Therapy for Infertility and Pregnancy Loss

Grief that nobody prepares you for, and most people don’t know how to talk about

Contact Me Here

The invisible grief of infertility and loss

You know the feeling: the two-week wait where every twinge means something and nothing at the same time; the moment before you look at the test, when hope and dread sit so close together you can't tell them apart; the way your whole life starts to organize itself around cycles, appointments, and the question that never stops running in the background: will this be the one?

Maybe you've watched the test turn negative so many times that you've stopped telling your partner when you're taking one, or maybe you've heard a heartbeat and then lost it, or maybe you've never seen a positive test at all and you're grieving something hard to explain because it never technically “existed.”

People going through infertility and pregnancy loss often describe a strange kind of double life. On the outside, you're functioning, going to work, smiling at your friend's baby shower (or skipping it entirely and feeling guilty about that too). On the inside, you're running calculations, managing disappointment, and bracing for the next round of hope and potential heartbreak.

This grief is different from other kinds of loss. There's no funeral, no bereavement leave, no casserole from the neighbors. 

You're mourning someone you never met, a future that never formed, a version of yourself that didn't get to exist. 

And because society doesn't have rituals or even language for this kind of loss, you end up carrying it alone, wondering if you're allowed to grieve something that "never really happened."

You might notice yourself:

  • Avoiding pregnant friends or social media announcements, then feeling like a terrible person for it

  • Having sex that feels more like a scheduled medical procedure than intimacy

  • Snapping at your partner over small things

  • Losing interest in plans, hobbies, or friendships that used to matter to you

  • Feeling disconnected from your body, like you’re living in something that betrayed you

And then there are the comments: "Just relax and it'll happen." "Everything happens for a reason." "Have you tried acupuncture?"

People mean well, but when you're deep in this, well-meaning advice can feel like being handed a band-aid for a broken bone. You don't need to be fixed. You need to be understood.

Why this hits your nervous system, not just your emotions

Infertility and pregnancy loss aren’t just emotionally hard; they train your body to expect disappointment.

After enough cycles of hope followed by loss, your nervous system starts to learn that hope itself is dangerous, so it protects you the only way it knows how: by staying on high alert, going numb, or cycling between the two.

This is why you might feel exhausted even when you slept eight hours, why you can't concentrate at work, or why you flinch when someone asks if you have kids.

Your body is trying to protect you from getting hurt again, and that protection comes at a cost.

Traditional talk therapy can help you understand what you're feeling and why, but when grief gets stored in your body, understanding alone doesn't always heal it.

How I work with infertility and pregnancy loss

What I hear most often from clients is that they want a therapist who understands this experience, someone who doesn't need a crash course in IVF protocols or an explanation of why "just adopt" is an infuriating thing to say. I get it. You shouldn't have to educate your therapist while you're trying to heal.

I use a combination of approaches for my clients who are healing from infertility and pregnancy loss.

For processing the trauma of loss and the accumulated stress of treatment cycles, I use EMDR and Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART), which help your brain reprocess painful memories without requiring you to narrate them in excruciating detail.

For the ongoing challenge of living with uncertainty, making hard decisions, and building a life that feels meaningful even when things aren't going according to plan, I use Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which helps you get unstuck from the thoughts and feelings that keep you spinning and reconnect with what matters to you.

The goal is to help you hold grief and hope at the same time without being paralyzed by either so that you can live your life in the meantime instead of just holding your breath through it.

What it means to heal without “getting over it”

Healing doesn't mean “getting over it.” You might always carry some grief about this chapter of your life, and that's okay.

What changes is your relationship to the grief. This means it stops running your life and it starts becoming something you can experience without being overpowered by it.

Here’s what my clients typically experience through our work together:

  • You can make decisions from a clear place. Right now the grief might be so loud you can't hear yourself think, and every choice feels impossible: keep trying, stop, explore other options. Therapy turns down that volume so that you can listen to what you want, separate from the fear, the pressure, and the noise.

  • You can talk to your partner without it turning into a fight or a shutdown. Maybe one of you wants to keep trying while the other needs a break. Maybe you're grieving in completely different ways and it's creating distance between you. You can learn to navigate that together instead of silently resenting each other.

  • You can show up to your sister's baby shower and actually be present for parts of it, not just white-knuckling through until you can leave. Your relationships stop feeling like obligations you're barely surviving.

  • You can have sex that feels like connection again, instead of a timed procedure dictated by the fertility calendar. Your intimate life gets to be yours again.

  • You can answer "do you have kids?" from a stranger without it ruining your whole afternoon. You get to decide when and how you talk about this, instead of feeling ambushed by your own emotions.

  • You can rebuild a relationship with your body, even if it didn't do what you expected. That sense of living inside something that betrayed you can soften.

  • You’ll find out who you are beyond this experience. Your identity doesn't have to be entirely wrapped up in whether or not you become a parent, and that matters whether you're still trying, considering other paths, or facing a life that looks different than you imagined.

Support at every stage, not just during treatment

Some people come to me in the middle of fertility treatment, looking for support while they're still trying. Others come after they've decided to stop, or after a loss, or years later when they realize they never fully processed what happened. There's no wrong time.

I also want to be honest about something the research shows clearly: no outcome makes the grief disappear automatically. If you eventually get pregnant, you might carry anxiety through the whole pregnancy and struggle to bond with the baby out of self-protection. If you adopt, you might still grieve the biological child you imagined. If you decide to stop trying, the decision itself can be harder than the treatment was. Each path transforms the grief into something different, but none of them erase it.

That's not meant to be discouraging. The point is that therapy isn't just useful until you "succeed," whatever that looks like for you. Support after treatment ends, after the decision is made, after life moves forward, is often when people need it the most.

For some people, this grief eventually opens a door to considering adoption. If that's a path you're exploring, I also specialize in supporting adoptive parents through their own unique challenges. If that’s you, we can talk about that if you’d like.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • You shouldn't have to spend your sessions explaining what the two-week wait is or why advice like “just relax” makes you want to scream. I understand the medical landscape, the emotional rollercoaster of treatment cycles, and the specific kind of grief that comes with reproductive loss. That means we can get to the work faster, and you can feel understood without having to educate me first.

  • Completely. You can genuinely care about someone and still feel gutted by their pregnancy announcement, and those two things can exist at the same time. Feeling jealous doesn't make you a bad person or a bad friend, it makes you someone who's grieving.

  • Different grieving styles are normal, and one of you might want to talk about it constantly while the other needs space, or one might want to keep trying immediately while the other needs a break. Therapy can help you understand your own process and communicate about it without turning grief into a relationship conflict.

  • That's one of the hardest parts of this experience. The decision to continue treatment, stop, or explore other options gets tangled up with grief, hope, fear, and sometimes pressure from partners or family. Part of our work can be helping you get clear enough to know what you want, separate from the fear and the noise.

  • Absolutely. An early loss can be just as devastating as a later one, especially when it's not your first.

  • Friends and support groups can be wonderful, and I'd never discourage you from leaning on your people. There's actually something uniquely healing about connecting with others who understand. But friends and groups can't help you process what's stored in your nervous system or work through the trauma. They can witness your pain, but trauma therapy is what can help you heal from it long-term.

  • No. The approaches I use, like EMDR and ART, don't require you to narrate your trauma over and over. We work with what's happening in your body and brain in ways that process the pain without requiring much disclosure.

  • Yes, and many people find it helpful to have support during treatment rather than waiting until afterward. We can work on managing the anxiety and emotional toll of the process as you go, and having someone in your corner can make the whole experience more bearable.

  • Maybe. Pregnancy after loss often comes with its own challenges, like anxiety, difficulty bonding, and the strange experience of grief and joy existing side by side. Some people find that getting pregnant brings up old losses in unexpected ways. I'm here for that part of the journey too.