The pain that comes from longing, not knowing, hoping when you feel all hope is gone and trying to trust when you feel that your trust has been betrayed month after month, cycle of cycle and even by promises made by potential solutions that have proved unworthy of your belief in them. How do I know this? Because of the fertility stories shared with me by those who are suffering. This is why the main aim of the Freedom Fertility Formula is to help those who are struggling with fertility issues reclaim emotional control of their fertility journey. Only once they are feeling strong again from an emotional perspective can we begin the mind/body connection work that focusses on their desire to have a baby. To help with this it is important to be able to learn how to dial down the intensity of the difficult feelings without attempting to squash them down, as that will just leave them festering and all too soon they will come bubbling to the surface again. The reason why so many people struggle with the idea of being able to do this though is that when they think of moving away from pain their minds go to pleasure, happiness, joy,etc., and if you are in a huge amount of emotional pain that can feel far out of reach can’t it?

This is why I teach my clients instead how to find their NEUTRAL PLACE.

What I mean by Neutral Place is that space in which we are just getting on with our day. No particular highs or lows, just doing what needs to get done. Our mind focused on the task in hand and not wandering off into the future and worrying or reflecting on the past and feeling sad. Once they’ve tapped into that feeling then we can rock their difficult feelings back and forth until we reach their neutral place, and I will share with you how in a moment. Firstly there is something that is important for you to understand in relation to this, and to tell you about that I need to take you way back to what I call my Hollywood version of Cave Wo(Man) times (in other words I’m not aiming to be too historically correct here and merely using it to make my point). You see back then life was simple as far as our emotions were concerned, because here’s the thing… Your emotions are actually there to tell your body how to respond in the here and now. They do this based on your sensory experience in relation to what it going on around you. Back in Cave Wo(Man) times there were clear boundaries around what was dangerous and what was safe. When they were running low on food, if they didn’t have shelter, if they saw a wild animal, etc they knew they were in danger. When they had food, shelter and were protected from wild animals they knew they were safe. The feelings they had around this set the body up to be able to deal with the situation at hand. However, because the mind sets up the body based on our sensory experience, we can re-imagine anything we like using our senses and the body will believe that is what is happening rather than what actually is. So, when you are reflecting back about something that has caused you pain, or worrying about things in the future your body believes that something awful is happening to you in the now. In case you are thinking well when I see a pregnant woman, or a birth announcement, etc., that is happening in the now, I want you to be aware that in fact though those experiences are actually triggering your upset about not yet having your own baby. So, your mind either goes backwards to past disappointment or forward to worry about it never happening for you. They are then causing your mind to set you up for a dangerous situation when actually you are not in danger. You see unfortunately our emotions haven’t evolved with regards to how they set up our body, and they don’t appreciate that these days there are lots of things that cause us upset, that are not connected to our physical danger. This is important for your physical well-being as well as your emotional well-being because when the mind believes we are in danger it puts us in the emergency state, which we are only ever meant to be in for short bursts of time. When this happens all of our non-essential functioning of the body in relation to survival are put on the back burner, including fertility. If this goes on for too long actual physical changes can happen in the body that may cause disease, and as I have explained in my previous post affect your ability to get pregnant. Here in lies the problem because when you have something real happening to you, there is a physical way out. If it is in your mind you can’t take a physical action to stop the pain. So, we need to help the mind realise that there is nothing truly going on in the now that is putting you in danger, to avoid it setting off that emergency reaction in the body. *USEFUL TECHNIQUE* I mentioned earlier that we can rock the feelings back and forth. This gives you the opportunity to acknowledge your difficult feelings (we never want feelings to be ignored) and then by spending time being fully present in the now, we can experience the fact that we are not in danger. I use a coin as a symbol of the two different sides and you can either just imagine the coin or actually place one in your hand. I will explain how to do this now, but the best time to actually experience the effectiveness of this technique is when you are caught up in strong difficult emotions. The first thing you will want to do is notice how intense your feelings are by assigning a number to them, -10 being the worst you can feel and zero being your neutral place. Once you’ve done that acknowledge the feelings by saying something like “I acknowledge the feelings as much as I do at -10” (whatever the number is). Then close your eyes and turn the coin over either in your mind or in your hand and become fully aware of your surroundings. How the chair feels beneath your body, your feet on the ground, the temperature, and so on. Then turn the coin back over and open your eyes and notice where you are on the scale. Even if it is a difference of 0.5 you will notice you have moved down. This happens because you have changed your focus. Then once again say “I acknowledge the feelings as much as I do at – 9” (whatever the number is). Then close your eyes and turn the coin over either in your mind or in your hand and become fully aware of your surroundings. Once you have done that turn the coin back over again, open your eyes and notice where you are on the scale. Do this until you reach zero. This is a very simple yet powerful technique that if you fully immerse yourself in your environment, ie how your body feels again the surface upon which you are resting, your feet in your shoes, the temperature of the air on your skin, and so on, you will feel differently and your emotions can therefore send new messages to your body. Bringing you back into emotional control, because as we calm our mind our body can’t help but follow and as our body is taken out of the emergency state so our mind can return back to neutral.

Remember this is best used when you are feeling upset, so learn how to do now and put it into action the next time you find yourself struggling emotionally.