The Effect of Negative Emotions

I talked in the last tip two weeks ago about negative emotions and how they can affect your fertility by impacting your physiology and said I would expand on it in the next fertility tip, so here goes.

I see so many couples that come in to the clinic totally beaten down by the system.  I can literally see it on their faces, in their body language and hear it in their voices. This not contributing to improving their situation one bit.

The therapists at my clinic strive to help each person become more empowered to take charge of their fertility, take responsibility for their situation, and get their lives back.  I am very proud to say that couples have told me that when they leave our office, though they may not be pregnant yet, at the very least, they leave feeling better, more empowered.  This I believe has a significant impact like our wonderful herbal formula that can help to optimize balance and improve the nutrients in the system.

In order to do everything possible to improve your fertility your emotional state and how you process your emotions must be explored.  There is a great saying by a Chinese Qigong master, "If you don't go within, you go without".  And this definitely can apply to fertility.

A part of "going within" involves recognizing and letting go of negative emotions that may be negatively impacting your physiology and perpetuating the fertility issues you were experiencing.

Let me make one thing very clear.  I talk about getting rid of negative emotion, but this doesn't mean that feeling a negative emotion is bad in some way.   As a matter of fact, negative emotions can be very beneficial and create opportunity for learning, growth, and improving your health and your fertility. I want you to feel negative emotion.  It’s completely normal. It's holding on to the negative emotion that creates a problem.  

It has been shown in many studies that a person who holds on to negative emotion such as anger may have an increased incidence of cardiovascular problems. "Worriers" in a study from Sweden have been shown to be more prone to cancer.  Sadness and other depressive emotions can suppress the immune system over time.  Some studies even support the fact that women who have a history of depression may take longer to become pregnant.

What I have found though is that once a person understands how to acknowledge the negative emotions they experience and use these emotions as a useful tool to learn and grow, this emotion doesn't just have to be "dealt with" but you can truly let it go and also let go  of any negative impact it may have been having on your physiology.

You can do this when you realize that negative emotions have a purpose.  Your negative emotions are telling you to PAY ATTENTION. In other words, everyone can feel angry if someone is crossing their boundaries.  This anger can remind you to enforce your boundaries.  Everyone should feel fear if a bus is coming at them so they can PAY ATTENTION, protect themself and step out of the way. Everyone can feel sadness when they have just lost a loved one.  This may tell them to pay attention to what that person meant to them.  Guilt is even a very valuable negative emotion to help you evaluate situations in your life.

And once you pay attention and get what you can learn, you can get rid of the negative emotion so that its effects do not continue to build over time and contribute to suppressing your immune system, continued accumulated stress, poor nutrient absorption, and less than optimal hormone production.  

How do you let go of negative emotions learn from them?  It’s very similar to the tips I have written about getting rid of limiting beliefs or even destructive thoughts you may have about yourself or your situation which also have been shown to impact your physiology.

1)  Acknowledge the emotion.  Do not repress it, pretend you didn't experience it, or feel as though there is a problem with you because you experienced anger, sadness, fear, or guilt.  Instead, just acknowledge that it has come up as your ally and that it is reminding you to pay attention.

2)  Imagine yourself looking at the scenario from a different perspective and ask yourself, "What can I learn from this that would be for me, constructive and for the future".  If you have trouble finding what you can learn because you are stuck in the emotion, I mean really feeling the emotion every time you think  of the event, or person or scenario, imagine yourself as a fly on the wall, a third party so to speak, moving up and away from the situation to give you a different perspective.  Get what you can learn from it and put this in that place where you store all of the learnings that you create which support you and help you grow.

3) Let the emotion go. This will happen when you get what you can learn from the situation and in some cases reinforcing the learning by taking action is necessary.  

By the way, when you do this it doesn't mean you have to let go of the desire to have a child.  Just because you have been able to let go of the sadness, anger, fear, and guilt and look at your life differently, instead of focusing on what you lack, focus on what you have now, or as we spoke about last time, redefine your definition of family, this doesn't mean that you give up your desire to be parents.  It only means that you are developing a much more constructive scenario to help support balance in your health and allow you to continue to move towards creating the life you long for.

So next cycle, if you find that you aren't pregnant yet, really put these steps into practice and find out what you have learned about yourself.   What does experiencing the negative emotions while working towards creating a child reveal to you about yourself that is supportive, constructive, or destructive?

If you get stuck on being able to let it go, you might need to take a few additional steps.  If you are feeling the negative emotion of sadness when you get your period for example, ask yourself "Why is having a baby important to me?"

If you come up with a nice seemingly positive statement like "because I want to share my love with a child" but you are still experiencing the sadness, ask yourself again "Why is 'wanting to share my love with a child' important to me?" Keep asking this question about each answer until you find the real belief that is creating the sadness.  And then you can apply the steps in the other fertility tips (regarding destructive thoughts and beliefs) to get rid of thoughts and beliefs/decisions that do not support you.  This will likely improve your physiology along with your fertility.