Yael
The Ambivalence of Trust: A Story of Fertility Preservation
Yael, 27, came to me to discuss the dilemma she was facing regarding the egg-freezing treatments she was undergoing. She felt torn between her desire to trust her body to conceive at its own pace and the dictates of medical science.
Yael is a beautiful, independent, and strong woman who is highly self-aware and mindful of her actions. She enjoys exploring her femininity and feeling that her health is in her hands. That is why, several years ago, she took a course in Fertility Awareness—a method that helps women track their monthly cycle and ovulation to know exactly when they can conceive.
Because Yael was so self-aware, she noticed that something was wrong with her ovulation and went to see a gynecologist, who sent her for tests. When he told her she did not have many eggs left, she decided to begin the process of fertility preservation.
This is a complex, unpleasant, and demanding process that I myself underwent before starting chemotherapy. It involves hormone injections, blood tests, and ultrasounds every other day. When the second round failed to retrieve any eggs at all, Yael broke down.
Yael: "I did one round, and only a few eggs came out. The second round didn’t work. There was nothing even to aspirate," Yael told me. "I took a two-month break, and now I'm supposed to start a new round. I feel like I can't fully commit to the process. I have a strong feeling that everything will be fine and that I won't need these eggs in the future, but I still don't feel like I can trust my body one hundred percent. On the other hand, I feel that going through the process is an expression of distrust in my body."
Me: "So, what is your goal for our session, then?" I asked.
It seemed Yael was ashamed of the situation she had reached, as if something was wrong with her because she didn’t fully trust her body and her intuition.
Yael: "This ambivalence makes it difficult for me to undergo the process wholeheartedly... Perhaps I want to gain strength, to feel that I am doing this out of internal motivation."
Me: "You said that undergoing the treatments expresses a lack of trust in your body. I think it’s the opposite. You were actually listening very closely to your body, and what you did was super responsible. Do you want to do another round?"
Yael: "I plan to do it."
Me: "If so, let’s focus on helping your body support this. Let’s start with the perception of what faith and trust really are. You say, 'I believe in my body,' and yet, for you, your actions express a lack of faith in it. This conflict puts your body under stress. Why is it so important for you to cling to your belief? Perhaps your belief can change."
Yael: "I feel that I need to protect myself. This stems from difficult experiences I had with doctors... and if I don’t protect myself, they won’t protect me."
Me: "Tell me about a difficult experience you had with a doctor."
Yael: "A few years ago, I had a yeast infection and was suffering greatly. I went to the doctor, and he behaved appallingly. He barely said hello, didn’t even close the curtain. He came in before I had taken my clothes off. It hurt me terribly, and everything disgusted me. He immediately told me to take antibiotic pills, without even checking everything, and spoke very rudely. I left there truly crying. And that is when I started to become more self-aware and conscious of my body, stemming from that experience."
Me: "Let’s do a little exercise. Close your eyes, take three breaths into your heart, and imagine you are inside a light that is beyond your beating heart, beyond your body, beyond everything. In that light, imagine you see a screen, and that screen shows you everything you gained thanks to that incident with the doctor."
Yael: "I gained the awareness of fertility, and also the decision to embark on a journey with my body. It’s truly an experience of success that I can take care of my body and rely on it, and the moment I rely on it, it cooperates."
Me: "Look at all the amazing things you gained that have made you who you are today. Breathe them in, knowing they are there no matter what. Go a little deeper into the light in your heart, and imagine that from the depth of the light in your heart, a beam of light is sent out, and you ride on it into the heart of that doctor. You arrive at his heart and look curiously at what is happening there. You are curious to discover what caused him to behave that way. What do you see?"
Yael: "That these are the only tools he has. He doesn’t know how to act differently. And also, he sees so much suffering from women that it is too much for him."
Me: "Could you offer something from your heart to his heart? After all, he gave you a tremendous gift."
Yael: "I think... sensitivity."
Me: "So, let’s imagine that the light in your heart sends sensitivity to his heart. Is there anything else you want to give him?"
Yael: "Respect, so that he knows how to be respectful."
Me: "Okay, send him that too. Anything else?"
Yael: "Maybe also the knowledge that he doesn’t know everything. Even though he is a doctor and he studied and he is smart... maybe humility."
Me: "Maybe we should also send him love? He sits for hours in that small room; it’s not simple... Let’s send him a lot of love. See him connected to all the other doctors in the world; watch how this container, where everyone is held for you, breaks down, and how each of them becomes a separate person. And see the hearts of all the doctors; allow your heart to connect with the hearts of the doctors with whom it will feel good to be treated, and ask to meet precisely them in your life."
"Now, return to your heart, take a good breath into your own heart. Check how you can be connected to yourself and also choose who to trust each time. Your choice to trust others does not contradict your ability to listen to yourself; on the contrary. Through self-listening, you will learn who to trust. Check if there is anything else bothering you regarding this issue."
Yael: "What you just said — about trusting doctors not meaning I don’t trust and listen to my body. I feel like that hasn’t fully settled inside me."
Me: "The choice to go to the doctor was yours. I think you do trust doctors; otherwise, you wouldn’t go to them. And yet, it is very difficult for you. Maybe this is something between you and yourself. It feels like a need of the ego. Let’s check it."
At this point, I guided Yael to imagine she was talking to her ego as if it were a separate entity existing on its own. I asked her to explore what its need was, and why it was interfering with her.
Yael: "A belief comes up that I can heal anything by myself."
Me: "What does that belief give you?"
Yael: "That I can only trust myself."
Me: "When did you learn that?"
Yael: "When I was little."
Me: "What happened then?"
Yael: "I asked my mother for help with homework, and she didn’t help me. I felt that if I didn’t do it myself, it wouldn’t get done. I felt that only I could do it. I sat there, frustrated that I couldn’t solve the exercises and frustrated that my mother wasn’t helping me, perhaps because I had annoyed her."
Me: "What did your ego lose there in that incident with your mother?"
Yael: "The ability to ask for help."
Me: "Because what was taken from it?"
Yael: "Something related to control comes up. Because if I can’t even help myself, then I’m left with nothing. That’s the feeling I get with doctors."
Me: "What will restore the ego's sense of control so it has the confidence to trust others?"
Yael: "Acceptance — not resisting it... accepting its need for control, and it might change."
Me: "So it is actually asking for acceptance. Let’s send it acceptance. And I’m not sure it wants to receive it from the heart. Maybe from the head or another center in the body. So ask it where it wants to receive this acceptance from."
Yael: "From the throat."
Me: "Okay. So imagine that through the light in your heart, you come to the throat, and from there you send this recognition to your ego. What else comes up?"
Yael: "My throat hurt a little bit before, and now I feel that it has passed... The issue of accepting and asking for help also comes up. That it is good for me, I tell the ego."
Me: "What will allow the ego to agree to accept and ask for help?"
Yael: "The mere fact that we looked at it. It needs to believe that it's okay to accept help. Maybe it needs to be seen."
Me: "And from where in the body does it want to receive this visibility?"
Yael: "From the head."
Me: "Great. So go the same way. Through the heart, connect to the head and send it the visibility."
Yael: "I'm feeling that lump in my throat again... I felt a lump in my throat for a long time, and now I feel like it's a strong energy that wants to move in the body."
Me: "It looks like the ego is fighting quite a bit with what is happening here now. We need to give it an alternative. Who is the Yael who trusts both herself and others? Who is the Yael who can choose whether or not to receive help? The ego needs a definition. So what is the definition?"
Yael: "It comes up that it increases my freedom of choice. It increases both sides — both the ability to trust others and the ability to trust myself."
If you, like Yael, have ever felt a painful experience with a professional, you are welcome to perform the same exercise Yael did here with the insensitive doctor and with the very idea of "doctors." Send love to all the professionals belonging to that group, and imagine that in the future, you invite into your life those with whom connection will feel safe and supportive.
Today, four years after that meeting, Yael is already a mother to a two-year-old daughter. She became pregnant naturally, without any intervention.
