Hello, hello, my beautiful friends.
Welcome back to IVF This.

Today’s episode is about something that comes up constantly in IVF spaces—and is almost always misunderstood.

We’re talking about detachment.

You’ve probably heard it before.
“Try to detach.”
“You can’t care so much.”
“You have to let go.”

And if you’re in the middle of stim injections, or refreshing your portal waiting for updates, or holding your breath in the two-week wait, you might be thinking:

Detach from what?
From the thing I want more than anything?
From the thing my entire life is currently organized around?

So let me start here:

Detachment in IVF does not mean that you stop caring.
It does not mean you stop hoping.
And it absolutely does not mean you become calm, neutral, or unaffected by something that matters this deeply.

Detachment is not about loving this less.

It’s about loving yourself more—no matter how this unfolds.

That idea is the heart of today’s episode.

What Detachment Actually Is

Detachment is not emotional distance.

It’s a relationship shift.

It’s the practice of loosening the grip between:

• the outcome and your worth

• the outcome and your identity

• the outcome and your belief about whether you did “enough”

You still care.
You still want this.
You still show up.

But you’re no longer asking the outcome to answer questions like:

• Am I enough?

• Is my body broken?

• Did I fail?

Detachment is allowing uncertainty without turning yourself into the collateral damage.

You might say:

“I can want this deeply,
and my life still gets to matter
even if it doesn’t happen the way I hope.”

Or:

“This outcome is important to me,
but it is not a measure of my worth.”

What Detachment Is Not

Because many of you were taught a version of detachment that felt cold, shaming, or impossible, this part matters.

Detachment is not:

• pretending you don’t care

• numbing out

• emotional shutdown

• forcing yourself to be positive

• assuming the worst so it hurts less

• or controlling your thoughts so perfectly that nothing touches you

If detachment has ever been framed as “just don’t get your hopes up,” I want you to hear this clearly:

That’s not detachment. That’s self-abandonment.

Detachment does not remove grief.
It does not make loss painless.

What it changes is how alone you are inside the grief.

You might say:

“This hurts because it matters,
not because I did something wrong.”

Why Detachment Is So Hard in IVF

IVF is not a neutral experience.

It trains hyper-vigilance.
It trains control.
It teaches you to monitor, measure, track, optimize.

Your body becomes a project.
Your calendar revolves around numbers.
Your worth can start to feel tied to follicles, embryos, grades, betas.

IVF quietly teaches:
If I just pay enough attention, I can control this.

And when control slips, your nervous system panics.

Because for so many people, caring deeply has become a survival strategy.

IVF doesn’t just ask you to hope.

It asks you to micromanage hope.

And then it tells you to detach.

No wonder this feels hard.

Detachment During Stim Cycles

(With Grounding + Anchor Statements)

Detachment during stim cycles does not mean being casual or disengaged.

It means doing what’s yours to do—
without asking today to guarantee tomorrow.

Detachment during stims might look like:

• following the protocol without interpreting every sensation as a sign

• letting your clinic hold the data instead of carrying it alone

• noticing obsessive thoughts without letting them run the show

• allowing your life to continue alongside IVF

You might say:

“Today, I am doing what today requires.
Tomorrow gets to be tomorrow.”

Or:

“My job is participation, not prediction.”

Or:

“I can care deeply without monitoring every variable.”

Anchor / Coping Statements for Stim Cycles

• I am allowed to want this without knowing how it ends.

• Right now, I can come back into my body instead of racing ahead.

• Nothing I am feeling today is a verdict.

• This cycle does not get to define me.

Detachment During Transfer Cycles

(With Grounding + Anchor Statements)

Transfer cycles carry enormous emotional weight.

They’re symbolic.
They hold history, hope, grief, and longing all at once.

Detachment here does not mean dampening hope.

It means refusing to make the outcome a referendum on:

• your body

• your effort

• your deserving

• your future

Detachment during a transfer might sound like:

“I can hope fully without making hope responsible for protecting me.”

Or:

“I can imagine a future
without punishing myself if it doesn’t arrive.”

Anchor / Coping Statements for Transfer Cycles

• This transfer matters, and I matter regardless.

• I can be here with this feeling without solving it.

• Hope is allowed here, without conditions.

• No outcome gets to rewrite who I am.

Detachment Is a Practice — and Grounding Is How You Return

Detachment isn’t a destination.

It’s a returning.

And when I say “returning,” I don’t mean thinking your way into calm.

I mean grounding.

Detachment lives in the body first, not the mind.
Because when your nervous system is flooded, no amount of reframing will land.

Grounding is any practice that helps you come back into the present moment—
back into your body—
when IVF pulls you into the future, the past, or a spiral of what ifs.

It’s how you remind your system:
I’m here.
I’m safe enough right now.
This moment is not the outcome.

Grounding might look like:

• putting your feet on the floor and naming five things you can see

• holding something cold or textured

• slowing your breath and lengthening the exhale

• placing a hand on your chest or belly and orienting to now

• noticing where you are in the room, right here

Grounding doesn’t make you care less.

It helps you care from a regulated place instead of a flooded one.

And that’s often where detachment actually lives.

Closing + Gentle Grounding Invitation (30 seconds)

Before we close, I want to offer a short grounding invitation.
You can do this now, or come back to it later.

If it feels okay, place one hand on your body—wherever feels supportive.

Take a slow breath in…
and let your exhale be just a little longer than your inhale.

Notice something you can see.
Something you can feel.
Something that reminds you that you’re here, right now.

You don’t need certainty in this moment.
You don’t need answers.

Just presence.

Final Anchor

If detachment feels hard for you, it’s not because you’re weak.

It’s because you are loving something that matters deeply.

And you are allowed to care deeply
and protect yourself gently at the same time.

Detachment isn’t about loving this less.

It’s about loving yourself more—
no matter how this unfolds.

And that is not giving up.
That is staying with yourself
through one of the hardest things a human can endure.

I’m so glad you’re here.