Week 4: The Illusion of Control in Infertility & IVF and Why Less Is Not Giving Up
Control rarely looks like force.
It looks like responsibility.
It looks like being proactive.
It looks like fixing something before it becomes a problem.
It looks like love.
And for many women on a fertility journey, control has worked.
Until it didn’t.
There is a moment when the body starts asking for something else.
Not louder effort.
Not better strategies.
Not more information.
Something quieter.
Control is often a nervous system strategy.
A way to stay ahead of discomfort.
A way to avoid sitting in uncertainty long enough for it to speak.
When you fix too quickly, nothing gets to land.
The body does not process.
The information does not integrate.
The pattern stays intact, just dressed up differently.
This is where burnout lives.
Not in doing nothing.
But in doing everything while never arriving.
Many women confuse slowing down with giving up.
Because they were wired early to believe that overdoing equals safety.
Equals worthiness.
Equals success.
That wiring is not wrong.
It was learned.
And it makes sense.
But there comes a point where the same pattern that built your life starts constricting it.
The body knows this before the mind does.
Fertility asks for presence.
Not perfection.
Regulation, not optimization.
Honesty, not performance.
Sometimes the most regulated thing you can do is pause.
Not forever.
Just long enough to notice what is underneath the urge to fix.
Anxiety.
Fear.
Doubt.
The need to control the outcome.
Nothing needs to be solved in that moment.
Just seen.
This is not about doing nothing with your life.
It is about doing something different in the moments that matter most.
The mundane ones.
The quiet ones.
The ones where no one is watching.
This is where patterns unwind.
Not dramatically.
But gently.
Over time.
And that is often enough.
Listen Now: The Illusion of Control in Infertility & IVF and Why Less Is Not Giving Up
Week 5: Why Surrender Feels So Threatening When You Want a Baby During Infertility & IVF
Let's Do This Together 💚
Monica
Listen up, lovelies: Everything I share about health, diet, or fertility magic is my opinion. Yep, it’s all based on years of trial and error, study, reading, listening, and side-eyeing the nonsense out there. What worked for me might be a jackpot for you—or it might be a total flop. Bodies are weird like that. 🤷♀️
Let’s get one thing straight: I’m not a doctor, nutritionist, dietitian, or any other kind of licensed health wizard. If you need medical advice, run—don’t walk—to an actual qualified professional. Don’t come back here saying Monique told you to eat kale for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, okay?
As for the products I mention, they’re either what I used during my own infertility rollercoaster or what I wish I’d known about back then. No guarantees, no promises, and absolutely no refunds on your hope budget if it doesn’t work out.
Now that we’ve cleared that up, proceed with curiosity and, above all, discernment. You’ve got this. 💪✨
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Full Transcript:
00:00
Hello beautiful and welcome to the Finding Fertility podcast.
00:10
I'm Monica, your mentor in uncovering the hidden layers of your fertility journey. Together, we'll discover the right path for you within the six essential steps to creating the family of your dreams. We'll ditch the overwhelm, tune into your intuition, and build a vibrant foundation for your fertility. Whether it's through gut health, subconscious healing, or energetic alignment, you can unlock your body's natural power to get and stay pregnant.
00:37
Your fertility journey is all about radical responsibility and deeply believing that your body is on your side. It's time to stay consistent, embrace trust, surrender, and create the transformation you deserve. Fighting fertility does not diagnose, prescribe, or treat any fertility issues. What we do is empower you to take control of your health by uncovering the root causes holding you back. Let's do this together.
01:04
Happy Friday y'all, welcome back to another episode. I am truly honored you are here with me, especially if you have listened to week one, week two, week three, and you are actually showing up and doing this work because as you've seen, it is boring. It is mundane. It doesn't feel like you're doing anything. It's not quick enough. And this is where the magic lies. Take it from me. I have been doing this work for well over a year now and I still
01:33
catch myself, right? I'm going to be really brutally honest here. After recording the first three weeks, my control patterns absolutely started to slip in thinking these podcast episodes aren't long enough. There's not enough information. Maybe I should do a worksheet so they can download a worksheet for every episode. Just like, oh my gosh. And it's so funny coming here to record week four.
02:02
because this week is noticing one moment where you feel the urge to fix, manage, or improve something. I can show you guys this is why the work matters so much because the old me, six months ago, I would have done it. I would have been like, okay, I'll find more time. I'll record this much and then I'll go back and make these things. And then I'll have to rerecord and put in there. I would have just...
02:28
gone in and over controlled and improved on something that doesn't need it. I'm not saying that there isn't room for knowledge, worksheets, yes of course there is, but what we're really getting into is sitting with the uncomfortable feelings and noticing, becoming that ultimate observer of our reality and understanding why our reality is the way it is.
02:56
Once we understand that, then we can take the right action steps when it comes to the doing to really create the reality that we want. And therefore, it moves into the physical. Pregnancy is a very spiritual process, but it is very physical as well. When we are lowering our cortisol levels, improving our gut health, balancing our hormones,
03:23
and doing everything right, but not seeing the success that we want, whether it's pregnancy, IVF, or even just our test results improving, just feeling better in our body. This is where shifts can happen. This week, we're staying with control and we are looking at how it often disguises itself as fixing or managing something.
03:48
For many of us, control doesn't look like force. It looks like responsibility, care, being proactive. Fixing feels helpful. Managing feelings. Managing feels mature. Stepping in feels like love. That over-controlling, I'll just do it. And that control pattern goes like wildfire.
04:17
when you have children. For all my women listening who are dealing with secondary fertility issues, if you are becoming radically honest, you can see how you over-controlled the whole early motherhood, maybe even causing some tension between you and your husband because he just doesn't do enough. For those still in the waiting, you can see in your fertility journey, the control has gotten what you wanted, and now it's time to soften that.
04:47
level of control can absolutely get you what you quote unquote want. It's this illusion of success. But the reality is your body, especially when you're dealing with fertility issues, is either quietly or it may feel like it's screaming at you to release that control. Sometimes fixing is not caring. It's discomfort avoidance. And this week is all about noticing that difference.
05:16
Noticing the moment something feels slightly off, a feeling, a situation, a conversation, a thought about your body, your timeline, your progress, and notice what happens next. Do you immediately move to solve it? Optimize it, explain it away. Do something so you don't have to sit in the uncertainty. This is bringing back to me even recording these podcasts in batches.
05:46
Moving into the first three months of the new year, I won't be in Hawaii. I'll be away from my podcasting equipment. I am controlling and pushing to batch a lot of this content to make my time more enjoyable in the future. But also noticing I'm doing this and this is all I'm doing and this is going to be good enough because it comes from a really grounded place. It comes from a
06:12
A learning and a teaching place at the same moment. This is what I know a lot of women need to step into. But then watching myself in my silent meditations, you need to do more. This isn't enough. So finding that balance. Yes, you're going to have to take action steps, right? You're going to have to do the doing. But what is the frequency of that doing? And are you
06:38
overdoing it because you think not optimizing it in 10 different ways and making it super shiny and super amazing just isn't good enough. And that impulse, like my patterning and how you see your patterning, it's not wrong. We just learned it. That's just what we learned to do. And we honor, yes, it served us in some ways, but now it's not serving us in other ways. And we need to find that balance. Most of us just learn
07:06
early on to stay ahead of the discomfort and that felt safer and so that is what's in our nervous system. What does it feel like to just show up without overdoing, without over managing, making sure everyone feels good, making sure everyone has a goodie bag? I have a beautiful cousin and an aunt who is my godmother as well who every time we go visit them they give us goodie bags and I'm like, girl.
07:36
I don't need a goody bag, I just need you. That's all I've come here for. So that overdoing, that fixing, that optimizing, it becomes a strategy. Managing becomes a stay regulated. You feel good about yourself, you feel worthy. When you fix too quickly, you don't give your body time to process. You skip over information, you do not let it land in your nervous system.
08:04
You do not create new habits and new patterns and you just stay busy instead of being present. The present is where things actually shift. So this week, when you feel the urge to fix, overdo, overcomplicate, micromanage, I want you to pause just long enough to notice what's underneath it. Is it anxiety?
08:34
Is it fear? Is it doubt? Is it unworthiness? Is it the need to feel in control of the outcome? I want you to start taking the time to notice just long enough and then ask yourself, do I really need to fix this? Adding worksheets over the 20 weeks, I really gonna benefit people? I'm asking you to do less, not more. And just check in with yourself.
09:01
Sometimes the most regulated thing you can do is nothing at all for that moment again and again. You've done it long enough to feel what you're actually feeling and giving yourself space to truly create the reality of your dreams. And I know that this feels like doing nothing is giving up, not doing anything. And this is what I'm like, this is the
09:29
purpose of these weeks to show you that isn't true. You're just wired to pattern that way. You have a bunch of emotional BS linked into it, especially worthiness. You've been taught that overdoing equals success. Remember, if you need a reminder, if you bought yourself a bracelet or something like a necklace, or you're putting sticky notes around,
09:58
to remind yourself that you are the ultimate observer. Being able to do that for yourself, you're already shifting the butterfly effect of your life, the frequency of your life, because you're doing things differently now. And I'm gonna repeat this again. I know it doesn't feel like doing anything. And that is the whole purpose. We need to get out of this hyper mode of control, overthinking, over analyzing, beating ourselves up, judging ourselves, shaming ourselves.
10:28
Only way out of that, other than doing bigger breathwork sessions, therapy sessions, or emotional freedom tapping, somatic work, especially around the pelvis, the hips, is to show up in those mundane moments again and again and do the complete opposite to what you've been patterning. Get out of autopilot. And you're gonna...
10:52
See yourself be in autopilot and just don't judge yourself for it. Just be like, okay, I see it again, okay, we're gonna do something different. No judgment, just radical honesty and go, okay, we're gonna flip the script today, right now and continue to do that. So next week, we are going to reframe surrender so it doesn't trigger fear of letting go.
11:17
Because just as I said, if you feel like you are doing nothing, that you're giving up, that if you let go, it won't happen, I promise you that is just a story from fear. So until next week, my beautiful friend, keep up the amazing work. We'll see you next Friday. Thank you once again for tuning in and becoming the conscious mama you were born to be.
11:44
Remember, I wasn't some magical unicorn who stumbled into fertility success. I stayed consistent. I put in the work and I made it happen. And guess what? You can too. Remember, this transformation happens when you stay committed to yourself. Trust your body, follow your intuition, make it possible. The links that you need are down below. And if you are still here and you absolutely love this podcast, please take some time.
12:12
and leave me a review and help other women like you find this podcast to get the support they need.
