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Silent Struggles: Navigating Infertility and Perinatal Loss
142 Plays11 months ago
In this episode, we explore the emotional complexities of infertility and perinatal loss, gaining valuable insights into coping strategies, emotional resilience, and the importance of mental health support during challenging times. Whether you're personally affected or seeking understanding, this interview provides a thoughtful exploration of healing and hope in the face of fertility struggles and perinatal loss.
About today's guest:
Caylin Broome (she/her) is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker holding additional certification in grief and trauma. She is a proud alumna of Oglethorpe University and the University of Georgia, and has provided clinical services in nonprofit, community-based, school, residential, healthcare, and private practice settings in the Atlanta area since 2010. Recently, she has transitioned to private practice - seeing clients in-person in her office in Midtown Atlanta, and virtually across the state of Georgia. Caylin works with clients across the lifespan and specializes in supporting people through grief and loss, adoption-related issues, aging and caregiver stress, and trauma. In her free time, you can find Caylin snuggling with her five rescue pets (sometimes all at once), rewatching The Office or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or nerding out on Atlanta’s local comedy scene.
Get in touch with Caylin:
www.caylinbroomecounseling.com
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Outside of Session'
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome back to season two of Outside of Session. I'm your host, licensed clinical social worker, and therapist BFF, Julie Hilton. This season, I'm interviewing some incredible guests who also happen to be experts in their fields. Mental health, motherhood, spirituality, and so much more, I can't wait for their stories to be told. These are all the conversations I'm having outside of session.
Guest Introduction - Kaylin Broome
00:00:47
Speaker
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of outside of session. My guest today is Kaylin Broome, who is a fellow licensed clinical social worker and therapist here in the Atlanta area. She also has additional certifications in grief and trauma, which is why I wanted to have her on today's episode, because we're going to be talking about infertility and perinatal loss.
00:01:10
Speaker
which a little heads up can be a pretty heavy topic, but it's still so much needed for us to have this conversation. But I do want to encourage you to make sure that you take really good care of yourself today as you listen to this episode, especially if this topic is something that hits close to home.
00:01:27
Speaker
A little bit more about Caitlin, she works with clients across the lifespan and specializes in supporting people through grief and loss, adoption related issues, aging and caregiver stress, and of course trauma. Another thing that I learned about Caitlin is that she has five rescue pets, which means we automatically love her because any animal lover is automatically a friend of mine. So I hope you enjoy today's episode as I sit down and talk with Caitlin.
00:02:05
Speaker
Kaylin, good morning and welcome.
Understanding Perinatal Loss
00:02:07
Speaker
Thank you so much for being here today. Good morning. Thank you for having me. I have been looking forward to this for a little while since we first spoke about it. Yeah, absolutely. I feel like we got all of our, hopefully got all of our little tech issues out of the way. Knock on wood.
00:02:22
Speaker
Knock on wood, it's gonna go, great. I'm really excited about having you here today because you've got such a niche in your practice that I feel like is something that is so needed to be talked about. It is a little bit heavy though, but I see it come up in my practice a lot, even with a lot of my friends. I feel like so many people are on this journey, so today we're gonna be talking about perinatal loss and infertility, and I just feel like it's something that really, really needs to be talked about more.
00:02:52
Speaker
Yes, yes, and you know, it's
Intersection of Grief and Adoption
00:02:55
Speaker
interesting. I kind of fell into this work It's not my primary specialty, but it is something I see a lot just If you imagine an umbrella right grief is the big umbrella right and then for my practice just about anything in life can be under that right I've also also done a lot of work in the adoption community
00:03:14
Speaker
And if you think about it, that is one of the connective tissue points, if I can say that, between adoption and grief, is that a lot of the families who pursue adoption, that's been part of their story too. There's adoptee grief too, you know, for the adoptees themselves. That's a whole separate podcast though, but yes, yes, yes, yes, more time than we have today, I'm sure. But yeah, and so I think that's kind of where I first kind of started to see
00:03:43
Speaker
how common infertility and perinatal loss, by which I mean miscarriage, stillbirth, which is miscarriage after about 20 weeks into the pregnancy, or death of the infant within the first year. So that's kind of when we say perinatal loss, it's kind of anything under that realm. How common it is and how much of that is not spoken about.
00:04:06
Speaker
in our society. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. Yeah, and I would imagine, I've done a lot of grief work as well. I actually used to work in hospice. That was like the first almost decade of my social work career was in hospice. And so working with terminal illness is just a very different type of grief versus if you lose someone suddenly or if you lose someone even by suicide. But perinatal loss is its own realm of, it's its own different kind of grief.
Societal Norms Impact on Miscarriage
00:04:34
Speaker
So can you share with us some of you know what those differences that you see in your work like what what comes up for you? Absolutely. So I think I'll start with miscarriage just because I think that is the one I would say is talked about the least right you know in our culture it's very common for people to wait until
00:04:56
Speaker
12 weeks say to announce that they're pregnant, right? As if that's some like magic moment, right? Where did that come from? You know, it's interesting from what I understand and you know, caveat, caveat, I am by no means an expert here. But from what I understand is that
00:05:13
Speaker
miscarriage is more common in the first 12 weeks. But if you look at the numbers, it's like it's definitely not unheard of for it to happen after. So yeah, but I think that's kind of it is a little bit arbitrary in some ways. And I've seen people I know personally as well handle it both ways, either telling people that they're pregnant before 12 weeks and others who wait, right.
00:05:33
Speaker
the thing with that is you know you can have a miscarriage before you even know that you're pregnant you know it might seem like a very heavy painful period i mean that's fairly common for a lot of people who just don't even know that that's what's going on right um for others um you know if if they're pregnant right and it's early on and they haven't shared with anyone really except for the people closest to them you know if if something happens and the baby doesn't survive then
00:06:02
Speaker
you know, who knows about it, right? You know, I mean, maybe no one, maybe just two or three people, right? And in some respects I can see how
00:06:14
Speaker
that for some people is the right choice, right? Because it's hard for some people to make the pregnancy announcement and then be like, oh, this actually happened. So there is not going to be a birth after all, right? And then for others, what this does is that, okay, well, if no one knows about it, then are we suffering in silence, right?
00:06:34
Speaker
Right.
Comparing Types of Grief
00:06:35
Speaker
Like I can see it both ways on one hand, not telling a lot of people means you're kind of suffering in silence. But if you've made an announcement, then that's that many more people that you call and have to kind of like notify. And that's such a, a painful thing to have to do is to let more people know actually lost the baby. Yeah. It's a burden too. I think on the people who are suffering the most usually, um,
00:07:01
Speaker
And so then beyond that, a stillbirth, like I said, usually that's considered a stillbirth if you're 20 weeks along into the pregnancy when the miscarriage happens. And usually by that point, more people know, right? And so there are more opportunities for support. Sometimes those are medically complicated situations, depending on how far along you are when it happens.
00:07:26
Speaker
if we're talking about medical trauma too, there's a whole host of other kind of complicated clinical things that can be happening there. And then certainly, you know, when we think about perinatal loss, like within the first year or so of life, you know, that's kind of, you know, what's called the sudden infant death syndrome, or, you know, I know a lot of people aren't using that term as much anymore, but yeah, that's one that, you know, if that happens to you, you kind of
00:07:52
Speaker
I don't want to say don't have a choice, but to tell people, but that's one where people know and there's more opportunities for support. So I don't want to say anyone is easier or harder. They're just different. The landscape doesn't look different. Which I'm sure, just any loss, if you're working hospice, comparing is a losing battle, I feel like most of the time.
00:08:10
Speaker
Oh, yeah, for sure. And that's interesting because it's like, even in if the big umbrella is grief, and there's all these like subcategories, even in this subcategory that you're working with, I can see how that's so very different depending on even the three that you just listed, whether it's early on, whether it's
00:08:32
Speaker
20 weeks like late pregnancy late in the pregnancy or the first year like those are very different experiences so what are the different complications I guess that you see with grief I know you had even mentioned when we were on the phone a couple of weeks ago
00:08:50
Speaker
Um, a confusing
Infertility and Ambiguous Loss
00:08:52
Speaker
feeling. Well, I guess this is more with infertility too, but like the grief of that of like, there's this confusing feeling of, it's kind of like a loss that you never had. Like you're grieving a loss of something that didn't happen.
00:09:05
Speaker
Yes, yes. And that being its own brand of grief too, right? 100%, 100%. So I would term that ambiguous loss. Other people might describe it differently. But so Pauline Boss, who is a big grief lady in the grief world, right?
00:09:24
Speaker
first talked about this and the way she termed it was situations where someone is either physically present but psychically absent, right? So that might be the case of Alzheimer's or other dementias, right? Or addiction in some cases where it's like, okay, this person's still here and alive, but they're not the person I knew our relationship is not what it was.
00:09:46
Speaker
So either physically present and psychically absent or psychically present and physically absent, right? That's how I remember it. Yes So not heard it described that way, but that is so yeah. Yes. So with infertility even if Even if it's a situation where someone either you know never conceives at all despite trying or
00:10:11
Speaker
They have multiple pregnancies that don't ever make it all the way to a birth, which is a lot of people's story, unfortunately. It's one of those things where it's like, this is still part of the landscape of their life, right? This still takes up brain space, emotional space. There's still some degree of attachment bonding that happened there.
00:10:26
Speaker
Even just thinking about the plans and hopes for what your family would look like. That's a lost feel. That is so true. I remember even with a lot of my clients now experiencing grief, we talk about it and not just through death if it's a divorce or a breakup or something like a loss of a job, a career or something like that. So much of the grief is grieving the future, the plans that you had made, things that haven't actually happened yet.
00:10:53
Speaker
We put so much stake in what we plan on having, especially for those of us that are big planners, right? Like when we can visualize our life moving forward in certain ways, that is such a huge loss. And so I think that that complicates people's feelings too, because again, it's confusing. It hasn't happened.
00:11:13
Speaker
Yeah, but there was so much hope for it. There was so much time spent envisioning it That it's almost but I see a lot of people struggle with that. Like how are you supposed to grieve something? And I think that this is one thing that a lot of people who haven't lived that or something similar don't really understand and I would say kind of like an embodied way, right, you know It's
00:11:42
Speaker
And I'm sure you know this too, but just thinking about how powerful our imaginations are, right? The way the human brain works. If we imagine something, a similar physiological process happens in our body too, if that event was actually playing out right in front of us, right? That's why in therapy, guided imagery is so powerful. Like why anxiety works the way it does, right? You know, we imagine a scary situation and our body is like, oh no, and starts to react like that, right?
00:12:09
Speaker
I kind of conceive of this similarly thinking about the loss of the imagined future and the plans and the hopes that you have, right? You know, maybe you had started to think about what this child might look like, right? You know, if you and your partner are very strong features, right, you know, names, you know, quirks, all the things, you know, and for a lot of people, this can kind of vary how people think about it. And I think just from the treatment perspective, this is relevant to
00:12:37
Speaker
how did the pregnant person think of what was going on inside of them during their pregnancy before the miscarriage, right? For some people, the moment they find out, boom, that's a baby, that's my child, right? And this is not me getting into kind of like, where does life begin, right? That's, you know, but are you seeing this as your child or are you seeing this as a cluster of cells that will become my child?
00:12:59
Speaker
For some people, it's just how they conceive of it is relevant in terms of their meaning making of this loss, how they understand what this actually is. Again, not to say one is easier or harder, it can hit each person differently just depending on their understanding of what happened too. Yeah, absolutely.
Social Media's Role in Awareness
00:13:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:25
Speaker
So I'm even thinking about how helpful it is to hear, for people to hear you put words to what you see other people go through, like even explaining what you just said about different people's interpretation is really, really important because two people can go through seemingly the same experiences, but they experience it very differently. So what are some of those variations that you maybe see come up a lot in your practice?
00:13:54
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it is. Um, I feel like what I see more than anything is kind of this, so another, another kind of jargony term, disenfranchised grief, right? You know, um, someone might say something to me like, Oh, you know, I had a miscarriage, but that was 20 years ago and I, you know, it wasn't a big deal. Um,
00:14:18
Speaker
I don't want to say like across the board. I disagree with that. I think it means what it means to that person, but I do. I can tell you more often than not that there is an impact that went unrecognized when people say things like that, whether it's strain in their relationship or shifts in how they see themselves. Maybe string with family members who say things like,
00:14:35
Speaker
Well, at least it was early on. At least you never held the baby in your arms. Which, side note, don't ever, ever totally first start. Please do not. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Never start a sense of at least, right? And don't tell the person what their loss should mean to them, right? Yeah. That's one of those toxic positivity comments where you're trying so hard to offer comfort, but it's such a miss because that's not comforting.
00:15:00
Speaker
It's not comforting. And the last thing I want to do is like shame anybody for things that they said, you know, that were well intentioned, but missed. Right. You know, because what happens then, and I'm sure you've seen this in your great work, sometimes people are so afraid of saying the wrong thing. They say nothing at all, which is not good either. Right. So I think, you know, I say this knowing I think people are trying to help and I think they just don't really understand. And so, yeah, so I feel like a lot of people
00:15:32
Speaker
their miscarriages in some ways don't mean as much to them because they've not given themselves permission for it to mean something to them or for their you know their loved ones haven't given them permission for it to mean something right it's there hasn't been a space to really go into that you know
00:15:49
Speaker
for sure and that was that was going to be another one of my questions because I feel like miscarriages are something that women are finally able to talk about a little bit more openly compared to generations before us like I feel like this is something that I think people didn't realize how common it was there wasn't really a space to explore it it was kind of a
00:16:11
Speaker
I don't know, like almost just like a burden that you were supposed to bear quietly. And there was also an expectation of this should be easy to get over. And I feel like that's, thank God, starting to change. What are your thoughts on how this is changing? What kind of impact is that making on women who are able to seek out therapy and support and being able to talk to their families about what they need?
00:16:37
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I think so. And you and I talked about this on the phone, you know, social media, it's a tool like anything else, right? Could be used for good, could be used for bad, right? Social media, I can, and it might just be kind of the corners of the internet that I tend to occupy. I do see more talk about, you know, about miscarriage and, you know, fertility struggles and
00:17:04
Speaker
Things like that that maybe were a little bit more kind of behind closed doors previously I think the ability to stay anonymous if you want but still connect with other people in
Sensitivity Around Mother's Day
00:17:15
Speaker
a way makes that easier for some people you know to really kind of get into what their experiences and know that they're not the only ones which
00:17:24
Speaker
By the way, I was just reading you, kind of brushing up on some of the facts about all this just before we got on here. And so it's estimated that over 30%, and this is from March of Dimes, but 30% of all pregnancies ended miscarriage.
00:17:39
Speaker
So that is hugely, hugely prevalent. And so for every one person that each of us know who deals with this, I'm sure that there are more, two, three more, maybe more in our circles that we don't know who have dealt with it. Yeah. Absolutely. Even when you were talking about the different spaces that people are able to grieve more publicly and share their stories, I'm even thinking about how mothers stay.
00:18:08
Speaker
I feel like there's so much awareness now online, especially that Mother's Day is a very painful holiday for a lot of different reasons, even for people that have like a strained relationship with their mother on that end of it. But there's a lot of the group of people that we're talking about here, Mother's Day is an incredibly painful holiday.
00:18:31
Speaker
And I think that people have become so much more sensitive of that and so much more as we celebrate mothers, we also collectively grieve and mourn with our friends that we know that are in this space. For sure. And I think you're right that there is more sensitivity to this right now. I don't know if you've seen this, but
00:18:58
Speaker
you know, the, um, emails that I get from like different online retailers and stuff like that. Now, a lot of them have a button that it's like, okay, do you want to opt out of mother's day emails or father's day emails or yeah. Yeah. So yeah, some, yeah, some companies are catching on. I hope that it's sincere and not for optics as you know, a lot of, um, you know, kind of statements like that.
00:19:22
Speaker
can be. Um, but yes, I, um, but yeah, I really think that that's a wonderful thing that people can, you know, so you're not getting like, Oh, 20 mother's day emails from places that I shop at online, you know, in your inbox all the time. Um, yes, I, there is more acknowledgement right now of how hard things like that can be. And I remember years ago I heard somebody say, and I wish I could remember who, but as I could attribute this properly, but just that
00:19:52
Speaker
trying to conceive and not be able to at a certain stage of your life, right? Where everybody is getting pregnant, sometimes on purpose, sometimes not on purpose. It's like walking around with your skin off and your nerves are raw and exposed and people are just bumping up against you all the time. It's like, okay, I'm going to check Facebook for a quick second on my break at work. Oh, pregnancy announcement from one of my friends. And that's, absolutely. Maybe that's where I'm hurting right now. You know, so,
00:20:21
Speaker
It's just, I mean, I think that there's, obviously we can't shield ourselves from everything in the world, right? That hurts nor should we, but at the same time, I mean, it's just, I think it's just, this is one thing just talking about the disenfranchised thing. This is something that goes unrecognized largely is how hard that space is.
00:20:39
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely, yeah. And one thing that came to mind as you were sharing that, what I've seen in my practice is that I work a lot with medical trauma, since I'm more on the trauma end of things.
Psychological Impact of Medical Trauma
00:20:53
Speaker
I work a lot with medical trauma. And for a lot of women that I've worked with, the medical trauma part creates a, I don't know if you see this in your practice a lot, but it's almost like a,
00:21:08
Speaker
distrust with their own body. After going through a miscarriage or infertility. It's a feeling of
00:21:17
Speaker
Some women have described it as a betrayal almost of like, my body betrayed me. And that's where all the feelings of self-doubt and self-blame come in. Can you speak on that a little bit? Like, is that something that you see a lot of that feeling of, did I do something wrong? Or like, I just see it bring up so much distrust within self and so many fears of what did I do wrong.
00:21:43
Speaker
Yes, I totally can see that where and you know, again, this is something that's different for every person I feel like some people and we could kind of debate on what you know what the risk of being productive factors are here for this but
00:21:59
Speaker
Some people are very quick to try to figure out the if-then of a situation, right? That's what our brain does. That's what our brain is wired to do is figure out cause and effect and categorize, right? All intended to keep us safe out there in the wild, wild world, right? And so what that might look like for something like a miscarriage or a stillbirth is, okay, who's responsible for this?
00:22:19
Speaker
what made this happen? Sometimes there's no answer. And for some people, that's really, really hard is to sit in that space of, yeah, I just don't know. I just don't know what happened, why this pregnancy didn't make it to term, right? Sometimes people are quick to blame themselves. Oh, you know, if I hadn't gone out to this restaurant this day and got COVID, right? Maybe that wouldn't have happened. Or if I eat this certain thing, or maybe I was working too hard, right? And my stress is down. And so
00:22:47
Speaker
With that, you know, a lot of times when there is that strong degree of self-blame and guilt kind of.
00:22:52
Speaker
you know, you talk about like kind of the head heart lag, right? You know, people will say things like intellectually I understand. It's one thing, but it doesn't feel like it. I don't feel that, right? To me, and weigh in on this, if you have more to say about that, but to me, that's more suggestive of trauma. If there's this high, like there's a kind of a story about, okay, here's what happened, here's who's responsible, here's that fault, and it's definitely me, right? I think a lot of times there is some traumatic loss
00:23:22
Speaker
Yeah, that makes so much sense. I think that when I'm working with my clients, so much of trauma work is putting together a framework for saying, where did this snowball start? Because there's probably lots of little t traumas, lots of little, even emotional paper cuts along the way of life that create what I usually call that core negative belief.
00:23:50
Speaker
And so what I see a lot with medical trauma, not just with miscarriages, but there's so much of a feeling of having no control over what happened. And so it's a very either helpless or powerless feeling. And so
00:24:05
Speaker
As hard as it is to feel helpless, if you can find what happened and you have a reason for it, it can help you not feel so helpless. So if I knew that if I hadn't gotten COVID or if I hadn't worked too hard, that would be painful to think that I caused this, but then I would know, okay, I know how it happened and why it happened.
00:24:26
Speaker
then I can prevent it from happening again because I know what the cause is. And so that helps to give almost even if it's a really painful feeling, it still gives you some kind of sense of control. So I wonder if that comes up a lot because I see that so much with different types of medical trauma is I almost want to be able to blame myself in a way because then I can control it differently in the future. Yeah, absolutely. Just this thought of, you know, it's
00:24:56
Speaker
Okay. Even if I did this, so to speak, and I'm not endorsing that belief system, but you know, not at all. Yeah. What the intramurals. It's a very faulty belief for sure. It's something that we build up over time, but it's a very, it's a very faulty belief that it's trying to like gain a sense of control over things that really and truly we don't have control over. Yeah. And I think even still to your point, as painful as that may be for some people that can feel
00:25:22
Speaker
the lesser of two evils compared to we live in a world where sometimes awful things just happen and there's no way to prevent, predict, mitigate anything. That's the big scary thing for a lot of people is that idea.
00:25:37
Speaker
It also makes me wonder when you're working with your clients who let's say they have a miscarriage and then a year later, a few months later, whenever they decide to try again, what do you see coming up that because I would imagine just a lot of anxiety and a lot of fear. How do you help people work through that?
Anxiety in Subsequent Pregnancies
00:25:57
Speaker
Yes, yes, yes. And so I think that that looks different on every person. You know, I think that
00:26:03
Speaker
you know for talking about trauma symptoms that can come up if someone has a hard time you know getting pregnant and that's a very like protracted process here just the anxiety of okay you know pee it on a stick the two-line show you know it's positive okay well I can't even breathe wrong
00:26:20
Speaker
right? I can't even see if I can't, you know, I need to treat myself with kick gloves, right? You know, or this is just gonna happen again, right? You know, and I definitely think if we're talking about like from a nervous system standpoint,
00:26:34
Speaker
keeping ourselves in that state of hyperarousal, hypervigilance, right? You know, where we're just so wary of every single little shift in our body, every single sensation, right? And, you know, seeing these things as potential signs something is wrong, this is just going to happen the same way as it did. That is a really, really hard space to be in. So where I would kind of start with a client who was kind of dealing with some of those things is
00:27:01
Speaker
kind of to the extent that felt safe and possible at the moment, learning to different befriend their body again, right? Absolutely. This feeling of okay, you know, yes, you know, there are things to worry about right now. Yes, I'm not going to lie to someone and say that this isn't scary and vulnerable. And right here right now in this moment, are things okay?
00:27:21
Speaker
Right. Can you feel your feet on the floor? Can you feel yourself breathing? Right. And, you know, just kind of starting off with like self compassionate mindfulness, you know, kind of all that stuff. That's where I would start. And once there was this sense of safety and that could take one session that could take five. I mean, it depends on the person, you know, longer in many cases.
Rebuilding Trust After Trauma
00:27:42
Speaker
You know, then I think that's where we can kind of start to get into kind of like you said, the core beliefs about
00:27:49
Speaker
you know, if this happened before, is it more likely to happen again? Maybe, maybe not. You know what I mean? Depending on the reasons why it happened, right?
00:27:58
Speaker
Yeah, I even like how you said that of starting with learning to befriend your body. Because I think a lot of the work I do is helping people learn to trust themselves again. Because when you have something tragic happen, and there's a part of you that might be blaming yourself, or having doubts of did I do something wrong?
00:28:21
Speaker
It makes it really hard for us to trust ourselves more moving forward. How will I know if I don't know exactly what I did before, how do I know that I won't do it again in the future? So building that trust back with yourself to say, it's okay for me to listen to my intuition again.
00:28:35
Speaker
It's okay for me to believe that that my body is capable It's okay for me to believe that I can Pay attention to signs and symptoms that that need to be paid attention to it's also okay for me to trust myself to relax I love the way you said it because trust and befriending your body just kind of goes together and and starting over it kind of like that and
00:28:58
Speaker
I don't know, just coming from that place of trust with yourself. I think that as you continue to move forward with it, like you're saying, I'm like working on other things. Um, I don't know. I think that that's more of the foundation of what, what has to happen first. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. I think, you know, if we think about kind of three phase trauma work, you know, um, starting with stabilization kind of, okay, let's,
00:29:23
Speaker
kind of slow the, you know, the train is coming to a halt on the tracks, right? You know, okay, let's get back to where we are. Let's figure out, okay, what do I need right now, right? How do I take care of myself if this is what I'm dealing with? And I see that a lot, you know, just, you know, starting with learning how to ground, you know, learning how to do small little things every day to try to help yourself. Not trying to heal the whole thing, right? But doing what you can every day.
00:29:50
Speaker
you know, whether it's okay. You know, today I got dressed and went outside, you know, and that's the most I could do because my anxiety was screaming at me. Okay. If that's more than you did yesterday, that's phenomenal. Hey everyone. I just wanted to pause for a quick moment to say thank you so much for all the love and support that you're showing outside of session.
00:30:18
Speaker
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00:30:35
Speaker
And I feel like a lot of that conversation leaned more on the side of perinatal loss. But when it comes to infertility, how is
Unique Challenges of Infertility
00:30:46
Speaker
that different? How is the grief on that side a little bit different? Yeah, and it is. It is. So infertility, talking about it from this angle of can't conceive, have never had a positive result. So I'm just conceptualizing it that way just to differentiate them.
00:31:02
Speaker
infertility of that standpoint, you know, it's, you may not have that same level of, okay, you know, I got a positive pregnancy test result and so I'm holding my breath for the next, you know, nine months, whatever, right? It's, you know, it may not be that, but you might be in that hypervigilance state of trying to conceive if you're still in that space where you're actively trying, right? You know, just talking about treatment for infertility, right? You know, for a lot of couples,
00:31:32
Speaker
planned intercourse, scheduled sex as part of the equation, which for a lot of people can strain their relationship in some ways. For some people, it takes some of the joy, the spontaneity, the spark out of it, not for everybody, but for some people, yes. And so for some people, that's a loss, this feeling of natural connection with my partner, this ability to do this when it feels right to both of us. The fact that it becomes a means to an end for some people
00:32:01
Speaker
It does change that, that dynamic a little bit. That's part of it. I think I could have imagined that that would be stressful, but I would never have thought about that in terms of grief, because I think you're right. I think so many couples that I know, it becomes...
00:32:19
Speaker
Not necessarily a chore, but it's a means to an end. There's even a lot of stress around it at certain points. And I know people, a lot of times after a few months, just have to take some deep breaths and say, we've got to come back to baseline. We have to regroup a little bit. But I've never thought about that being grief in the relationship as well as grieving what our sex life used to be. Right. Absolutely.
00:32:49
Speaker
It's just talking about how for a lot of people learning to get back into the present moment, stay in the present moment is a skill that will help this, maybe not be better, but slightly more variable. This whole plan to intercourse thing kind of flies in the face of that. Just this thought of, okay, well, if I am ovulating in this window of time,
00:33:11
Speaker
I'm not really feeling it, but I also know if I, if I don't do it, you know, soon, it's going to be another month or more. Right. You know, um, it's just, I think the whole thing just gets very complicated for a lot of people. It does. And I'm thinking too about, um, couples that I know that are, are in that space. I've had so many women say I tried for so many years not to get pregnant. Yeah.
00:33:40
Speaker
not knowing. It's almost a feeling of I didn't know that this was going to be a issue, not that it's always obviously the
00:33:51
Speaker
what's going on with the woman. But I never imagined that I wouldn't be able to get pregnant. I was trying for so many years. My early twenties trying not to get pregnant that I never imagined that this would be part of my journey. And we, when we were talking about grief earlier, so many people have their life planned out. You get married, you say, we're going to wait three years to have kids. And then at three years, we're going to get pregnant. We're going to have a kid in our fourth year. Then we're going to be able to have the second kid two years after. Like so many people plan down the birth years of their kids.
00:34:22
Speaker
And when all of a sudden you say, okay, it's time to start trying. And it's sometimes years later before that, it actually, it finally happens. You know, I think that that's just, again, a grief of the timeline that you had expected for yourself, which impacts your future. Sure. Absolutely. And, you know, I mean, I think during, you know, for people who are kind of more on that trajectory where,
00:34:49
Speaker
you know, maybe things are happening a little bit more delayed than they would have thought. It's one big sticking point that I see for a lot of people is just other people's comments about, okay, well, you're 32, you better start trying or stop sticking or all your other friends are having babies, you know, oh, at the baby shower, oh, you're next, you know, like kind of all these things.
00:35:12
Speaker
And that's so painful for a lot of people who, you know, would say, you know, yep, we're trying all the time, you know, believe me, I want this too. It's just not happening. Right. You know, not that those are words necessarily that, you know, my clients would feel comfortable saying, you know, Yeah, you guide people on how do you address people when again, well intention, I'm sure. Uh huh.
00:35:37
Speaker
But a really painful thing to have to explain and not necessarily their responsibility to have to explain that, especially if it's a random person, you know, how do you advise people on being really protective of themselves in those moments, but also maybe drawing a line and setting a boundary with people of kind of an inappropriate question to ask? How do you advise people to address that? Oh, goodness.
Setting Boundaries on Fertility Discussions
00:36:05
Speaker
Thorney. You know, I would say, and I was having this conversation with another therapist, I know he does a lot of grief work. And I'm sure you've seen this too. All grief work involves boundary work too. And that's something that I didn't know until I really got into this. Our relationships change the way we look at the world changes, right? And so even just thinking about this, you know,
00:36:32
Speaker
maybe this is a situation where someone needs to build some assertiveness skills, you know, some boundaries with maybe family members who aren't the most sensitive here, maybe some internal boundaries, right? Okay, I'm going to spend time with, you know,
00:36:44
Speaker
And, you know, Susie, whatever, right, you know, but internally, I'm going to be like that duck that's just laying the water roll off its back, right? Her comments are not going to get to me. I'm not going to give them one inch of brain space, right, you know? But it's hard, you know, and I would say in terms of how to deal with it, a lot depends on
00:37:05
Speaker
You know your relationship with the person who made the insensitive comment, right? If if someone closer to me like a family member or friend someone I mean to see regularly I might be a little bit more inclined to be like hey, I know you didn't mean anything But just so you know, here's what's going on with me. I would appreciate this not being brought up anymore, right? Um, that would be something that you could do for people who are kind of more co-worker acquaintance stranger at the grocery store kind of thing I feel like a lot of people
00:37:34
Speaker
That's where the internal boundary work is helpful to just having this mindset almost of like they know not what they do, right? Because if you're fighting every single little battle, if you're standing up and reopening this wound every single time talking about this painful thing to educate other people, that's a big burden on you. So I think discernment about when is this worth drawing a line with and when is it not?
00:38:00
Speaker
If you're friends or, you know, friends, family member, whatever, with someone who, you know, is dealing with this, that might be a great time for you, possibly, to kind of be an ally to them, just saying, not outing anything that's too personal, but just
00:38:14
Speaker
kind of quick change the subject, right? You know? I like that.
Supporting Those Experiencing Grief
00:38:18
Speaker
Yeah. Uh-huh. Just take that burden off of them, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's a really good question too, just with all of this, how can family and friends be supportive? What is actually helpful for people?
00:38:33
Speaker
whether it's what you're teaching your clients to be able to ask for or just like what you would want the general public to know. Like, how do we support couples and people wanting pregnancy? How do we support them? Yeah. This is another one that's really super individually dependent, I think. I think as a general rule, most of us are not good at asking for help. And I think that's just true. A lot of us for different reasons, right?
00:39:01
Speaker
So, my first thing would be, okay, we need to get good at asking for help, right? You know, I've done a lot of work with family caregivers also, you know, people who are older or have disabilities, and that's another population that kind of is, you know, not really recognized, I think, as, okay, this is, you know, there's a lot going on and they need our community care, right?
00:39:26
Speaker
I used to tell them, keep a list in your pocket of things that you need. Dry cleaning. Take the dog to the vet to have his nails clipped. Pick up the kids from soccer, whatever. So then that way, when someone says, hey, let me know if there's anything I can do. Nine times out of 10, most of us are going to be like, oh, yeah, I'll let you know. And then we never do. But to be able to follow this. Yeah, I like it. I have a list. Yeah. Whip that thing out if you actually. Here you go. Yeah, if you want to help, here's how you can help.
00:39:55
Speaker
So I, you know, assertiveness again kind of comes in there, you know, I think kind of feeling affirmed in your right to take people up on their offers for help and to receive that care. But in terms of family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, whoever who are trying to be support people for people dealing with, I would say grief really of any kind, any kind of hard thing.
00:40:19
Speaker
know that the person probably needs help and is not saying so, right? Could use more support. Obviously, respect their boundaries if they're saying like, no, like, please stop coming to my house, please stop calling me. Like, you know, don't keep on doing that. Consents important always. But, you know, even things like, hey, you know, here I am at Publix, I know you like this type of cookie, and they had a bunch, you know, for, you know, on BOGO or whatever.
00:40:46
Speaker
I'll be by your house in 15 minutes. I'll leave them on the front porch. No need to say hello. Right? I love that.
Processing Long-Unacknowledged Losses
00:40:53
Speaker
You know, making it not pressure filled, right?
00:40:57
Speaker
recognize that even when you're dealing with a big thing like loss of any kind, infertility, any kind of illness, the real world still goes on too at the same time, right? There's still lawns to mow and trips to the post office to be made. And so if you want to be a support person, that's a great way to plug in. Okay, I'll take care of your normal life stuff. I'll take care of some of your adulting for you if you're okay with that.
00:41:21
Speaker
So you can focus on what you need to focus on right now, the things that only you can do right now. Absolutely. And I'm just thinking about that can feel uncomfortable at first. Absolutely. If it's hard to accept help for sure. Yeah. But I'm thinking about how if you can allow yourself to accept help and open up to that, I'm just thinking about how that can help to free up
00:41:46
Speaker
the mental space needed to be able to grieve appropriately. Because I think so much of us, not only is it hard to accept help, but if we keep ourselves busy, we can continue to postpone our grief. And I don't know about you, but I think that for a lot of people that if the loss happened years ago,
00:42:11
Speaker
there may not have been an awareness of what a trauma it was, what a big loss it was, especially when we talk about grieving things that maybe didn't happen, or if people say, you know, really minimizing the experience and saying, oh, well, you were only, you know, you were only a couple of weeks along, like really dismissive, and that kind of gets internalized, right? If it's not something that I should have to spend a lot of time grieving. I'm just thinking about,
00:42:42
Speaker
For anyone listening today, if that is your story, if it has been a really long time and you're just now really starting to accept, I think this did impact me more than I ever recognized at the time, that it's okay to seek out help for something that happened a really long time ago.
00:43:00
Speaker
because I think with all trauma sometimes that we have this like lag response where we are so incredibly strong and we survive so much that sometimes it seems like we're okay in the moment because life is still moving on and we do have you know other children to take care of and other jobs and other things going on that life is just like steamrolling us sometimes.
00:43:27
Speaker
And so sometimes it takes years to really look back and say, and not just with this kind of loss, with divorce, with all kinds of loss, right? Like it hits us years later to say, I think that impacted me more than I ever recognize. And I feel like it's just coming up now. So anybody that's listening, I just really want to encourage that if you come in saying, I think I never fully processed through this as a therapist,
00:43:54
Speaker
Like, there's so much compassion, but also so much like, I'm so glad you're giving yourself this opportunity now, because of course it made an impact on you. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think, well, first, I want to just totally, totally, you know, support what you said. It's never too late.
00:44:16
Speaker
you know, um, whether it's been, you know, months a year, 10 years, 30 years, whatever, you know, I think that these things don't go anywhere just because we haven't gotten into them. Right. And I always feel like being able to do the deep work of healing in many respects is a luxury. And if I can say that, because
00:44:41
Speaker
Say my day-to-day circumstances are unstable. I am worried about where my next meal is gonna come from. Where am I gonna sleep tonight? This issue affects people whose life circumstances are more that too, right? And so being able to do the deep grief and deep trauma work sometimes does need to be back burner for very understandable reasons because all this stuff takes priority. You know, the Maslow's hierarchy, right?
00:45:11
Speaker
And so sometimes, I mean, we truly can't safely get into this until it's been some time. I mean, just different reasons. And so I feel like anytime someone is willing to look at the hard things in their life, the things that they've been either putting back burner for reasons I just mentioned or other reasons too. I think that one of trauma's main missions is to perpetuate itself. So you think about kind of the chronic busyness and stuff that's very much a trauma response for a lot of people.
00:45:41
Speaker
that constant outrunning, you know? Anytime someone says, I think I'm ready, whenever it is, I say do it, you know? Yeah, yeah.
Reassurance to Grievers
00:45:55
Speaker
My last question is, do you have any, we've kind of touched on this a little bit, but do you have any just words of wisdom or tips that you would want to share with anybody listening today who's currently going through either infertility or a recent or long time loss? Do you just have anything that you would want to share with them?
00:46:20
Speaker
I apologize. Yeah, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, because I think in some ways it's the most important one. That's why we're here, right? You're not by yourself. I think that this is just one of the strange phenomena in life is that we always feel more alone than we really are. I don't know why that is.
00:46:43
Speaker
Right. You know, but I mean, I think that so many things just feel so big and so heavy and we carry them alone because, you know, again, it's a head heart lag, right? Intellectually, I know 30% of pregnancy is under miscarriage, right? And no one else had my miscarriage, right? No one else knows what this feels like or, you know, what this is going to be like to live with this whole.
00:47:10
Speaker
right? You know, that can't be filled, you know, even with another baby, right? You know, it wasn't that first one, right? And, you know, just that is a valid, real experience. And I want to get like emotional here. You know, people say things like,
00:47:28
Speaker
You're young, you can try again. Oh, there's IUI or IVF. Great, great. But maybe I don't see that as options for myself. Or maybe I don't have the financial resources to pursue something like that. Absolutely. Adoption, maybe I don't want to adopt. Even if I do want to do all those things and can, I wanted it to happen this way. And so that's the reality I need to live in versus that.
00:47:57
Speaker
I think just, I hate to say it, the burden is on the grievers to develop a thick skin here, unfortunately, right? While the rest of the world catches up and I hate that and I'm mad at that. And having that assuredness within yourself, like, this is real, it matters, you know, it hurts, you know, I'm an acceptance and commitment therapy therapist, right? So I'm kind of focused on, you know, there are things that we can,
00:48:24
Speaker
control our influences and things that we can't in life, right? And how do we really dig deep to figure out what matters most to us and how to bring those things to light in the world, right? And that's not me saying you have to turn your trauma and your loss into something transcendent, right? Because that's also too big a burden for all of us, right? And you can do what you can to be good to yourself, to be good to other people, to help other people know that they're not alone, you know, whatever feels right to you.
00:48:52
Speaker
And just knowing you have total freedom here to decide what this means to you in your life. And I guess that's what I would say. Yeah, absolutely. That's so good. That is so good. Thank you so much for sharing that. Yeah. So before we wrap, I ask all of my guests this question. So it's a little bit of a change of direction. But I feel the reason why I like asking people this question is because I do a lot of inner child work.
00:49:20
Speaker
And I think it's just so powerful. And the question is, if you could go back and tell your younger self what thing, what would it be? Now that you have this wisdom and this life experience and everything that you have, so not necessarily on line with what we've been talking about today, but just in general, like if you could go back and tell your younger self what thing, what would you wanna say to her? Oh boy. You're gonna be okay.
00:49:53
Speaker
I think that's all she needed here. I was just, you're going to be okay. You're going to be a little bit of a meandering road, right? But you're going to be just fine. Yeah. How good would that have been if so many of us were told and just had a sense of knowing that we're going to be okay through this? Yeah. Yeah. That's so beautiful. Well, Kayla, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you for sharing all of these.
00:50:17
Speaker
Shining light on a topic that that really needs more attention for helping so many people know that they're not alone and that there is hope that. That they can have to give themselves permission to be able to process through this and that it can look so different from everybody, depending on what their story is that there's.
00:50:36
Speaker
There's not one right or wrong way to process through any of this, but there are professionals out there that can help them find what's right for them with this grief. I just appreciate that so much.
00:50:50
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you for having me on. I've really enjoyed talking to you. Yeah, it's been so great. This is a passion. I could talk about it all day.
Kaylin's Practice and Website
00:50:58
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So I will definitely have all of your information in the show notes, but why don't you let people know where that they can find you because somebody might want to hear more about you or connect with you. How can people find you? Absolutely. Absolutely. So my website is KaylinBroomCounseling.com. C-A-Y-L-I-N and Broom is my last name, B-R-O-O-M-E.
00:51:17
Speaker
And I have a private practice in Midtown Atlanta For anyone dealing with grief trauma, you know infertility And then a whole host of other things just cuz I I like the variety Yeah, that's probably the best way to connect with me as my website
00:51:34
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Well, good. Everyone go check Caitlin out. Um, especially if you're in the Atlanta area and you're needing some help in this, um, in this area, I know should be a wonderful fit for you. So that's all we've got today. Thank everyone for tuning in and everyone have a good week. We'll talk to you later.
00:51:58
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of outside of session. Remember, while I am a licensed therapist, this podcast is not a substitute for individual therapy. The contents of this episode are for educational and entertainment purposes only. If you are having a mental health emergency, please dial 911 for immediate assistance or dial 988 for the suicide and crisis lifeline.