We are going to dedicate this week to talk thoroughly about intertility and sterility, the causes and possible treatments, but also about the emotional processes surrounding these circumstances.
And we start interviewing psychologist Olga Carmona, co-director of Psychology CEIBE and with whom we already talked in our previous special about the hypersexualization of girls.
In the first part of the interview that we are going to publish today we will talk with Olga Carmona about the emotional process faced by people with fertility problems and that should be understood as a duel.
From your professional point of view, what is the path of a couple with fertility problems before the diagnosis is confirmed?
It depends a lot on the couple and the reasons why they want to be parents and also depends on the diagnosis by which they are infertile or sterile. It is important to distinguish between infertility and infertility. Sterility is the inability to conceive (it never causes pregnancy) while infertility is the inability to successfully carry out pregnancy, but it can be conceived, that is, in the second case there is usually a period more or less length of recurrent abortions.
Are there common emotions in both situations?
In any case, both are lived with an infinite frustration and helplessness, going through the usual stages of a duel: the shock, which is usually accompanied by denial and where they try to find solutions that seek to minimize the problem; we are tired, we need a vacation, etc ...
Then comes the anger, anger, the search for culprits. This is an especially critical stage for the couple as it can turn against each other. Afterwards, a negotiation stage usually begins, where we feel willing to do what needs to be done to achieve that child that becomes increasingly impossible and begins the long and painful path of treatments where, in addition, expectations are often excessive and the failures come hand in hand one after the other which gives rise to the beginning of the next stage: depression or anxiety, depending on the personality structure of the woman or the couple. It is a very hard, long, exhausting stage, where the essence of our femininity and / or masculinity is threatened, where we perceive an almost total loss of control of our actions and desires, and where we have not yet understood that the path to motherhood or paternity has become a race in the background, in a roller coaster where one day we are at the top, touching with the fingertips the certainty of a child and the next we have descended to the hell of emptiness again, the emptiness of Our belly and our life. And you have to draw strength from weakness to start over.
Is the shock of discovering that you can't have children very big?
Yes. It is not something that we have valued as possible throughout our lives, we have the mental illusion that we control our fertility, that it depends on us one hundred percent.
Therefore, it is difficult to fit in and is not lived as one more pathology, but has a whole psycho-emotional aspect where terms such as guilt or inferiority begin to have a life of their own.
Could we say that there is a grieving process with its phases?
In full rule, as I explained above. The difference is that the path to acceptance is longer because the possibility appears and disappears constantly.
In a process of mourning for death, there is no possibility of returning the life of those who have lost. In a process such as infertility or sterility, each with its differences, the path of acceptance is longer because there are many moments where expectations are renewed and it seems that we can achieve it.
What should a person or couple who have fertility problems do before making the decision to go to treatments?
In my opinion, any couple should reflect deeply and honestly on the reasons why they want to have a child.
In the case of a couple that has problems for this and taking into account the hard road they will travel and that does not always end in success, they should do an exercise in dialogue, agree at what time to stop, and seek specialized and non-specialized support , that is, to count on the help of professionals who accompany them on the tour and also have family, friends who network.
Never isolate yourself, let alone live it as shameful. And I say this because many couples feel they are different and inferior because they cannot conceive like most people and hide it.
The road is tremendously hard to pass in solitude and not pay very high prices for it.
How do you live that process, expecting that there is not always success at the first attempt?
It is an exhausting and painful process, frustrating and full of obstacles, but it will depend a lot on the motivations that have led them there, on the solidity of the couple, on the personality structure of each one and also on the diagnosis. There are some pathologies that have a solution although the process is lengthened and difficult and others that do not have it. And a third case, in my opinion the most disconcerting, which is when medicine cannot establish the cause because apparently everything is in order. In the latter case, the lack of reasons, certainties, strategies, adds to the lack of understanding of what is happening and why. Acceptance is almost impossible, so you can stay for a long time in the later stages of the duel without the possibility of closing the door.
We thank the psychologist Olga Carmona the interview she has given to Babies and more and tomorrow we will continue talking to her within our special week on infertility.
