What are the impacts on mental health of having a miscarriage?
Having a miscarriage is one of the major losses couples and individuals can face. Each person may experience the loss and trauma of a miscarriage differently. Couples therapy and individual therapy are parts of holistic miscarriage counseling at Wisdom Within. You both need time and space to grieve this major, sudden, unexpected loss. An ectopic pregnancy can also be a form of miscarriage. Miscarriage due to an unsuccessful fertility treatment is just as devastating. You may have been building and decorating a nursery and buying baby clothes in excitement. Maybe, you just ordered and spent time putting together a crib or bassinet. At night, you may have been thinking about possible baby names.
A couple’s hopes and dreams are shattered in an instant with the news.
A ectopic pregnancy happens when a fertilized egg attaches itself outside of the uterus, perhaps in a fallopian tube, rather than in the uterus. In the case of an ectopic pregnancy, doctors will terminate the pregnancy as it can lead to death in the mother when the egg does not implant in the uterus where it’s supposed to grow. Now, you wonder how to announce your miscarriage. You look at the empty nursery and empty crib and sob. Your whole body feels the loss of the baby that you were carrying. Do you call your relatives one by one, or just tell one of them to share the sad news with the rest?
The trauma of miscarriage can be devastating.
One moment, you are joyful and excited about having a baby. The next moment, you are trying to deal with the shocking, sad news of pregnancy loss. Your whole world falls apart. The hopes and dreams you had are shattered, and it feels like you can’t tell anyone how much pain you are in. Women and their partners often struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms after a miscarriage.
A miscarriage is a major loss and traumatic life event and causes PTSD symptoms.
After miscarrying, some women spiral into depression after a miscarriage, others get angry, and other women feel very sad. Other women may have anxiety and be filled with self-doubt. Leading up to getting pregnant, a couple may have had a considerable amount of trying, effort, attention and energy sent forth to get pregnant. Getting pregnant may have been hard work. A women who is unable to carry to baby to term may be comparing herself to women who have healthy pregnancies. When her due date comes up, she may even envy or become angry when she sees other new mothers with their healthy babies.
he team of therapists at Wisdom WithIn Counseling specialize in holistic miscarriage counseling and pregnancy loss.
Feminine mental health is over looked after a miscarried. Doctors do not refer women to receive counseling services after miscarriage enough. Often, women are forced to cope after the loss of a miscarriage alone. Two in three women develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after miscarriage. Early pregnancy loss often leads women to develop symptoms and show signs of PTSD. As well, women may experience memories of the trauma and loss for months and years after. Women may be unable to sleep or concentrate, feel skittish, or feel irritable.
How long does the pain of miscarriage last?
High levels of anxiety and depression may occur for nine months to three years after a miscarriage. Early pregnancy losses are common and not talked about. Most of social media posts hype up the pregnancy journey. However, not many posts on social media talk about how to handle the unexpected loss of miscarriage. There can also be medical trauma that a woman experiences after miscarriage. Doctors send women on their way without understanding the emotional consequences and psychological impacts of early pregnancy loss procedures. Women are not given referrals for counseling after medical miscarriage produces, which leaves them feeling more alone.
In the process of grief, denial may surface.
A woman’s mind may jump back and forth between acceptance and denial. She may want want to believe the news she is hearing from her doctor or midwife. For many women and couples, part of grief is denial. A woman may not want to believe that a miscarriage is occurring.
Women may experience complex PTSD symptoms, anxiety, self-doubt, anger, jealousy, and mood swings after a miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy.
Experiencing a medical trauma as well as miscarriage leads to post-traumatic stress, self-doubt, anxiety and depression. Early pregnancy loss has a huge psychological impact on women, their children and their partners. Counseling can help women and their families talk about miscarriage. Sharing your story of pregnancy loss in counseling can be the start healing. Counseling regularly at Wisdom Within can positively impact maternal mental health.
A combination of chronic pain along with the emotional trauma can have negative impacts in all areas of life.
Women can benefit from holistic miscarriage counseling when they are experiencing PTSD symptoms.
Depression and PTSD from miscarriage and impact personal relationships and relationships with children.
Emotionally, a women may feel such a heaviness and depression that she can’t goto work. She may feel in hopeless, sad, and indequate and forget to fill out necessary FMLA paperwork. In severe cases, miscarriage can lead to PTSD symptoms and the breakdown of a career. Not being able to concentrate at work can lead to low employee performance review ratings. After a miscarrying, a woman may avoid socializing with other pregnant friends or moms. Loss of pregnancy can lead to distance and social isolation.
Due to medical trauma, the sudden loss, and past traumas and losses being re-triggered, emotions can run high.
Women who have lost a pregnancy may need to take time off work.
Partners can also ensure they are taking time off or FLMA leave. Some women and their partners also report nightmares or flashbacks after miscarriage. Other PTSD and trauma symptoms include avoiding anything that would remind them of their baby or loss. Women and their partners may need support to express loss if one is holding it in.
After miscarriage, women and their partners may experience negative, intrusive, self-cricial thoughts.
There may be irrational fears about future unwanted loss occurring again. When suffering from depression, a woman may think the miscarriage was her fault. Counseling helps women cope with unexpected loss of pregnancy and the severe depression that goes with it.
To begin, click below to schedule your phone consult to heal from pregnancy loss and the trauma of a miscarriage.
After a miscarriage, a woman might feel like it’s hard to trust her body, or may be afraid to try again.
Miscarriages can be physically and emotionally exhausting. To the person who had a miscarriage, they were very excited about their pregnancy and they were overjoyed to be having a child. As well, the couple may have been facing struggles with infertility, doing IVF treatments, or IUI for years. There can be emotional exhaustion that goes along with a miscarriage.
It can feel like a massive defeat if you really, really want a baby of your own. Defeat can be saddening. Notably, having a miscarriage is the exact opposite of that joy and anticipation of growing a family. Instead, being told a couple is having a miscarriage is a very painful realization.
It is always okay to cry and let go through tears.
When some couples run into issues is when on person holds in their emotion. One person may become stoic and unable to tolerate small distress in the day. Anger, irritability, anxiety, sadness, and even jealousy at other women who are currently pregnant and progressing are common.
Couples may experience higher anxiety after miscarriage and early pregnancy loss.
Of women who had miscarriages, many feel anxious about getting pregnant again. During another pregnancy, women and their partners show high levels of anxiety. In a future pregnancy, it is very common for women and their partners to show clinically significant anxiety and depression symptoms. There is a constant fear of not carrying a baby to term.
For couples, holistic miscarriage counseling is a safe place to talk about anxiety and depression.
Mothers may also struggle to manage the needs of a healthy child after a sudden loss like miscarriage. Having another little one to care for can be overwhelming when a mother is experiencing miscarriage. A young child may not understand why their parent can’t get out of bed due to sadness or depression. Family therapy and parent-child therapy can help children cope and understand depression and loss.
You can talk about the emotions of sadness, anxiety, anger, and jealousy that arise when you see a pregnant person.
It can be triggering emotionally and upsetting to see other women who are pregnant when you are feeling grief. When you see another woman who is pregnant, you may feel envy, jealousy, sadness, or anger. These are all normal feelings to the sudden loss and trauma of miscarriage.
Holistic miscarriage counseling can help women who feel envious, resentful or mad that other women get to carry to term.
It may feel difficult to be happy for a friend or family member who announces their pregnancy. After miscarriage, it may be impossible to think about visiting a friend or sibling after birth of their baby. Miscarriage can lead to wanting to avoid hospitals, babies, and anything that is a reminder of pregnancy. Women may feel emotionally upset more so when important dates go right along miscarriage their own loss.
Baby related events like gender reveal parties and baby showers can be triggering emotionally.
Holistic miscarriage counseling to talk about how to handle invitations to other women’s baby showers. It might feel like you are too overwhelmed in grief to goto a baby shower. Being happy for someone else is basically impossible when experiencing grief and loss. You can have a safe place to talk about attending or declining the invitation if going would charge up high intensity emotions.
What is PTSD and complex trauma after pregnancy loss?
Miscarriage and pregnancy loss can trigger PTSD and complex trauma just like surviving a terrorist attack, abuse, or experiencing domestic violence. To note, many women who have miscarriages are more likely to experience chronic pain, head aches, body aches, digestive issues, and sleeping problems.
The body begins holding on the the post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms.
After miscarriage, women may experience severe anxiety and wonder if she is doing everything right. A woman may need extra reassurance. It is important that a woman receive counseling for anxiety depression. Counseling can help a woman cope after sudden loss and stop comparing herself to other women who carry their pregnancies to term.
The sudden loss and trauma of a miscarriage can re-trigger childhood trauma and loss memories to resurface
Even if it may be true that the body miscarries due to chromosome issues or birth effects, it can be very difficult to believe.
A woman’s body goes into fight, flight, and freeze trauma states after a miscarriage.
Fight is when she feels angry, upset, or like arguing over something small due to sadness and grief.
As well, flight is when she just wants to run away from the pain, such as through adrenaline rush activities. She may also take part in negative behaviors like alcoholism, drug use, or self-sabotage. Freeze is b=feeling paralyzed and frozen. Maybe, it is a struggle to goto work, to simple eat. This is the freeze trauma response after miscarraige.
To begin, click below to schedule your phone consult to heal from pregnancy loss and the trauma of a miscarriage.
Past trauma events due to when her body was in flight, fight, and freeze years before can arise.
Her body is shifting hormones overnight after a miscarriage. Emotions may feel overwhelming for you all. Due to the trauma responses of flight, fight, and freeze, a woman may begin remembering past trauma experiences when her body also as in flight, fight, and freeze. For some women, sexual, emotional, or physical abuse in childhood caused the body to go into flight, fight and freeze.
Sudden loss and trauma can resurface after a miscarriage.
If a woman has experiences other losses and traumas in childhood like sexual, emotional or physical abuse, these losses can resurface. As well, if a woman has lost a parent, sibling, or had a close friend die, this loss can resurface after a miscarriage. A miscarried can re-trigger past, painful, heartbreaking losses like a partner cheating or being unfaithful.
Women may struggle with body image issues and eating disorders after miscarriage.
Many women gain weight to feed their baby in a pregnancy. However, when a women can no longer carry her baby to term, she may feel shame about her weight. She may having cravings for comfort food after her miscarriage due to the PTSD symptoms and depression she faces. A woman suffering after a miscarriage may over eat or consume large amounts of food due to sadness. Due to PTSD symptoms, a woman may develop an eating disorder or disordered eating habits.
Appetite changes can be a topic to being to holistic miscarriage counseling
As well as having an increase in appetite, women suffering after a miscarriage may lose their appetite. After the news of miscarriage, a woman may feel so depressed she no longer has an appetite. She may no longer want to eat out of complete sadness. In negative cases, a woman may turn to alcohol, drugs, or other self-sabotaging behaviors or numb away the pain. Being in emotional pain from a miscarriage can impact feeding, eating, and food consumption. Body image issues may surface after a miscarriage.
How does counseling support women in healing from PTSD?
With PTSD, emotional detachment is common. A woman may feel disconnected for her body after loss of pregnancy. Holistic miscarriage counseling at Wisdom Within can help women love and accept themselves as they are. Our team of therapists provide a safe, nurturing space to grieve and heal after pregnancy loss. You can gain positive coping skills to get through this difficult time with hope. Treating your self with love and care are key steps in healing after miscarriage. Counseling can be a safe place to talk about healthy, self-love ways to cope with trauma and severe loss.
Holistic miscarriage counseling at Wisdom Within supports women in healing spiritually after a miscarriage.
A woman may want to make a grave in her back yard to visit her rainbow baby. Depending on your spiritual beliefs, you may want to have a way to connect with your rainbow baby’s spirit in your everyday life. Some women get a tattoo to spiritually heal after miscarriage. Other women may want to have a funeral. Other friends, children, and family, can come honor the life of the baby at a funeral. Grief ceremonies can be very healing and positive for loss.
Culture plays a role in healing from grief and loss
Our culture brushes off miscarriages and discounts the severity of this loss. As well, certain religious views and cultures may put pressure on a woman to not talk about the miscarriage. If a woman goes to a family member, and they are insensitive, she can feel even greater loss. Some women who come from a history of fertile women may feel like an outcast if they can’t carry a baby to term. Seeing family members having babies left and right can lead a woman to feel like an outcast in her family. If a woman has a miscarriage, she may not get the emotional support she needs from her relatives. A woman may need help setting boundaries to heal from miscarriage too.
At Wisdom Within, holistic miscarriage counseling can be a healthy way to receive nurturing, emotional support.
Take the time to make your own grief ceremony and remember your baby’s life. Save your hospital bracelet if you wish. Plant an apple tree in your front yard in memory of your rainbow baby. Your therapist holistic miscarriage counselor can help you find and create grief rituals and events.
Childhood trauma memories come back from the loss of miscarriage
After a miscarriage, past losses and traumas may resurface that she has forgotten about. Having a parent die years prior may not seem as significant until a woman receives the news and feels the loss of her miscarriage. If there are losses you have faced on top of a miscarriage, Wisdom Within Counseling can help.
High anxiety and hyper vigilance in holistic miscarriage counseling
It is normal to have high anxiety after experiencing a miscarriage. Due to the loss, grief, and pain of miscarriage, it is normal to question yourself. You may have anxiety about food choices, sleeping habits, and even social anxiety that develops. You may avoid places where there are pregnant women or mothers. For some women, miscarriage is a one-time occurrence. Other women may have multiple miscarriages leading to greater PTSD, trauma and loss symptoms. The more miscarriages a women has, the more she may avoid places that remind her of these losses. After miscarriage, walking down the diaper isle in Walmart or seeing baby clothes can cause a woman to have a panic attack. Receiving an invitation to a baby shower for a friend may cause tearfulness, anger, or a panic attack after miscarraige.
After a traumatic loss like miscarriage, you deserve the support of a feminine health and holistic miscarriage counselor.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, you can pick from art, yoga, music, and walking therapies by the beach for healing. Self-doubt can take over your mind. A high state of anxiety may cause you to criticize yourself sadly. Holistic miscarriage counseling helps women work through the pain and stress of miscarriage. There may be feelings of sadness, disappointment, self-doubt, and loss. Counseling helps couples and women deal with any pressure to quickly get over it and try again due to family or cultural expectations. Therapy for loss and trauma helps women gain self-love skills, practice self-care and teaches holistic coping mechanisms.
With high anxiety, you might wonder if you did something wrong to cause the miscarriage.
To note, do not question yourself, or random reasons this occurred, like if took your prenatal vitamins.
Don’t feel that you miscarried because you drank too much caffeine. If you have attended their physician or midwife appointments regularly, you did the best you could. Do not blame yourself. There are a variety of reasons why the body miscarries. The team at Wisdom Within Counseling specialize in holistic complex trauma and loss therapies.
Your body is whole, complete, and perfect as it is.
Most importantly, do not try to find a reason or explanation for why you miscarried. You body is not broken. Use positive affirmations like, “I trust my intuition,” or, “I am whole and complete as I am.”
Miscarriage counseling helps women rebuild trust in themselves
A woman may be doubting her body‘s ability to be pregnant again.
A may be wondering if she can even carry a baby to term after a miscarriage. As well, women can talk about feelings of failure in holistic miscarriage counseling. It is common for women to develop negative, limiting beliefs about themselves after a miscarriage. After miscarriage and pregnancy loss, therapy can help a woman let go of feeling responsible. Many times, women struggle to find a reasons for their miscarriage. Counseling can help women heal if they feel guilty, shame, or responsible in some way. It is normal for women to question their world when they lose their baby. Naturally, after miscarriage, women may think it was something they did or didn’t do that caused the loss. Instead fo self-blame, counseling helps women develop resilience. holistic miscarriage counseling helps women cope with and overcome shame and a terrible sense of guilt.
Holistic miscarriage counseling helps women believe in themselves and trust their body again.
Grieving the loss in holistic miscarriage counseling at Wisdom Within
At Wisdom Within Counseling, you can pick from a team of creative, holistic therapists. A miscarriage can impact all members of a family differently. A mixture of individual, couples, and family counseling sessions can help families process the grief.
To begin, click below to schedule your phone consult to heal from pregnancy loss and the trauma of a miscarriage.
When a woman has an older child, they also grieve the loss of miscarriage too.
Play therapies can help a child process death and loss of a sibling to be. Watching parents grieve, feel depressed, and be aloof can be a change and adjustment as well. Play therapy for children can help youngsters understand why their parent is crying, sad, and depressed. Children need help understanding grief and loss, and where a baby goes when it dies. Holistic family counseling at Wisdom Within gives families permission to cry together. As well, families have a safe, creative place to tell their story and talk about what their hopes and dreams were. Families can grieve the miscarriage losses and give voice to those losses in therapy.
The anniversaries of losses can be significant in counseling
In cases of miscarriage, there are specific dates to keep in mind. On these dates, trauma memories, anxiety, and depression symptoms will resurface. Notably, women who experience miscarriage may have a PTSD flashback on their due date. The day their baby was supposed to be born can be triggering. Anxiety, anger, and mood swings may occur on the day the couple found out they were expecting. The day the couple received a positive pregnancy test is a day etched in stone with loss.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, we believe in spiritual connection when healing from loss and trauma.
Holistic miscarriage counseling can help women practice extra self-care skill on those emotionally triggering anniversaries. Women and couples can find ways to commemorate these painful dates with healing rituals. For instance, to grieve on anniversaries, couples and women may play a meaningful song, burn a fire, plant a tree, light a candle, toss a bottle into the ocean with a letter inside to their miscarried child.
What is unique and creative about holistic miscarriage counseling?
Using art therapies, yoga therapies, music therapies, and walking therapies, families can heal after loss. Creative, expressive arts in therapy provide grounding and centering skills. Family counseling after a miscarriage offers a safe, nonjudgmental place to share your loss and your trauma story.
Holistic miscarriage counseling can help women and their partners cope with the sudden loss in a healthy ways.
Your holistic trauma therapist at Wisdom Within Counseling will time to listen to your pain, hurt, anxiety, and story. Art therapies, yoga therapies, music therapies and nature therapies can support healing and resilience. Talking about how you feel and what you are going through with a therapist can improve mental health coping tools. Young children can do child-centered play therapy.
Many families, couples, young children, and women need to talk about this sudden trauma.
Grieving and finding positive coping tools is part of healing after loss.
What shouldn’t you say when a friend has a miscarriage?
Maybe, you are not suffering from a miscarriage, but you are wondering how to comfort someone who is. We all know women, and many of those women in our lives have experienced miscarriage. The emotional, physical, and mental impacts of miscarriage are massive.
These are some helpful tips to be a supportive friend. As well, these tips of what not to say to someone who has miscarried can help you be socially aware of your female friend’s emotional needs after trauma. Remember, the best thing you can do is empathize with their suffering, loss, and be a good listener.
A few tips below on how to be a sensitive, supportive friend after a miscarriage
You never want to tell someone just to get over it. Every woman and couple takes their own time to heal and grieve loss. Getting over a miscarriage can take many months and years. To note, in what you say, you also never want to minimize the loss of a miscarriage. Do not minimize the severity of pain and trauma caused by an unexpected loss like a miscarriage. Counseling can help you know how to be a supportive, nurturing friend.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, we offer a speciality in trauma, loss, and grief therapies.
Instead, help your friend find miscarriage counseling. Talking about her loss and sadness with a therapist can provide mental health support. A therapist can help you friend feel the loss of her miscarriage while building confidence in her body.
Don’t talk about what to be grateful for right after someone miscarries
Also, do not say that a person should be grateful their body miscarried. For an on looker, it might seem good that a person didn’t have a child with special needs or severe physical disabilities. But a woman who has miscarried does not want to hear that. As well, never say that a miscarriage was actually a positive thing. This can come off as invalidating to your female friend’s experience as miscarriage is deeply emotional and painful. Working with a therapist can help your friend feel nurtured by a professional. Holistic miscarriage counseling at Wisdom Within can include art, yoga, music, and creative expressive arts.
Do not tell a woman who has just miscarried that she can or should be grateful that she can at least get pregnant.
Even if you may be struggling to get pregnant, saying this is not supportive. Saying, “at least,” minimizes the severity of loss and trauma around a miscarriage. It is very judgmental to tell a woman to be happy that at least she knows she can get pregnant again. When a woman is grieving the loss of her child, she needs a shoulder to cry on. You can help her connect with a therapist by bringing over tea, cookies, and your laptop to search for a therapist together.
Never blame a woman for having a miscarriage
The last thing a woman who has just miscarried needs is to feel blamed like it was their fault. To note, if your friend had a miscarriage, they are deeply needing empathy, sensitivity, and understanding. Sometimes, women do not even get support or emotional help from their partner, family, or friends. Different cultures handle loss in different ways. So, cultural pressure to get over it or not talk about it, can be difficult. Women experiencing miscarriage may not be getting empathy from the people, their partner, or family. Holistic miscarriage counseling at Wisdom Within helps women feel safe and nurtured when grieving.
Miscarriage can happen to anyone, so seeking holistic miscarriage counseling sooner than later is a sign of strength.
Those who face more public media coverage are more susceptible to facing publicized loss.
“It’s a lonely experience,” Zuckerberg wrote to a new reporter after the miscarriage he and his wife experienced. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife had a miscarriage. Before the miscarriage, social media posts were all over showing a healthy pregnancy announcement. However, with the news of miscarriage also came social media coverage that they couple hoped would offer support to other couples miscarrying and facing loss.
You are not alone if you are dealing with trauma and loss from miscarriage.
Zuckerberg writes how, “gut-wrenchingly painful” miscarriage is for all members of the family. You are not alone. Celebrities alike also experience miscarriage and early pregnancy losses. Working with a holistic miscarriage counselor at Wisdom Within Counseling can give you tools to cope with loss. You can find ways to create inner peace, self-acceptance, and gain emotional confidence skills.
Online and in person in Niantic, we help couples, children and teenagers in neighboring towns.
In other Connecticut towns, we offer video counseling in Connecticut to families in Portland, Berlin, Bethany, Bethel, Bethlehem, Milford, Kent, Bloomfield, East Hampton, Southington, Haddam, Litchfield, Simsbury, Fairfield, Cobalt, Marlborough, Cromwell, Canton, Avon, Rocky Hill, West Hartford, Clinton, Wethersfield, Middlebury, Rye, New Canaan, Cheshire, Waterbury, Guilford, Chester, Deep River, Moodus, Durham, and Middletown, Connecticut. We help families in Connecticut in Bozrah, Waterford, Old Lyme, Ivoryton, Griswold, Darien, Centerbrook, Westbrook, Essex, East Lyme, Newington, Shelton, South Windsor, Granby, Franklin, Branford, Griswold, Groton, Ledyard, Suffield, Lisbon, Montville, Bristol, Stratford, Hartland, Glastonbury, Colchester, East Haddam, Hadlyme, Hamburg, Enfield, Old Saybrook, Riverside, Westport, Ridgefield, and Madison, Connecticut. As well, we help couples and families in Milford, Connecticut in Forest Heights, Fort Trumbull, Baldwins Crossing, Silver Beach, Naugatuck Gardens, Bayview, Oronoque, Johnsons Corner, Connecticut.
If you are dealing with loss and trauma after a miscarriage, you are not alone.
The team at Wisdom Within Counseling would love to help you grieve, heal, and overcome this traumatic part of your life.
