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Healing the Mind, Healing the Body
An Interview with Helen Adrienne, MSW, ACSW, BCD
By Gwen Morrison
Infertility can be an emotional disaster. It drains people of the resources needed to handle the reality that conception is going to be a challenge – if it happens at all. This devastating reality leaves many people with feelings of anger and resentment, as well as profound feelings of grief.
Helen Adrienne (www.helenadrienne.com), MSW, ACSW, BCD, from New York City, N.Y., provides psychotherapy for people struggling with gynecological and reproductive issues. "Psychotherapy can be many things," she says. "In general, it is a process that allows us to understand our behavior and make changes so that we can feel happier and calmer. In its simplest form, [psychotherapy] creates the opportunity for us to lay out our problems and issues and sort through our choices in a systematic way."
Adrienne launched her practice in 1979, devoting herself to helping others resolve emotional struggles that were triggered by physical conditions. She explains that there are many techniques that facilitate working through obstacles and fears. Through techniques like psychotherapy or hypnosis, couples are able to use their minds to teach their brains new approaches in the areas that are consuming them.
With infertility, the reality of the issue presses on a couple every 28 days, causing emotions to be very intense. If these strong emotions are left unacknowledged, they will only worsen.
"People struggling with infertility feel as if insults are added to injury," Adrienne says. "They already feel vulnerable. To make matters worse, a social protocol which would address infertility is lacking in the fertile world. Without a prescription for behavior, the population at large can, in the course of normal interaction, easily wound or offend."
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