Destigmatizing Emotional Health While TTC
Hey mama bear,
9 years ago, I know I needed help.
I had been trying to get pregnant for almost a year and was totally and completely obsessed with TTC.
I vividly remember sitting at my desk at my old accounting job and googling “how to stop worrying” while simultaneously also googling, “first pregnancy symptoms”.
It consumed my everything. I knew something needed to change because life wasn’t fun anymore and my worries about the future of my family were at an all-time high 🚀
So I found a Life Coach of my own (side note: I didn’t want therapy and I happened to discover a coach who specialized in fertility). I signed up despite what I thought was an outrageous investment. But I honestly didn’t feel like I had any other choice.
And literally, the rest is history.
Asking for mental and emotional support along the journey to my baby was the best decision I EVER made and was my catalyst to revealing the very best version of who I could be in this lifetime.
There is no freaking cap to what you can feel and achieve in your life when you know how to work and work-through your thoughts and beliefs.
The problem – and what makes my heart sad – is that many people DON’T learn the mindset tools. They don’t ask for help. They just suffer.
OR
They wait for things to get SUPER BAD before asking for help.
Cause coaching or therapy isn’t yet normalized in most social circles and very often people believe that if they ask for help, then “something must be wrong with me.”
But in this week’s podcast, we’re gonna break down the stigma against what it REALLY means to ask for emotional and mental support and why LITERALLY EVERYONE IN THE WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD THAT BREATHES NEEDS IT.
Instead of just going through the motions on your fertility journey and hoping that the positive pregnancy test will be the thing that finally lights you up – learn how to light yourself up 🔥 in this week’s new podcast: Destigmatizing Emotional Health While TTC.
You’re gonna learn:
Why it’s socially “more cool” to work on your physical health, but not your mental health (SO backwards 😣)
Why we hold so much resistance to getting the help we need.
What it REALLY means and looks like to ask for this kind of mental and emotional support.
Listen to the full episode:
Full Episode Transcript:
Welcome to the Fertile Ground Podcast with Spenser Brassard. The only podcast that teaches you how to get your mind and body on board so you can get your baby on board. And now here's your host, mind-body fertility expert and certified life coach Spenser Brassard.
Hi mama bear. Spenser Brassard here, your life and fertility coach teaching you the mind-body approach to getting pregnant, the best approach without it taking over your life. God, how good does that feel? Right. Actually, it's getting closer to, in spring 2019 before the world went crazy, is when I conceived my son Beck and spring always has like this really close part in my heart now because it was such a special time that season and everything really felt like it was coming together and all of my, you know, life coaching tools we're starting to really take flight in my life, in my clients' lives. And I had just created Fertile Ground, one of the courses inside of Fertility Mind-Body Mastery, and shortly after, you know, creating that course and applying everything I was teaching, gosh, I found out I was pregnant and it's just so crazy.
So spring, I think will always be super special for me as that happened. So it's just cool to reflect on that. Okay. So. I have a really interesting topic that I want to talk to you about, and I'm pretty sure I say that at every podcast - I have a fascinating topic... I have such an interesting topic. You know, I wouldn't do a podcast that I didn't think was really, really, really, really interesting. So here we are. Right. Um, so I was inspired by this podcast from a conversation that I had on Instagram with an amazing woman. So if you ever, if, you know, if you have me on Instagram, um, DM me, say hi, I'd love to, you know, learn about what you're going through. And, or even just if you want to say "Hey, want to introduce myself", I'd love to, hear from you. My handle is Spenser Brassard, S P E N S E R B R A S S A R D. And so I have conversations with women all the time, just because I love connecting and conversing with you all. And so she had applied for Fertility Mind-Body Mastery.
Um, but she had been trying to conceive for less than a year. And didn't know if investing in the program was necessary for her. Right. And it really got me thinking about something and this woman, like, she's incredible, she's kind and sweet. And she's just, you know, at that point where you're kind of a little bit confused as it's getting closer to that one year mark. Um, so she was like, Oh, I don't know if I want to dive deep into this. And like I said, it really got me thinking about something and I'd say that the majority of our culture, like we wouldn't dare to ask for mental or emotional support and those that do, a lot of us think that we need to wait for things to get super bad before asking for help.
Um, but she had been trying to conceive for less than a year. And didn't know if investing in the program was necessary for her. Right. And it really got me thinking about something and this woman, like, she's incredible, she's kind and sweet. And she's just, you know, at that point where you're kind of a little bit confused as it's getting closer to that one year mark. Um, so she was like, Oh, I don't know if I want to dive deep into this. And like I said, it really got me thinking about something and I'd say that the majority of our culture, like we wouldn't dare to ask for mental or emotional support and those that do, a lot of us think that we need to wait for things to get super bad before asking for help. We wait until we are in the darkness and see no way out before we ask for help. We wait until we can't sleep at night before we relieve ourselves of mental and emotional distress. And even if we do ask for help, it's super hush hush, right? Because we don't want people to judge us for it. But think about this: We wouldn't wait until we were terribly sick to start taking care of our bodies. We wouldn't wait to be diagnosed with an awful illness before we eat a vegetable or went for a walk. Right. Culturally, we prioritize physical health and there is an obvious, huge stigma around asking for mental and emotional support.
And this also plays, you know, specifically in the fertility world, in the fertility industry, it's the physical health is what is prioritized. And the doctors are like, "okay, yeah, and less stress." But, you know, I think, and really, truly believe there's an obvious stigma around asking for mental and emotional support. Like it's perfectly normal and it's even cool to talk about your workout class or brag about the latest diet you've been on with friends, because a big motivating factor behind physical health is that it changes how your body looks and appears to the outside world. And we are a culture that really cares about how we look. So working on your physical health is cool. Like it's, it's cool. Like it's a, you're a cool person if you work out and eat well. While working on your mental health, culturally means, quote unquote, that there must be something wrong with you because our society values the outside versus the inside. We value how we look versus how we feel. We care more about what people think about us and how our lives look on the outside than how we truly feel about ourselves and our lives. And without awareness around this, we will continue to create a life that looks great from the outside. That looks fantastic on paper or on Instagram while neglecting how we really truly feel. And choosing to numb out with booze and clothes and cars and keeping the cycle going. Instead of learning how to process our emotions, change our thoughts and truly thrive in life. We are conditioned to spend our money on stuff and things. Instead of getting mental and emotional support in the hopes that more stuff will solve how we feel - a better car, a newly renovated kitchen, um, a better wardrobe will make us feel better. And then it's not socially acceptable to ask for emotional help. And that there's something wrong with you if you do. So most people don't seek it and have a harder time creating what they want. Now, this behavior is normal and because it's normal, it's what most of us do. But I'm going to be blunt here and say, fuck normal.
I do not want to suffer if I don't have to. I do not want to be full of fear if I don't have to. I don't want to hold onto past energy, people, and events if I don't have to, do you? Now, this is a huge realization of you're on the fertility journey and can be incredibly transformative for you because a huge pain point on the journey is your family not looking complete on paper because your baby's not here yet. But if you make the choice to value how you feel and learn, for example, what it really means to belong versus how your life looks on paper and trying to fit in. Then you will train and rewire your brain to feel happy and whole now, instead of hoping and waiting for a future event on paper, to bring this to you. We need to normalize asking for mental and emotional support to achieve our dreams because the next generation, they need this. What would you choose for your future child? Would you want your child to wait for things to get super bad at school before they talk to you? Would you want them to wait for their grades to get really awful; for them to get terribly bullied before they come and talk to you about it and ask for support?
Or would you want them to come to you and ask for help when things just aren't feeling their best? Why do we wait until we don't even recognize ourselves anymore on the fertility journey before feeling worthy to process, to feel and to heal. I want to normalize getting the emotional and mental support that I need, personally, to thrive in this world for me, for you and for the next generation. Now speaking for myself. If I got pregnant on my first month of trying, I wouldn't have been introduced to the power of life coaching and I would have never have learned about the power of our minds and how we can use it to heal our bodies and thrive in life. I would still be valuing the outside versus how I feel on the inside.
And I know for a fact that this podcast, which has had over 200,000 downloads at this time of recording this, and has clearly helped tens of thousands of women and potentially babies being born all over the world, would not exist. One huge glitch in the cultural system of valuing the outside is that you never find what you're looking for. I know that your monkey mind is telling you that more money, a baby, or losing that weight will finally be that thing. Finally, when I get this, then I'll be happy, right? That brings you joy, but true lasting, fulfillment and satisfaction exists deeper than this, beyond things and stuff. Satisfaction doesn't last on circumstances. They come and they go, we all know this, you know, graduating high school or, you know, graduating college was a celebration. Right. And then you started your job. The wedding. Ugh. That was the most incredible day. And then you got home from your honeymoon and had a marriage. Having a baby, miraculous, miraculous experience, and then you come home and you're a new mum. Life continues. The high of these events wear off, life stabilizes, and then what do you do if you believe that these big outside events are where your value lies? You keep searching and needing the high one. My amazing client was talking about this in our group coaching call in Fertility Mind-Body Mastery.
She said, Spenser, I just feel like I won't be happy until all 10 boxes are checked off. She was referring to her career, her home, her relationship. And of course her baby, but as I coached her through this, she so brilliantly realized and said, You know what? I know that as soon as that 10th box is checked off an 11th one will pop up, and I was like, she's a hundred percent right. And this is like the perfect definition of perfectionism. Perfectionism has a way of always saying, okay, nope, not there yet. I know you've reached that 10th box, but we are going to now, very subtly and sneakily, add an 11th and a 12th, 13th box. So with perfectionism, we never reach enough. This is what happens when we tie our worth to outside circumstances and events.
We never get there. We never feel enough. Now the intention behind this podcast is to de-stigmatize asking for mental and emotional support. To release the shame surrounding this subject, to release the shame around wanting to feel better and wanting to, honestly, just feel your fucking best. And I'm hoping to do this by giving you a completely new view of what it means to get this kind of help. It doesn't matter to me. If you ask for support for, um, you know, someone else, or if you choose to apply for Fertility Mind-Body Mastery and get support from me. I really just want you to recognize a few limiting beliefs you might have around getting the support that you need and deserve and are worthy of.
Right. So, okay. Here's some old limiting beliefs versus some bright new shiny ones. And like, this is a lot of what coaching is, it's learning what limiting beliefs you have that are holding you back in life and rewriting new ones. So I'm just going to rewrite you a few new ones here. So I'll give you the old one versus a new bright, shiny one. Asking for mental and emotional support means there's something wrong with you versus asking for mental and emotional support means there's something incredibly right with you. Listen up. If you want to get personalized support, to heal, feel better and thrive in all categories of your life. If you want to overcome what you've been through on your fertility journey, if you want to create a new future with a new mindset that believes and is hopeful and feel confident about your future instead of rewriting and replaying the old one with an old mindset. If you want your mind and body to feel at ease while you welcome a new baby, then come on. There is clearly something incredibly right with you, think about it. And I got to say this, cause your shame is definitely lying to you right now and telling you like, why me?
Why do I have to go through this or that you're really alone in wanting or needing support. I gotta be real. Everyone's been through shit and everyone in the world, every single human alive would benefit from mental and emotional support. Every one, we are a world full of humans that 100% needs to learn how to mentally and emotionally process what we've been through. And we need to learn how to believe new thoughts that make us feel loved, confident, and enough now. And I'm sure you have a few friends or family members that live in an old mental story from 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago because they never processed and healed and changed their thoughts around it. Okay, so let's do a few more. Asking for mental and emotional support means you messed up somewhere versus asking for mental and emotional support means that as a human and like everyone else in the world, you went through some shit.
And you have hope that you will recover and rewrite a new story to feel better about what you've been through and to feel hopeful about your future. Asking for mental and emotional support means you're weak versus asking for mental and emotional support means you believe you're worthy of more. Asking for mental and emotional support means you're neglecting your body. Versus asking for mental and emotional support will make it so much easier to take care of your body. I needed to throw this one in there because it's so true when you're happier, you eat healthier. And when you don't eat so healthy, when the family is getting together for pizza night, you're not riddled with guilt. Just imagine how great your life could be. If you asked for support before it got really, really bad. Imagine how much faster things would progress. Imagine how much better you would feel in your pursuit of creating this beautiful baby. Now, maybe you're like, but Spenser things already feel really bad. Like I feel like I'm already in that fog. Can you still help? And of course I can. My group coaching program, Fertility Mind-Body Mastery supports women who've been trying to conceive for a few months, too a few years. It's for those who know they could feel better and feel those fears creeping in. And it's also for those that are totally feeling lost, no judgment, either way.
You belong with us. And if you're unsure, reach out to me, DM me, talk about this. Let's let's talk it out. You know, we want a baby because we believe it will make us happier. Why not take the pressure off of needing the baby to make us happy and learn how to be happy now? So mama-bear, you can see that there is clearly, very clearly, a stigma around asking for help mentally and emotionally, just as there are many cultural, mental, and social stigmas that hold us back in life. If we don't gain awareness around it, if we don't gain some distance around what everyone else is doing versus what works for us. But my program, Fertility Mind-Body Mastery is where you shift your focus on valuing what people think of you and what your life looks like on the outside to getting in touch with the kind of lifestyle that you need to thrive and feeling better on the inside.
And of course, a huge by-product and side effect of this is of course increased fertility as you strengthen your mind and body connection. So if you want to achieve something truly amazing. You have to learn what your thoughts are. Who you are. You need to learn how to feel your emotions. You need to create the time and space to let go of the old and create a new future. And I'd love to show you how this is done in my group coaching program, Fertility Mind-Body Mastery. So you can apply for this at www dot fertility mind body mastery dot com. I can't wait to see your application. All right. That's all for today. Lots of love.