Clinical psychologist Mandy Rodriguez shares coping tools for infertility, including a worksheet to identify feelings and triggers, communication strategies for couples, and ways to handle pregnancy announcements. The video includes links to a support group and mental-health resources.
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Hey, thanks for joining me today. If you saw the title and it spoke to you, I think that you're in the right place because I have some amazing tools for you, um, in the form of Mandy Rodriguez. She's a clinical psychologist. Help, infertility is making me crazy is our title today. And if you're going through infertility and you feel crazy, you're not alone because it is definitely the crazy maker. So drop some comments below if you feel like you're going crazy and if you want to even tell us what the craziest thing about it is for you. So what we know is if we can't cope, we can't continue, right? So Mandy joined us last Thursday in Infertility Empowered and she went over some key key points, like a checklist, but not, it wasn't a checklist, but she put together a worksheet. That's the word that I'm looking for. She put together a worksheet for us to be able to identify our feelings, identify our triggers. But the best thing about this is, is that this is an activity that's super easy for your spouse to do as well., and then you guys can kind of have a little conversation about it, right? Because we don't want to feel alone in our emotions, and sometimes there's a big disconnect between us over here and how our spouse is reacting over here, right? So we want to come together and we want to understand each other so that we can continue with the process. Time and time again, I see people making comments like, I have whatever their threshold is. It's sometimes for people, it's 6 months. Sometimes it's 6 years. I've been at this infertility thing for X amount of time and I can't do it anymore. I can't cope with another month of disappointment. I can't cope with another failed cycle. I don't want to do this anymore. I feel like it's stealing all of my joy from my family. From, if you are experiencing secondary infertility, from my spouse, I'm done, right? So we don't want to get to the point— first of all, we want to accelerate that process for you. We want to get you to a point that doesn't have you struggling for an extended period of time. Um, I believe that that's possible for most people. And along the way, we want to keep you from going crazy. Um, I know when I was going through infertility, there were things that I just flung to as, uh, such as scripture affirmations, um, just to get me through to the next cycle when I would have another chance, right? So, um, the reason that this is such a big topic right now is because we know that September is the biggest birth month on the calendar year. So if September is the biggest birth month, then the timeline of pregnancy announcements and gender reveals, which we have to deal with that too is going to be in March and going into April. So we want to have tools not only to cope with our own, um, disappointments, but we also want to have tools going forward to deal with those things that we see around us. Even if we're not on social media, you can take a break at social media, but man, you can't stop that woman in the cubicle next to you, um, from, you know, making her announcement. Um, social media is— abstaining from social media is not always the answer. It can be an answer, but it's not always an answer to moving past or getting all of those announcements, gender reveals, and things out of your system. So drop me, um, drop me that information that we talked about in the beginning in the comments, like what's the one thing that you wish people knew made you crazy about infertility. And head over, I'm gonna put the link in the comments, head over to the group so you can take advantage of Mandy. And I've got some other mental health support, um, information coming up in that group because it's super, super important to me that I support you in that way. Health and blessings to you. Bye-bye.
