How does infertility affect the couple in a psychological way?

Infertility is the complexity to conceive or maintain a pregnancy, this can happen to individuals without distinction of genders.

Infertility is commonly diagnosed once you fail to remain pregnant after 1 year, or for a long time trying. Also, when you have had several miscarriages.

Infertility is not "a women's problem", or something related to age, since there are many things that have the possibility of causing infertility.

Once a couple has trouble staying pregnant, both should have infertility tests.

Psychological implications of the diagnosis

As Syme explained in 1997, infertility from an emotional and psychological perspective, processed as a loss.

This loss is experienced in different stages; one is when the pregnancy does not occur as expected; another when the treatment cycles are finished and these are not successful.

And also when the woman becomes pregnant, but has a loss of the fetus.

The periods that infertile couples go through are seen differently by each individual, however they are relevant to take into account in the therapeutic organization.

Commonly, couples experience feelings of guilt, pain, sadness, envy or jealousy for those couples who are fertile, and this can leave an important mark on the psyche of those couples who do not seek therapeutic support.

How to deal with infertility?

To understand infertility, it is important that we know some of the most common causes that can cause this process:

• Untreated chlamydia or gonorrhea

• No ovulation

• Your fallopian tubes remain blocked, so sperm cannot reach the egg.

• Having poor quality eggs

• The way your uterus causes the fertilized egg not to implant easily

• Endometriosis

• Uterine fibroids

• Low sperm count

• Low sperm motility

• Sperm that do not remain well-formed

• Semen so thick that sperm do not have the ability to move easily in it

• There are no sperm in your semen

As we can see, the main reasons for infertility are biological, so it must be faced as a process under which we have no control.

Clinical practice shows us that the greater the acceptance of emotions regarding infertility, and the level of expression about it, the more the levels of discomfort are reduced in both men and women.

This therapeutic care is based on the understanding of emotional inconveniences and situations, which are commonly the product of a failure in cognition or perception of the problem. That is, the discomfort is causing by distorted thinking.

So, the treatment is based on developing capacities, re-learning, and modifying the negative assumptions that the individual has about himself.

The greatest advantage of this therapeutic form is the brevity of the treatment and the development of other capacities such as: relaxation, anxiety performance, assertiveness and social capacities to be able to face situations.