The sheer exhaustion of optimism fatigue

I don’t know where to start with this one, so I will just start with the fact that sometimes present situations can open old wounds and go from there. The present situation is struggling to find a buyer for a little house I still own. We have friends, colleagues and family also trying to sell properties with varying degrees of success. Others seem to be getting sales while we are not, yet there is nothing we can change about the property from the feedback. What this has unearthed is the fertility struggles I had 10-15 years ago. I could almost just swap friend’s house sale for friend’s pregnancy. They’re pregnant, I still am not.

This week I did a random open of a book I read two or three years ago, The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. The pages opened at a chapter about how some things just pass through us without leaving an emotional impression while others get stuck. Those that get stuck will re-appear and the feelings will recrudesce in response to unrelated events that somehow trigger the memory. I also saw in a book review the term “rushed healing” and how in a bid to feel better about something quicker than we really do we can suppress emotions. When I realised that my periods had stopped for good, I hadn’t anticipated the sense of relief that I would feel. Not because I didn’t have children, but because the sheer exhaustion of having to keep hoping could actually stop and I could start living the life I did have. But I realise now that I never really resolved that, and the impact those years had, it just came to an end, and I moved on from it, or so I thought.

My first foray into you can think it into being came with Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life. For some-one whose outer life was a far cry from their inner desires this was a beguiling revelation. I just needed to change how I thought, and hey presto! While I can certainly hold onto the truth that how we think does affect outcomes, indeed it does, the idea that we can direct outcomes with our thinking has not come to fruition for me. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it has increased anxiety and exhaustion. It breeds the idea that we should get the life we want, that what we want is always in our reach, so when it doesn’t happen there is a deep sense of shame, that our efforts weren’t enough, we weren’t good enough rather than consideration of the myriad of other reasons, many of which likely to be beyond our control, that meant things didn’t work out as hoped.

In those years to have to “stay positive and not give up” did become exhausting as did the endless cycle of hope followed by disappointment. We never had IVF, a decision I do not regret even though I don’t have a living child, because the odds for us were so low and the stakes so high. I remember saying to a friend who was encouraging me to “have a go at IVF” that there was only so much disappointment I could take. Some-one close to me went through 6 failed rounds, it’s really not for the faint hearted. There was always someone with a success against the odds story, the mythical granny who had triplets at 95 (slight exaggeration but you get my drift), so I really shouldn’t give up hope. There really was no reason why I couldn’t have another baby, except it wasn’t happening. No amount of positive thinking, visualisation, foul green juices and the rest were able to jolt my reproductive system into action. It would appear it had done all that it was intending to do.

In his book Michael Singer talks about just letting it go now when it comes back up. So what can go in place of this single focus against all odds thinking that was encouraged through that time. Because the fear that came back is that those of us who I will term “infertility survivors” know well and good that it is completely possible for all efforts to come to nothing. It is in our realm of lived experience to have to let go of a deeply held hope for our lives and accept a different reality. We know that it might not work out and there is no getting away from that.

With this having presented itself for re-examination some current tools that are going into the box are as follows:

Radical acceptance: I am yet to read Tara Brach’s work and would very much like to. I became aware of it in the trying to conceive tunnel, but it always got drowned out by the optimism that was closer to fantasy that seemed to need to prevail. The idea tugged at the keep going machine, but didn’t get to take hold. But there is a level of relief in being able to accept things as they are at that moment and to accept that maybe we don’t know what the outcome will be. A friend said to me that when things are tough she focusses on what the best next step might be. To identify the best next step, we need to be able to make a realistic appraisal of where we currently are. I remember reading some statistics when the IVF question was current. The study (and I can’t remember which study it was) found that of couples with unexplained infertility (which was us) those that had IVF had a 17% pregnancy rate as opposed to 16% in those who continued to try naturally. I did thankfully choose not to sink thousands of hard earned pounds into a 1% chance, but I did hang onto the hope that we would be in that 16%, choosing to reject the reality that 84% of those couples did not conceive. How much more peaceful could those years have been if I had just let this go?

Maybe being prepared to see reality can enable us to make better decisions. Yes, sometimes against all odds we succeed. But sometimes despite all our efforts, prayers, affirmations, vision boards, you name it, we do not. And then we have to decide what to do instead.

Embracing uncertainty and living in the moment: The fact that life is uncertain is both terrifying and liberating with equal measure. In each moment is a myriad of possibilities and keeping a fully open mind means we need not be stuck. Things are moving and changing all of the time. I read in a book “The Four-Way Path” by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles that only that which could not be lost in a ship wreck is truly ours. That means nothing is truly ours because everything can be lost in a ship wreck. To fully embrace this to me is to live in grace. Our lives are always now. We may have plans and ideas for the future, that may or may not come to be, but we can only actually live in the present moment in our current circumstances. Instead of hoping or fearing for the future I can ask if I have what I need for today, and what can I do about things today? I remember reading a magazine article by a woman in her thirties who was battling cancer and it really wasn’t clear if she would survive, and how she felt betrayed by her body and that her future had been taken. But one thing she did say was that without a future she realised that life didn’t happen in the future, it happened now. All of us at some point will reach that day when we do not have a future so it makes sense to live now, whatever now entails. There will always be people for whom it seems to be going better, but in reality life goes in cycles. We all have ups and downs.

So instead of making vision boards and affirming a particular outcome I will resolve to just be. Meditation can focus on the breath and awareness of my inner state rather trying to visualise and manifest a particular outcome that may or not come to pass, or try to create a feeling that is not currently there. Life will be as it is, I will be as I am and make the best choices I can with what I currently have, and understand that much is beyond me. And with that I will say Namaste

xx