succumb to the gravitational force of forced gaiety, remember to keep your sights on the fact that you will be a parent one day.
And as my former patient learned, our breath is a built-in tranquilizer.
