Coping with Christmas series: Care for yourself

Longing for baby and being surrounded by images of happy families is hard to take at the best of times, but can be even more difficult at this time of the year when there are so many expectations and emotions to cope with.

We have asked a number of people – those that have firsthand experience of infertility and therapists with experience of helping those with fertility issues – to give their advice on coping with Christmas and they have come up with a number of strategies that we hope you will find helpful.  Of course if you have tips that worked for you – please share them with us. 

Professor Kristin Neff gives you permission to take care of yourself 

Self-compassion, recognising that it is a tough time and offering care to yourself is a good way to protect against depression, says Texas professor Kristin Neff.

“Infertility can be accompanied by feelings of guilt and a sense of shame. This type of self-criticism releases high levels of cortisol, the hormone which creates feelings of stress and can lead to depression, ” says Dr Neff. Her research found that feeling defeated was connected to infertility related depression for both men and women.

She argues that boosting self-compassion rather than focusing on self-esteem (which is dependent on success and meeting standards) is a positive way to help individuals cope with infertility.

She says: “Self-compassion means recognising when you are having a difficult time and offering the same care and comfort to yourself that you would to another.”

Women were found to have a stronger capacity for self-compassion and this helped them to cope better and distance themselves from the opinions of outsiders.

However, for men the impact of internal and external shame was compounded by their own sense of self-judgement. This increased the likelihood that they might also experience feelings of hopelessness, helplessness and depressive symptoms. (Gelhardo et al 2013).

Compassion can be seen as a lesser virtue and often confused as ‘caring’ and as women often have the role of caretaker it is easy to see why compassion is described as something that women give to others rather than something they display toward themselves.

However as the old saying goes: “we cannot give what we do not have”. So to give compassion from the heart it must be experienced in the heart.

What is self-compassion?

According to Kristin Neff self-compassion includes three elements:

• Self-kindness—being kind and understanding toward oneself in instances of pain or failure rather than being harshly self-critical
• Common humanity—perceiving one’s experiences as part of the larger human experience rather than seeing them as separating and isolating
• Mindfulness—holding painful thoughts and feelings in balanced awareness rather than over-identifying with them.

“With self-compassion, you don’t have to feel better than others to feel good about yourself.  Self-compassion also allows for greater self-clarity, because personal failings can be acknowledged with kindness and do not need to be hidden.

Moreover, self-compassion isn’t dependent on external circumstances, it’s always available – especially when you fall flat on your face!  Research indicates that in comparison to self-esteem, self-compassion is associated with greater emotional resilience, more accurate self-concepts, more caring relationship behaviour, as well as less narcissism and reactive anger.

Compassionate accountability is a commitment to kind self-truth telling. It is the act of stepping up to the authorship of your life. It is the gentle re-establishment of faith bounded by principles that you protect just as much for yourself as you do for others.

It is the courage to act heroically when the person to be rescued is you.”

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