When Laura was first referred to me a few years ago, she called and said, “This is so vain, but I have this re-appearing rash all over my chin and neck that suddenly isn’t responding to any medications. One of my co-workers said you sometimes work with this sort of thing as a holistic counselor… do you think you can help?” We agreed to a four-session block of appointments and off we went, quickly learning that the skin irritation, in Laura’s case, was linked to unacknowledged anger, which dissipated fairly effortlessly once it was all brought up to the surface.
Within a few weeks the rash was gone, too. Permanently. (On rare occasions it warns of a possible return, but Laura now knows how to tune into what the rash “is trying to say” and full-scale flare-ups just don’t happen anymore.)
During one of these early meetings, Laura disclosed that she and her husband had been trying for several years to get pregnant, that they’d recently been to the doctor to do some tests, and that they were seriously considering various medically-based fertility treatments. But after her success shifting things physically using our holistic model for her rash, she decided that she would put some of her doctor’s recommendations on hold for a few months and explore whether any emotional issues were to blame for her difficulties getting pregnant.
Let's see... cheaper. Less painful. And, potentially, lots of secondary gains on the happiness scale… “WHY NOT,” she said! “Let’s give it a shot!”
The first thing I had Laura do was draft out a list of her goals, her pie-in-the-sky picture of her best case scenario around conceiving a baby. She wrote this:
We started shifting all the fears she had about how difficult it would be to get pregnant, how painful it would be to undergo some of the fertility treatments that she was scared were inevitable, how much of a failure she felt like she was for not being able to conceive easily, how it felt that her body had betrayed her, and how unfair it was that so many people around her were getting pregnant (including a few who didn’t even want to be moms). We systematically moved through these issues, clearing them on the physical and emotional levels simultaneously, until she started to feel truly different.
She described a newfound calmness, a sense of hope around becoming a mom. She and her husband began to feel like things were going to work out better than they had been thinking.
But the work wasn’t over, yet. We sifted through patterns that connected to financial fears, gender roles, holding intense emotions, “life is a struggle” belief-systems, self-consciousness around being a beautiful woman, and ideas about managing work and family life (Laura’s husband was working his way up the ladder of success, but would he be able to balance his career with being a dad?).
A lot of these themes are common for couples struggling to conceive, couples who dearly love each other and who genuinely want to be parents. There’s just a subtle (but dense) layer of sub-conscious patterns causing an also-subtle body-level ambivalence.
So part of you is saying, “I want to be a mom!” while another part of you is screaming, “What, are you crazy?!” When that happens, and in some form or fashion it’s happened to all of us at some point in our lives, the task is to calm down the part that’s rooted in the crazy fears (or not-so-crazy fears, as also might be the case), and get all those different parts of Self on the same page, the “YES” page. The “This will be amazing” page. The “We are supported completely” page.
Laura and I began our focus on fertility in April, and even though several times she had to work through the parts of her that felt like it was taking too long, it was never going to work, etc., by August she learned she was pregnant. The baby was born the following spring. Today Laura is a mother of three and she says she can barely remember what it was like to not be running around a noisy, toy-filled, chaotic house.
Now, that’s transformation!
(Part 2 will focus in on how the process works during one session… check back soon!)
Within a few weeks the rash was gone, too. Permanently. (On rare occasions it warns of a possible return, but Laura now knows how to tune into what the rash “is trying to say” and full-scale flare-ups just don’t happen anymore.)
During one of these early meetings, Laura disclosed that she and her husband had been trying for several years to get pregnant, that they’d recently been to the doctor to do some tests, and that they were seriously considering various medically-based fertility treatments. But after her success shifting things physically using our holistic model for her rash, she decided that she would put some of her doctor’s recommendations on hold for a few months and explore whether any emotional issues were to blame for her difficulties getting pregnant.
Let's see... cheaper. Less painful. And, potentially, lots of secondary gains on the happiness scale… “WHY NOT,” she said! “Let’s give it a shot!”
The first thing I had Laura do was draft out a list of her goals, her pie-in-the-sky picture of her best case scenario around conceiving a baby. She wrote this:
- I get pregnant in the divine, perfect time… without the use of medicine.
- I have an easy, healthy, and natural pregnancy.
- My physical body is prepared and healthy in all ways to carry a baby.
- I experience complete alignment with my physical, emotional, and spiritual Self during the process of trying to get pregnant - all the way through the birth.
- My husband is excited about his active role in my pregnancy: attending appointments, classes, exploring options, etc.
- Our relationships to each other and the new baby set up healthy communication patterns in the future for our family in a context of equality and mutual support.
- I feel complete clarity as to the priority decisions to make throughout this whole process.
We started shifting all the fears she had about how difficult it would be to get pregnant, how painful it would be to undergo some of the fertility treatments that she was scared were inevitable, how much of a failure she felt like she was for not being able to conceive easily, how it felt that her body had betrayed her, and how unfair it was that so many people around her were getting pregnant (including a few who didn’t even want to be moms). We systematically moved through these issues, clearing them on the physical and emotional levels simultaneously, until she started to feel truly different.
She described a newfound calmness, a sense of hope around becoming a mom. She and her husband began to feel like things were going to work out better than they had been thinking.
But the work wasn’t over, yet. We sifted through patterns that connected to financial fears, gender roles, holding intense emotions, “life is a struggle” belief-systems, self-consciousness around being a beautiful woman, and ideas about managing work and family life (Laura’s husband was working his way up the ladder of success, but would he be able to balance his career with being a dad?).
A lot of these themes are common for couples struggling to conceive, couples who dearly love each other and who genuinely want to be parents. There’s just a subtle (but dense) layer of sub-conscious patterns causing an also-subtle body-level ambivalence.
So part of you is saying, “I want to be a mom!” while another part of you is screaming, “What, are you crazy?!” When that happens, and in some form or fashion it’s happened to all of us at some point in our lives, the task is to calm down the part that’s rooted in the crazy fears (or not-so-crazy fears, as also might be the case), and get all those different parts of Self on the same page, the “YES” page. The “This will be amazing” page. The “We are supported completely” page.
Laura and I began our focus on fertility in April, and even though several times she had to work through the parts of her that felt like it was taking too long, it was never going to work, etc., by August she learned she was pregnant. The baby was born the following spring. Today Laura is a mother of three and she says she can barely remember what it was like to not be running around a noisy, toy-filled, chaotic house.
Now, that’s transformation!
(Part 2 will focus in on how the process works during one session… check back soon!)
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