Healthcare Training Institute - Quality Education since 1979
Psychologist, Social Worker, Counselor, & MFT!!

Section 1
Track #1 - Belief Systems about Infertility

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Welcome to the Home Study Course sponsored by the Healthcare Training Institute, homestudycredit.com.  This course is entitled, Infertility: Interventions for Shame, Mourning, and Feelings of Inferiority

Our primary intent for this home study course is to provide quality education to foster your professional growth.  The Institute has provided quality education since 1979.
 
We appreciate that you have chosen us as a vehicle for you to earn your Continuing Education Credit.

The purpose of the course is to assist you in increasing your knowledge regarding how to treat patients, clients, etc. dealing with xxx.  As each case study is given, if the concepts seem to be applicable to your situation, I encourage you to turn your CD player off and make a few notes regarding the application of the principle to your setting.  However, these notes are for your purposes only and are not to be sent to the Institute.  Also each track is very content dense.  So feel free to replay the track to review the content either for your own purposes, or if you feel appropriate play the track in an individual or group session for client education.  Also permission is granted to reproduce this CD.  We encourage you to duplicate and give copies of this CD to colleagues, clients, etc. as you deem appropriate. We feel the information on our CD's is valuable.  Thus, we have an interest in distributing CD's in as many ways as possible, to benefit the greatest number of people, who have a need and are receptive to this practical information.

The questions in your Answer Booklet are sequential and deal with the section of content that preceded it.  For this reason, to facilitate the answering of each question, you might read the question from the Answer Booklet prior to listening to that CD track.  By knowing what the question is ahead of time, you will then know the content to listen for that contains the answer.  So just a hint, after you write down the answer to a question in your Answer Booklet, read on to the next question in order to give you a “heads up” to listen for the content that contains the answer to the next question.

Merely write the correct letter on the corresponding blank line in your answer booklet. Each answer is only used once. Keep in mind there is nothing tricky or hard about these questions.  They are merely intended to verify the playing of this CD.

For the purpose of brevity, most generally, I will use the term “therapists” or “mental health professional.”  However, don’t let these terms deter you from applying the concepts to your situations.  When you hear the word “therapists,” if your job title is social worker, psychologist, marriage and family therapist, mental health counselor, professional counselor, resident director, program assistant, etc. merely substitute the appropriate term that is the most meaningful to you. In short, don’t let my use of the term “therapists” cognitively set you off track from hearing the content because your job title is school counselor, for example.  I will also use the term “client” for the purposes of brevity.  However, if you deal with patients, residents, students, consumers, etc., transpose “client” for the term that is the most meaningful to you in your work setting. 

On this CD set we will discuss such topics as: belief systems about infertility, facilitating mourning, couple issues in the dawning phase of infertility, as well as couple issues and therapy in the mobilization, immersion, resolution and legacy phases of infertility.

So  let’s get started

On this track, we will discuss belief systems about infertility.  This will include uncovering beliefs about infertility and fertility and locating the origins of these beliefs.

Infertility, the “plow” that thrusts itself through the couple’s psychological field, unearths many cognitive constructions, world views, assumptions, premises, narratives, attributions, and explanations that are related to various aspects of infertility.  These can collectively be called a couple’s “beliefs.”

The couples’ beliefs that become a part of the experience of infertility are not necessarily conscious or easily articulated, yet are often assumed to be “truths,” simply the way things are.  They may include very basic notions such as “Children and marriage go together,” “Fertility and masculinity are the same,” “Women who cannot bear children are not real women,” “Men who carry the infertility factor are not real men,” or “Adopted children are always a problem.”  Idiosyncratic beliefs might include such constructs as infertility proves “I’m different,” “I’m undeserving,” “I’m less manly or womanly than others,” or that “Nothing ever comes easy for me and my family,” or “Infertility is a sign that our union is flawed.”

My approach regarding helping couples deal with problematic and conflicting beliefs about infertility has two steps.  The first step is to help couples articulate their positions.  Secondly, I work with each partner to find when, where and how each view was learned and assimilated.  The focus can then shift toward the exploration of alternatives, that is, other ways that the couple can understand their experience of infertility.  Within this expanded discussion, the couple’s universe of assumptions can widen and thereby yield a wider range of feelings, choices and actions.  I have found that there are basically three subdivisions of beliefs that tend to dominate the landscape of infertility.  Infertility itself, assumptions about maleness and femaleness and the meaning and value of children and parenting.  On this track, we will discuss the first belief, concerning infertility itself.

#1 Uncovering Beliefs about Fertility and Infertility
First, let’s discuss uncovering beliefs about fertility and infertility.  Fertility and infertility are likely to summon up associations about the masculinity and femininity of oneself and one’s partner.  Like other traumatic stressors in life, infertility taps into existential beliefs and world views.  Fertility tends to be viewed as confirmation of worth, the reward for a virtuous life, and the marker of normality.  Infertility, by contrast, is often linked with an opposite set of values, such as less manliness or womanliness, confirmation of abnormality or worthlessness, and punishment for past wrongs.  Themes of retribution for past misconduct, evidence of intrinsic inferiority, lack of entitlement, cause for shame, and the curse of perpetual bad luck are often linked with infertility.  Clients often come to me saying such things as, “These kinds of things always happen to me,” “Why me?  I don’t deserve this!”  Conversely, “Why not me?  I always fail, nothing in life ever comes easily for me,” “Life sucks,” “The world is unsafe,” “I can’t do anything right!” and so forth.

In order to locate these beliefs, I tend to begin by asking a couple open-ended questions like “What does the diagnosis of infertility mean to you?”  Some couples can immediately list a number of assumptions that have plagued them since the infertility was first diagnosed.  Other couples, however, may feel embarrassed or ashamed of their seemingly absurd notions and may worry that the clinician will think their beliefs are “outdated,” “stereotypical,” or “irrational.”  Acknowledging this fear while asking more focused questions can be a more successful approach.  For example, I tend to preface the exploration of beliefs by saying, “Infertility is likely to stir up what may seem like totally fantastic, irrational thoughts and ideas.  It’s not uncommon for people facing infertility to have these thoughts.  Do these kinds of ideas occur to each of you?”

#2 Locating the Origins of These Beliefs
Second, let’s discuss locating the origins of beliefs about infertility.  Once the couple feels comfortable talking about their beliefs, I can then ask questions about how the etiology of these beliefs, or questions about how, when and why they think these beliefs were generated.  “Where do you think you learned that?” can be a useful question.  These questions about deprivation allow people to step back from their experience of infertility and appreciate the cultural, familiar, and personal sources of their beliefs.  In so doing, couples may have sufficient distance to question the absoluteness of their assumptions, to critique them, and to entertain the possibility of changing them.

Questions might include some of the following.  “Where do you think you learned this?”  “What are your ideas about how you came to think this?”  “Have thoughts like these surfaced at other stressful times in your life?  Or is there something special about infertility that evokes them?”  “What kinds of messages does society give us about fertility and infertility?”  “What ideas about infertility have you learned in your family?  Are there any stories about family members who have experienced infertility?”  “Is there some personal meaning that you attach to infertility?”  “How do you think being a man or woman affects the way you are looking at this?”

Such exploration can uncover problematic themes connected to the past.  When asked about what past or current experiences might be affecting the way in which they view the infertility and the choices they have made, some individuals can immediately locate the sources.

I asked Molly, age 36, about what had been most distressing to her about her infertility.  Molly stated, “I was born with a physical defect that was corrected with surgery…but I could never seem to reassure my parents or myself, for that matter, that I was as physically normal or sturdy as my siblings.  I felt if I could conceive and give birth to a child, I could finally prove that my body is normal.  That’s why I thought adoption, my husband’s first choice, was out of the question.  I prefer donor insemination, because that might give me the opportunity to demonstrate my physical normality.”

Do you have a colleague who might benefit from hearing this track?  On this track, we have discussed belief systems about infertility.  This has included uncovering beliefs about infertility and fertility and locating the origins of these beliefs.

On the next track, we will discuss two more beliefs about infertility.  These will include maleness and femaleness and children and parenting.

QUESTION 1
What are two steps to helping a couple deal with problematic and conflicting beliefs regarding infertility? To select and enter your answer go to Answer Booklet.