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The "waiting game" of fertility treatment can trigger stress, anxiety, and a feeling of being out of control.

Pleasurable and productive activities register to the mind as control, relieving stress.

Pleasurable projects must lead to a meaningful result from one's efforts in order to calm the nervous system.

Two of the things I hear most often from patients undergoing fertility treatment are, “I feel totally overwhelmed," and "The waiting is the worst part.”

If that resonates with you, that makes sense. You may have heard that people undergoing fertility treatment unsuccessfully can have similar levels of depression as cancer patients, or that fertility treatment quickly becomes the focus of people’s lives and can wreak havoc on friends and family. This is because the process is often more intense than expected, and often, people who have not been through it do not fully understand its impact on all areas of one's life. We have not yet uncovered exactly why fertility treatment puts us in “fight or flight,” but we do know that the process of struggling to have our dreamed-of family and........

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