Therapy in Chicago for TTC, Infertility, and Pregnancy Loss
Infertility, pregnancy loss, and the TTC process can cause create internalized, chronic stress.
Folks often feel uncertainty, repeated hope and disappointment, and a loss of control over a deeply personal and meaningful life goal.
Common experiences include:
grief and depression (for each cycle that doesn't result in pregnancy)
grief for a pregnancy loss, or for the timeline that you imagined for your life
anxiety that can take over daily life, especially around the two-week wait or medical appointments
a sense of the body having "failed" or betrayed you, which can affect self-esteem and body image
strain on relationships and intimacy
isolation, particularly as friends or family become pregnant or have children
financial stress from the cost of treatments like IUI or IVF
decision fatigue and mental overwhelm from the volume of medical choices involved
difficulties in parenting for those experiencing secondary infertility
It can also feel like identity disruption, feeling like your life is on hold or defined by TTC in a way that can feel consuming and hard to compartmentalize or share with others in a healthy way.
At Common Thread Counseling Chicago, we hope to support you and provide you with practical coping tools, whether you are in the first cycle of IVF or years into TTC.
How We Approach Therapy for Infertility, TTC, and Pregnancy Loss
We will meet you with care and compassion wherever you are in this journey.
Therapy at Common Thread Counseling offers a space to process the emotional weight of infertility and TTC. Counseling can help you sort through complex, sometimes contradictory emotions, like hope and dread before a pregnancy test, joy for a pregnant friend alongside private grief, and love for a partner alongside resentment about an unequal physical or emotional burden.
We offer a safe space to be honest with uncomfortable thoughts and feelings and gain insight into what has come up for you throughout your experience, without platitudes or unsolicited advice.
At Common Thread Counseling Chicago, we will use CBT tools to address anxious or catastrophic thought patterns tied to test results, appointments, or the two-week wait, and helps manage the intrusive, repetitive thinking common in TTC.
ACT can help build psychological flexibility for living alongside uncertainty and staying engaged and connected with work, interests, and relationships.
We can incorporate mindfulness, grounding, and strategies to reduce feelings of stress. We will also use couples-informed individual work to help someone think through communication and alignment with a partner, since partners often cope differently and at different paces.