What Is Infertility Counselling and How Can It Help You?

The infertility journey is one of the most emotionally demanding experiences any person, or couple can go through. The appointments, the waiting, the hope, the uncertainty, the grief and loss and then starting all over again in a cycle. For many people navigating Intrauterine Insemination (IUI) and In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), the physical process is just one part of the story.

The emotional weight often goes unspoken and swiftly dismissed or gone unnoticed.

Infertility counselling offers a dedicated space to process everything that comes with this journey. Not just the outcomes, but the uncertainty, the identity questions, the relationship strain, and the grief that builds quietly over time. At Mindful Steps Therapy in Markham, Mya Moran, HBSc., MDiv., RP, PMH-C, provides this kind of support to individuals and couples across Ontario and Canada virtually. Making care easily accessible to meet you where your at.

Why the Emotional Side of Infertility Gets Overlooked

The first thing many people aren’t aware of is that the infertility healthcare industry and clinics are unregulated. Meaning each IVF clinic has their own nuanced protocol and procedural approaches developing and adding towards ongoing research and the science.

What is standard and to be expected is the following:

• Cycle tracking
• Medication scheduling
• Retrieval procedures
• Transfers dates
• Repeated follow-ups and constant bloodwork

The emotional experience is not addressed and often gets dismissed. Majority of women and persons going through this process don’t necessarily get all the appropriate investigative medical testing before starting treatment. Most clinics will completely just jump right in without doing basic hormonal bloodwork, or any investigations of the reproductive system until after the first transfer.

Most first transfers fail on the first try. In Ontario, the statistic is 30-60% success rate for the first transfers. Mainly due to the lack of investigation, pre-care treatment and undiagnosed health conditions. (CARTR, 2025 Report)

Because every clinic has their own approach, guidelines, and protocols it becomes the responsibility of the patients to do their own research and be picky about who will be the right fit.

The emotional reality of infertility is exhausting, layered with complex emotions, and places so much responsibility on the advocacy of patients in their own healthcare. Many people describe feelings of grief after failed cycles, anxiety before every appointment, and a creeping sense of dread leading to self-imposed isolation as friends and family move through different life stages and feeling left behind, or stuck.

Infertility can quietly reshape your perspectives on your own identity, the role of your body and its capacity, your relationships, sense of belief, and your connection to your partner and support network.

Infertility counselling exists precisely because these feelings deserve more than a passing acknowledgement and the system has become one of complex chess to navigate. You deserve real, dedicated attention from someone who understands the terrain, has witnessed who has protocols and procedures that place your healthcare needs first and not for the pressure or the outcome. Many women have been harmed and walk away with PTSD from the medical system more often than not.

Harms that most people aren’t aware of include but not limited to:

• Repeated close transfers without giving body rest and recovery after loss
• No bloodwork or investigations post-loss
• Minimal history or preamble towards cycle monitoring and retrievals/transfers
• Dismissive doctors
• Mishandling of eggs, and embryos resulting in loss

What Infertility Counselling Actually Involves

Sometimes people assume that therapy during infertility means waiting to see what happens and then processing the outcome. In practice, it is much more active than that. It is proactive management in preventing trauma, working through decision-making skills, supporting and educating, as well as navigating the impact on the emotional body and you as a person or couple.
At Mindful Steps Therapy, we are specifically trained and maintain a current education focused specifically in perinatal mental health, infertility process, and grief/loss. Sessions are grounded in both mindfulness-based and somatic approaches that support the whole experience you are navigating.

This means working with the mind, the body and spirit of you together. Somatic therapy recognizes that grief, anxiety, and stress are not just thoughts but sensations that live in the body. The feelings and experiences can get trapped in the body. We will work together and learn to notice, identify, to become aware, and then work with those physical signals. This approach helps create a way to intervene as things are happening empowering you and supporting you in the moment as you need to make the best choices and decisions for your care. It can be an important part of coping with the ongoing uncertainty of fertility treatment; reclaiming and empowering within your control.

Sessions might explore the following themes and situations but are not limited to:

• Processing grief and loss after multiple losses
• Processing grief and loss after medical procedures, transfers or pregnancy loss
• Managing the anxiety and emotional overwhelm between appointments
• Support in decision-making skills and self-advocacy to meet your needs in your appointments
• Support in expanding and finding the “right” clinics for you to be safe and receive best care
• Navigating relationship dynamics when partners cope differently and silently or alone
• Working through the experience of receiving a diagnosis
• Reconnecting with your body and sense of self during treatment
• Preparing emotionally for IVF or IUI procedures
• Finding meaning and stability when outcomes feel out of your control
• Dealing with pregnancy after multiple losses (living with the experiences)

Therapy does not follow a rigid script here it is customized to each human being whom, brings a different story, experience, history, support systems, and a different relationship. Mya works collaboratively with clients to understand what they actually need, rather than applying a one-size-fits-all framework.

When Might You Consider Infertility Counselling?

There is no single right moment to start. Some people come to therapy early in their fertility journey, as a proactive way to build emotional resilience before treatments begin. Which is often recommended for those beginning their journey. Others may be finding this article now after being in it. Some reach out after a particularly difficult loss, medical dismissal, traumatic experience, or a failed cycle that left them feeling helpless and stuck.
Some signs that counselling might be helpful right now:

• You find yourself unable to think about much else outside of where you are in the cycle
• You feel disconnected from your partner, even when you know you are both going through the same thing
• You are noticing that you are isolated or prefer to be away from others
• Grief from a miscarriage or pregnancy loss is still present and you have not had space to fully process it
• Your losses haven’t been acknowledged or heard by others around you “No One Gets It”
• You feel like you are performing okayness for the people around you but privately struggling
• You feel irritable and anxious
• Your body feels like something to be managed and monitored rather than a part of you
• You are finding it hard to imagine what your life looks like on any path forward

If any one of these feel familiar or can identify with, that is enough of a reason to reach out for support now.

The Role of Somatic Therapy in Fertility Support

One of the things that sets Mya's approach apart is the integration of Integrative Somatic Therapy Practice principles into her work with clients. Somatic therapy pays attention to how the body holds emotional experience. During fertility treatment, the body is often at the centre of everything: being monitored, intervened on, filled with complex emotions, and sometimes feeling like it’s all failing.

Many people going through IVF or IUI describe a complicated relationship with their body during this time. There can be frustration, disconnection, and even a sense of betrayal by the body.

“It should be doing the one thing it’s created for and it’s not working. There must be something wrong with me”. I hear this time and time again.

Somatic approaches help clients reconnect with their bodies in a gentler non-judgmental way, reducing the adversarial quality that polarizes the pressure on the body.

This body-aware way of working complements the mindfulness practices Mya also draws on, helping clients build a steadier inner foundation even while the external circumstances remain uncertain.

Supporting Couples Through Infertility

Infertility affects relationships in ways that are not always easy to predict. Partners often grieve differently, communicate differently under stress, and have different thresholds for hope and disappointment. One partner may want to talk constantly; the other may go quiet. These differences can create distance at exactly the moment when connection matters most. Some may just not understand what the other is experiencing and how they can support or help them to move forward, seemingly stuck or shut-down.

Infertility counselling can support both individuals and couples. Whether you are coming alone to process your own experience, or both of you are feeling the strain, there is space at Mindful Steps Therapy to work through what this is bringing up. Secondary infertility is the highest common factor that people are going to IUI and IVF. The experience of struggling to conceive after a previous successful pregnancy can greatly impact relationships and carries its own unique emotional complexity and is equally valid to explore in therapy.

Taking the Next Step

If you are in anywhere in Ontario or across Canada looking for infertility counselling, Mya Moran offers virtual sessions so you can be comfortable where you are at in your safe space at home. Being a Registered Psychotherapist with the CRPO for over 5 years and specifically trained through the Postpartum Support International (PSI) developing an educated, informed training dedicated to infertility and fertility challenges.

You do not have to wait for a specific outcome to start you can just be where you are at. Reach out to Mindful Steps Therapy to book a consultation and take one step toward feeling less alone in this.