When Coaching Helped Her Through Fertility Treatment, She Made it Her Niche

Millions of women have been there (an estimated 6.1 million in the U.S. alone)—they want a child, but they fear (or know) that on their own, they can’t get pregnant.

For UK coach Anya Sizer—one of the millions who’s faced infertility—and the time consuming and emotionally wrenching process of fertility treatment—the pain and frustration was the path to a most personally rewarding kind of coaching.

“It’s about regaining control and it’s about restoring hope. So it’s about looking at the process of going through infertility and finding ways to best support yourself and a relationship.”

When a couple faces fertility issues, very often their focus is on getting the very best medical help available. The rest, for better or worse, they do on their own. Anya Sizer brings coaching into the mix “so that, as you go through what will inevitably be one of the hardest times in your life, you are best equipped internally and externally.”

What does that look like?

Sizer’s fertility coaching focuses on emotions, though processes, building support structures around a client, and ensuring that the actual fertility treatment is “as positive as possible.”

It was Sizer’s own experience with fertility treatment—leading to the birth of two children—that helped her reach a life-changing decision: to give up her career and get into coaching.

“I discovered that though I loved counseling, I wasn’t fantastic at it, because I’m quite solutions focused. If there’s a problem, I tend to look for ways forward. Because of that, I don’t think I make a good counselor.” But she realized she might make a great coach.

But she hadn’t thought at first of focusing on fertility as an exclusive coaching niche.

Sizer says as she began studying coaching during the treatment process before the birth of her second child, she began putting her training to work. “I was using the coaching tools on myself and seeing the huge success and huge difference it was making, so I began to tailor my practice more and more to people with infertility.”

As Sizer found with her own experience using coaching during the often drawn out process of fertility treatment, coaching’s tools fit perfectly with the needs of fertility patients.

“From an emotional perspective, cognitive restructuring (is) absolutely key. So, with myself—and a typical person going through IVF—a loop would be going through my head: ‘I can’t do this, I can’t cope, this isn’t going to happen, I can’t cope,’ and so the ability to use coaching to externalize those thoughts and to look at them, and look at the truth and then to throw away the stuff that’s not enabling you and to replace it and to work with more enabling thought processes was incredibly powerful.”

The second piece comes in the form of looking at a client’s situation and determining the systems and structures that can make their experience as helpful as possible—such as creating support systems and caring for relationships.

Sizer, who’s since written a book on the subject, Fertile Thinking, now coaches fertility clients through the London Women’s Clinic, an association Sizer describes as putting coaching firmly into the “package of care” provided to women and their partners going through fertility treatment.

“(Patients) can use me for email, they can telephone, they can have one-to-one coaching,” and Sizer runs two support groups, including one devoted to stress management.

One of the first things Sizer makes clear to clients is that infertility is not an issue of failing to think positively, and her coaching is nothing like a cheerleading session. “I think you can reduce stress levels, and you can help yourself, but people put this extra pressure on themselves to be up all the time, whereas I think my coaching in a sense comes from the other perspective, which is this will be one of the toughest things you’ve ever faced in your life.”

By connecting to the London Women’s Clinic, Sizer reaches some clients who might otherwise not have thought to include coaching into their mix of infertility treatments. “People are really, really struggling through this,” said Sizer, who said studies have consistently found significantly higher rates of depression among women with infertility–one study even finding one in four women undergoing fertility treatment were diagnosed with “depressive disorders” in addition to a high prevalence 0f “negative emotions,” changes in relationships and sexuality, and less favorable scores for “depressed mood, memory/concentration, anxiety and fears, as well as for self-perceived attractiveness.”

“It’s almost a no-brainer…you’ve got to give them the tools, the support and encouragement to get through it.” Just as, of course, Sizer did. Her own fertility experience gave her the credentials to work with clients as an expert, but also a means to find peace with that chapter of her life.

“Very soon after the birth of my son, I kind of felt closure in a sense with my own fertility journey and thought I can now totally specialize and move on.”