Mind/body connection

I believe my IBS is caused by the memory of how I felt when I had glandular fever. Same with my fear that when I have a flare up, it will last forever. I was just so I’ll and it wasn’t getting better which then treated two years later, again in 2012, then again in 2014. All because my body and mind remembered that first time and how out of control I felt (remember that lack of control is what emet and my OCD is all about). At least with me discovering garlic causes a bad reaction and reducing dairy gave me some control over the IBS but to this day, I still feel like my GERD had control of me.

Anyway, I also believe that the mind/body connection has something to do with why I’m not falling pregnant. I’ve always been afraid of morning sickness and kids being sick but we wanted a baby so we decided to give it a go. I told myself that plenty of people with emet get pregnant so there was no reason why I couldn’t do it. We started in the Spring of 2014 but by Autumn I was back on my birth control pills. I panicked every time I thought I was pregnant! I stopped eating in front of people thinking I had morning sickness and didn’t want them ti see me be sick. I limited what I ate which made me feel worse and obviously was going to stop me falling pregnant as I wasn’t getting the nutrients I needed. All of this made me feel like I had some control but of course I didn’t.

I distinctly remember sitting in the passenger seat of my Mum’s car in my way to my Nan’s and saying I felt sick. My two sisters joked in the back of the car saying I must be pregnant (they knew we were trying). They were laughing but I was panicking. I couldn’t do 9 months of feeling that way! It wasn’t long after that day that I was back in the pill having a full mental breakdown (I’d stopped my SSRI to try to get pregnant).

For the next 16 months I worked on my emet with The Thrive Programme. I cured my depression and I believed I had cured my emet. I guess I sort of did but I never challenged the OCD side of it and I’ve never been able to reduce my high desire for control. I now describe myself as a recovering emetophobe and someone living with OCD. I’m able to catch myself thinking incorrectly or performing safety seeking behaviours but I’m not always able to stop them.

We started trying again in April 2016 and I haven’t even had an evap line on a pregnancy test 😦 I’ve tried everything I can over the years to try and fall pregnant – acupuncture, diet, ovulation bracelets, charting, positions, supplements, creams… all sorts. Again I felt this was giving me control! But I’m sitting here reading, ‘Am I the Reason I’m not getting pregnant?’ By Rosanne Austin is making me wonder if it’s my mind that isn’t right (nothing is physically wrong with me or my hubby)? I honestly do still fear morning sickness and children puking. I tell myself I’d cope but it’s still there. I had a panic attack yesterday because I’d eaten too much but I immediately thought it was the Norethisterone I’m taking so we can’t start IVF next week. It probably wasn’t but I had the thought of how will I cope with the other drugs, being pregnant and sick children. I told myself I can do it but I do get flashbacks to 2014. What if my fear of feeling sick and not having control is stopping me falling pregnant? My Mum says other meets fall pregnant so it can’t be. But doctors say you can’t stop yourself being sick (which I believe you can), so it stands to reason that I’m mentally blocking myself falling pregnant. Many a time over the last six years I’ve felt fearful that my PMT was pregnancy symptoms and that I’d feel like that for nine months. I willed them stick to show two lines, I longed for a baby but I’m ashamed to say, I did feel some relief when my period started. Oh that makes me sound awful!

I’m now at a stage where I don’t really believe anything will help me fall pregnant. I don’t think I even believe the IVF will as it didn’t for some family members and didn’t the first time. This mindset, along with the above, will not get me pregnant! I know it’s my mind that’s wrong but how to fix it? I’m hoping Rosanne Austin’s book will show me the way.

I’m in charge

I realised this morning that I have been struggling with my desire for control recently. Not to the point where it has affected my mental health but I have definitely been feeling it. I want a baby so much and it frustrates me that there is nothing I can do to control that. No matter how hard I try to will myself pregnant, it will happen when it happens. In fact, trying that hard makes it less likely to succeed. But it goes so against my nature to ‘just let it happen’. So when I thought about getting a house it felt like something that I could control. I changed my job (as I have said before) and am on probation for six months so we have had to take a break from trying for a baby. This seemed like such the perfect opportunity to look for a house as we could buy a house and move in and then have the baby there. I have been worried that I would be stuck in a two bed flat for years and years so tried to control that situation. If I got a house first then I would be all set for when my magical two babies arrive. But of course, I may never have children and I could be in a home that I am not happy with without those children. I need to just let these things happen in life and use my secondary control to cope with them. Rather than worrying about housing etc. perhaps I should concentrate on something that I should be able to control which is my eating habits and exercising? I need to stop blaming external factors as the reason I don’t do these things and just do them. 
I’m annoyed at myself for slipping back into my bad ways of thinking but I have caught myself before it got too bad. Perhaps that is what is holding me back as well? I need to believe in myself, believe I can cope and believe I can achieve everything I want in life even if it doesn’t go exactly the way I have planed it. 

Isn’t life confusing?!

Isn’t like confusing?! I am just coming out of a period in my life where I have been in limbo. My job has been shifting from the small town in Surrey to having to work in London and that is not something I want to do. It has been good for challenging my emet but not good for spending time with my family and trying for a baby (both stress and being too tired when I get home!). I like stability. I like to know where I stand in life and what is likely to happen next. I am risk adverse. I want answers to everything in life. I need a reason why. Now this is a typical thought pattern of someone with anxiety. My main issue is not being able to predict things and not being able to accept that some things are grey, not black and white!

Just recently I was offered a new job that would mean I wouldn’t need to commute to London. I was so excited and accepted it as soon as I could. However, my body decided to play tricks on me and I was six days late for my period! My husband and I have been trying for a baby for a year but decided when I was offered the job that, providing I was pregnant that time, I would take the job and we would have a break until I have at least passed my probation. So naturally, I got stressed about needing to come on and so it was late. Bring on days and days of knicker checker and peeing on sticks! It wasn’t until I decided that I would take the job either way and just deal with not having statutory pay that I came on. Anyway, I digress. My point is I spent the whole time looking for the answer and getting stressed that I wasn’t getting one, which was only holding the answer off even more!

Why do I do this to myself?

 

Why do I do this to myself?! Why

Trying to conceive!

Trying to conceive (TTC) is an emets nightmare. Or at least a recovering emets nightmare. Not because of the fear that I might get morning sickness. It surprises me but since completing Thrive that doesn’t faze me that much. Today I felt a bit sick and I just told myself to get on with things and I did. Just like a non-emet would. Not it isn’t the feeling but that is the nightmare but the fact that you can’t control anything about it! Not when it happens, not what gender your baby will be, not what effects your hormones are going to have on you. Nothing!

Suddenly I feel like my body is being controlled by my hormones. Yes this is true but I mean like I have no control over anything! My face is covered in spots and it feels like I can’t do anything about it. Obviously I could if I wanted to. I could take the contraceptive pill which would clear my skin right up but I have chosen to come off it so I can have a baby. But that hasn’t happened yet and it has been nine months so far! Yet something else that I can’t control. My husband and I can only do so much (if you know what I mean!) and even that doesn’t guarantee anything. There is something stupid like a 25% chance each month and it decreases with age. I will be 31 soon! I just fail to see how this month or the next will be any different from the nine that have already gone before. What will make those different? I get that it is all down to being in the right time at the right place and the boys and girl growing into a baby but with all the talk about luck and mumbo jumbo of homeopathy around, it is easy to feel down about it without that blanket. I can feel my internal locus of control wavering as I try to understand why it hasn’t happened yet and how I can ‘make’ it happen this month. Once again I searching for a way to control the uncontrollable. Sound familiar? That is exactly what Emet is all about. Trying to control every aspect of your life because the one thing you really want can’t be controlled. I am trying to protect myself from failure and stress by doing everything I can to avoid that which only makes me more stressed which in turn doesn’t help me get pregnant! With an external locus of control and a high desire for control you feel the need to control every single aspect of your life as you try to get control of things that you believe you can’t. I hope that makes sense! Take for example germs on a door handle. My black and white thinking tells me there is definitely germs on the door handle to the library because the public use it. They will all be bad germs and will definitely transfer to my hand when I touch it and I will get sick. I can tell myself that some of the germs on the door handle may be good bacteria but that won’t make me believe it. I can tell myself that there may not be any bad bacteria on the door handle but that won’t make me believe it. I can tell myself that those germs may not transfer to my hand but I won’t believe it. I can tell myself that even if those germs are there and do transfer to my hand, it doesn’t mean I won’t get sick but it still won’t make me believe it. That is black and white thinking and is a particularly bad way of thinking when you have a strong desire for control.

When it comes to trying for a baby I just think that I would have been pregnant by now if I was going to be. There is nothing I can do to change the outcome. The positive mental attitude isn’t there and I struggle to remember that having that will have an impact on whether or not we do conceive. Everyone tells you that it is when you stop thinking about it and relax that it happens and I 100% believe that. If I could just tell my desire for control this and it would make life a lot easier! Lol

Anyway that is a quick rant about trying to conceive when you are an emet or recovering emet. Or a control freak as I have been calling myself! Maybe that isn’t the right terms as freak has many bad connotations to it. I need to think of another term. I wouldn’t call myself an emet anymore as this isn’t about being sick and never was. I wouldn’t say I have OCD either really as the not touching the door handle is all about control. I guess it doesn’t need a label (again another Emet trait, trying to tie everything up in a nice little bow!), but I must stop using the word freak!

I gave my niece a kiss!

So you are thinking, what’s the big deal? All you did was give your niece a kiss. But what if I told you that for the past week she has been throwing up in the mornings for no reason? Again, you might say what’s the big deal but for me it was. It didn’t cross my mind that she has been being sick. I didn’t worry about catching something. I just let her give me a kiss (which to a one year old is basically just putting her open mouth on my face!). 

I’ll admit that the thought that she had been sick crossed my mind after but I just dismissed it like someone else would and thought, ‘well if it get it, I get it. I’ll cope.’  That was such a big deal to me!

To have a baby or not to have a baby, that is the question

I posted this blog entry three months ago but I accidentally added it as a page and not a post! So this was from March not June!

Hubby and I had an argument last night. The same one we always have which is about having babies. We both want one (him more than I do) but my Emet just gets in the way.

I am sure this is a common theme amongst Emetophobes as they don’t want to go through pregnancy (I think something like 99% of emet sufferers are female) or worry that they won’t be able to handle the child being sick.

Last year my hubby and I decided it was time to have a baby. My emet was in a good place, it felt under control and we were both ready. But it went really wrong. My emet went crazy and I ended up having a nervous breakdown.

My sister is now having a baby and we met my cousins baby at the weekend and I think it made my husband broody (it did me a little). We had an argument about him meeting up with one of his female friends as I got all insecure saying he will go off with them as I can’t give him what he wants. This is what started the argument.

Anyway, I am now in a position where I really want a child but I can’t even handle the nausea I get from my IBS or the nausea I get from my period whilst I am on the pill. What am I going to do when I come off it? How am I going to cope my the nausea my hormones will cause? I know they will as they did last time. I have finally settled on the pill but I so badly want a baby and can’t be on that then!

I’ve got to do Thrive again and try and Thrive. I need to come to terms with the issues outstanding such as my desire for control, my disgust propensity, and my inability to tolerate uncomfortable feelings.