Hello, hello, my beautiful friends. Welcome back to another episode of the IVF This Podcast.

I want to talk today about something that I suspect almost every single person who has gone through infertility or fertility treatment has experienced in some capacity.

And I want to start with a little scenario.

Let's say you've just had an egg retrieval. You've gotten your fertilization report, and now you're waiting to see how many embryos make it to blastocyst.

And while you're waiting, you find yourself Googling.

Maybe you're looking up how many embryos someone your age typically gets. Maybe you're reading Reddit threads about fertilization rates. Maybe you're searching Facebook groups for people with your exact same numbers.

Same age. Same AMH. Same number of eggs retrieved. Same number fertilized.

And you find someone.

Someone whose circumstances look remarkably similar to yours.

And she had four embryos make it to blastocyst.

And for a moment, you feel this little wave of relief.

Okay. Maybe this is going to be okay. Maybe I'm going to get good news, too.

But then you keep scrolling.

And you find someone else with nearly identical numbers who didn't get any embryos.

And suddenly, that relief disappears.

Now you're anxious again.

Now you're wondering which person's experience is more likely to be yours.

And maybe you keep searching, because surely somewhere out there is another story, another statistic, another person who can help you figure out what's going to happen.

And I want to be really clear from the beginning: there's nothing inherently wrong with looking for information. There's nothing wrong with wanting reassurance. And there's certainly nothing wrong with finding comfort in other people's experiences.

But I want us to get curious about something.

Sometimes we're not looking for another answer.

We're looking for an answer that makes the uncertainty go away—or at least makes it feel more tolerable.

And that brings us to what I want to talk about today.

A concept I'm calling borrowed certainty.

SECTION 1: What Is Borrowed Certainty?

So what exactly do I mean by borrowed certainty?

Borrowed certainty is when we look outside ourselves—to other people, their experiences, their predictions, their confidence, or even their fears—and use those things to create a sense of knowing about something that is still fundamentally uncertain.

And I think one of the reasons this can be difficult to recognize is because borrowed certainty doesn't always look the same.

Sometimes it looks like optimism.

Your doctor tells you that your embryos look beautiful.

And you think, okay, my doctor feels really good about this. So maybe I can feel really good about it, too.

Or maybe your best friend tells you, "I just know this is going to work. I can feel it."

And you borrow a little bit of her confidence.

And honestly, sometimes that feels wonderful.

Especially when you've been carrying so much fear for so long.

But borrowed certainty doesn't always look hopeful.

Sometimes it looks like pessimism.

Sometimes it sounds like, "I'm just going to assume this transfer isn't going to work."

Or, "I'm not getting excited because I already know how this ends."

And what's interesting is that both of those responses can serve a similar psychological function.

They're both attempts to create some sense of predictability in a situation where we don't actually know what's going to happen.

One person is borrowing certainty that things will work out.

Another person is borrowing certainty that they won't.

And in both cases, the uncertainty is still there.

Now, before we go any further, I want to make a distinction.

Because I don't want anyone walking away from this episode thinking that listening to your doctor, researching your treatment options, or seeking support from other people is somehow a problem.

It isn't.

Medical information is important. Statistics are important. Understanding your diagnosis and your treatment options is important.

And sometimes another person's experience can be incredibly validating.

But there's a difference between using information to help us understand our circumstances and using information to try to guarantee an outcome.

A doctor can tell you that an embryo has characteristics associated with a higher likelihood of implantation.

That's useful information.

But that information cannot tell you with certainty whether your particular embryo will implant.

Someone else can tell you that she had success with a similar protocol.

And that can be encouraging.

But her success doesn't establish what will happen in your cycle.

Someone else's certainty is not the same thing as evidence about your future.

And I think this is where we start to understand why borrowed certainty can feel so compelling.

Because when we're navigating infertility, we're often living with an extraordinary amount of uncertainty.

And uncertainty can be really, really uncomfortable.

SECTION 2: Why Certainty Feels So Necessary

Let's talk about why.

Because I think it's important to understand that our desire for certainty isn't some kind of personal weakness.

Our brains are constantly trying to anticipate what's going to happen next.

Prediction is one of the ways we navigate the world.

It helps us make decisions, prepare for potential challenges, and respond to our environment.

And when something is uncertain—especially something that matters deeply to us—we can experience heightened anxiety and vigilance.

There is research showing that uncertainty about potential threats can contribute to anticipatory anxiety.

And when we're experiencing significant stress, it can become more difficult to access some of the cognitive abilities we rely on for flexible thinking, planning, and problem-solving.

Now, that doesn't mean uncertainty automatically sends our brains into some kind of neurological emergency.

And it doesn't mean that every time you're anxious, your prefrontal cortex has packed its bags and gone on vacation.

Although, I know sometimes it certainly feels that way.

But what it does mean is that when we're facing something important and unpredictable, our minds may become particularly motivated to look for information that helps us feel more certain.

And that makes sense.

Think about the IVF experience.

There are so many moments when we are waiting for information that has enormous emotional significance.

Waiting to find out how many eggs fertilized.

Waiting for blastocyst results.

Waiting for genetic testing.

Waiting for the pregnancy test.

Waiting for the ultrasound.

And sometimes, even after we receive reassuring information, there's another uncertainty waiting right behind it.

So we start looking for ways to make the waiting feel more manageable.

And one of the ways we do that is by seeking reassurance.

Now, reassurance itself is not a bad thing.

I want to say that again.

Reassurance is not inherently a problem.

Sometimes we need someone to remind us that we're not alone. Sometimes we need our doctor to clarify something. Sometimes we need to hear that what we're experiencing makes sense.

But there is a particular pattern that can develop when reassurance becomes our primary strategy for managing uncertainty.

And it goes something like this.

We feel uncertain.

That uncertainty creates emotional discomfort.

So we look for something that will help us feel more certain.

Maybe we Google. Maybe we ask our doctor another question. Maybe we scroll through a support group. Maybe we ask our partner to reassure us that everything is going to be okay.

And sometimes, we get exactly what we're looking for.

We feel better.

Maybe not completely better. Maybe not for very long.

But there's relief.

And our brains can learn from that relief.

In psychology, we call this negative reinforcement.

And despite the name, negative reinforcement doesn't mean punishment or that we've done something wrong.

It means that a behavior becomes more likely because it removes or reduces something unpleasant.

In this case, the unpleasant thing is the emotional discomfort associated with uncertainty.

So when we feel uncertain again, we may be more inclined to return to whatever gave us relief the last time.

And again, I want to be careful here.

This doesn't mean every time you seek reassurance, you're reinforcing anxiety.

Sometimes reassurance is useful. Sometimes it helps us make decisions. Sometimes it provides meaningful connection.

But when we're repeatedly seeking reassurance in an attempt to resolve something that simply cannot be known yet, we can find ourselves returning to the same questions over and over again.

Because the relief is temporary.

And the uncertainty remains.

The relief we experience when someone reassures us is real. But relief and certainty are not the same thing.

And I don't necessarily think the goal is to eliminate that relief or stop seeking reassurance.

I think the goal is to develop the capacity to return to something I call grounded neutrality.

And I want to be really clear here.

Grounded neutrality is not the same thing as emotional neutrality.

Emotional neutrality would suggest that we're not feeling particularly hopeful or particularly afraid.

But that's not what I'm asking you to do.

I'm not asking you to feel indifferent about your treatment.

I'm not asking you to stop hoping.

And I'm certainly not asking you to somehow manufacture calm in the middle of an experience that can be incredibly painful and frightening.

Grounded neutrality is about recognizing that, right now, we don't have enough information to draw a conclusion about the outcome.

It might work.

It might not.

And we don't know yet.

You can be excited. You can be hopeful. You can be terrified.

You can experience all of those emotions in the span of about six minutes because, hello, IVF.

But none of those feelings tell us what's going to happen.

We can have an emotional experience without turning that experience into a prediction.

And I think that's a really important distinction.

Because when we're borrowing certainty, we're often doing something else that I want to spend a little time exploring.

We're trying to experience a future that hasn't happened yet.

SECTION 3: The Illusion of Experiencing the Future

Something I talk about frequently with my coaching clients is how, when we're catastrophizing or imagining a feared outcome, we're often living those feared future things within the safety of our own brains.

And I want to explain what I mean by that.

Because when I say safety, I'm talking about the relative felt safety of imagining an outcome from the present, before that particular outcome has actually occurred.

I'm not suggesting that the anticipation itself feels safe.

Sometimes anticipation is excruciating.

Sometimes the waiting is filled with anxiety, dread, grief, and fear.

But there's an important distinction between imagining an experience and actually living through it.

When we're imagining the future, we're working with the information we have right now.

The emotions we're experiencing right now.

The circumstances that exist right now.

And we're using all of that to construct a picture of something that hasn't happened yet.

Let's say you're preparing for an embryo transfer.

And you've had failed transfers before.

So your mind starts imagining another negative pregnancy test.

You imagine getting the phone call.

You imagine hearing the nurse tell you that your beta is negative.

You imagine how devastated you're going to feel.

And you might even start experiencing some of that devastation right now.

Your stomach drops. Your chest tightens. You feel sad. You feel frightened.

Those emotions are real.

But the experience you're imagining hasn't happened.

And even if that feared outcome eventually occurs, the experience of actually living through it will not necessarily be identical to the experience of imagining it.

Because there are things you cannot fully account for from where you're standing today.

You don't know exactly what you'll feel.

You don't know what you'll need.

You don't know what support might be available.

You don't know what decisions you'll make or what information you'll have at that point.

And you don't know how your emotional experience may change over time.

There's actually an area of psychological research called affective forecasting, which examines how we predict our future emotional experiences.

And one of the things researchers have found is that we're not always particularly accurate at predicting the intensity or duration of our emotional responses to future events.

Sometimes we focus so heavily on the event itself that we don't fully account for all the other circumstances that will also shape our experience.

Now, I want to be very careful here.

I'm not saying that a failed transfer won't be devastating.

I'm not saying that infertility-related grief is something people simply get over.

And I'm certainly not suggesting that if you're afraid of something, the reality probably won't be as bad as you're imagining.

Sometimes reality is extraordinarily painful.

The point is that imagining an experience and living through that experience are not interchangeable.

And I think this becomes especially interesting when we apply it to borrowed certainty.

Because borrowed certainty isn't always about imagining a negative outcome.

Sometimes we're imagining a positive one.

Maybe we find someone who had a successful transfer with an embryo graded exactly like ours.

And we begin imagining that we're going to have the same experience.

We imagine the positive test.

The first ultrasound.

The pregnancy announcement.

And those imagined experiences can feel wonderful.

They can provide hope and comfort.

But they are still imagined experiences.

They cannot give us access to the actual future.

And this is the distinction I really want you to hear.

A reassuring prediction cannot give you the lived experience of a positive outcome any more than a catastrophic prediction can give you the lived experience of a negative one.

We're trying to experience the future from the relative felt safety of the present.

And the future simply cannot be fully experienced in advance.

Now, that doesn't mean we shouldn't imagine the future.

It doesn't mean we shouldn't make plans.

And it doesn't mean we shouldn't allow ourselves to dream about the things we want.

Those are all meaningful parts of being human.

But I think it's helpful to recognize the limitations of what imagining and predicting can actually provide.

Because sometimes we start believing that if we can just anticipate enough, prepare enough, or find enough reassurance, we'll somehow be protected from the emotional experience of whatever happens.

And that's a promise those strategies cannot make.

We can imagine the future. We just can't accurately live it in advance.

The feelings we're experiencing are real. But the future we're responding to is still imagined.

And that brings me to what I think is one of the most important parts of this conversation.

If we can't guarantee what will happen, and we can't fully know what experiencing it will be like ahead of time, what can we begin developing right now?

SECTION 4: From Borrowed Certainty to Self-Trust and Self-Loyalty

I want to introduce two concepts here that I think are incredibly important.

Self-trust and self-loyalty.

And I want to distinguish them because while they're closely related, they're not exactly the same thing.

When I talk about self-trust, I'm talking about developing confidence in your capacity to respond to your circumstances.

Not confidence that you'll always make the right decision.

Not confidence that you'll always know what to do.

And certainly not confidence that everything is going to work out the way you want.

I'm talking about trusting that you can continue learning, evaluating information, making decisions, and responding to yourself as your circumstances unfold.

Self-trust might sound like:

"I don't know what's going to happen with this transfer. And I don't know exactly what I'll need if it doesn't work. But I trust that I can begin figuring those things out when I have more information."

Now, self-loyalty is a little different.

Self-loyalty is the commitment to remain on your own side.

It's the commitment to continue treating yourself with compassion, dignity, and care, even when things don't go the way you hoped.

Even when you're disappointed.

Even when you're grieving.

Even when you make a decision you later wish you'd made differently.

Self-loyalty sounds like:

"No matter what happens, I'm not going to use it as evidence that there's something wrong with me."

Or:

"I may not know what to do next, but I'm not going to abandon myself while I'm figuring it out."

And I think these two concepts complement each other beautifully.

Self-trust is confidence in your ability to respond. Self-loyalty is your commitment to how you'll treat yourself while responding.

And they can reinforce each other.

Every time you respond to yourself with compassion during a difficult experience, you're creating another opportunity to build self-trust.

And every time you practice trusting yourself to navigate uncertainty, you're also practicing remaining connected to yourself rather than requiring someone else to provide the guarantee.

I'm actually planning an upcoming episode dedicated specifically to self-trust and self-loyalty because I think there's so much more to explore about how we develop these two capacities and how they work together.

But for today, I want to bring this back to borrowed certainty.

Because sometimes when we're looking for reassurance, what we're really looking for is some sense that we're going to be okay.

And that makes sense.

But there's a difference between wanting someone to guarantee that an outcome will be okay and wanting support while we navigate an outcome we cannot yet know.

And I think this is where we can start getting curious about our own patterns.

So the next time you find yourself searching for another statistic, another success story, another person's opinion, or another reassuring prediction, I want to offer you a few questions.

The first is:

Am I looking for information that will help me make a decision, or am I looking for something that will help me feel better?

And by the way, the answer can absolutely be both.

We don't have to pretend these things exist in completely separate categories.

You can genuinely need information and also hope that information will provide reassurance.

But understanding what we're looking for can help us recognize whether the behavior is actually meeting that need.

The second question is:

What am I hoping this person, statistic, or story will tell me?

Am I hoping it will tell me that my treatment is likely to work?

Am I hoping it will tell me that I made the right decision?

Am I hoping it will tell me that I'm not foolish for being hopeful?

Or maybe I'm hoping it will tell me that if things don't work out, I won't be completely devastated.

And I think this is where we can begin recognizing the limits of borrowed certainty.

Because someone else's experience might help us understand what's possible.

A doctor's expertise might help us make an informed decision.

A friend's reassurance might help us feel supported.

But none of those things can guarantee what our future emotional experience will be.

And the third question is:

If I can't know the outcome today, what would it look like to have my own back while I wait?

Not what would it look like to stop worrying.

Not what would it look like to become perfectly calm.

Not what would it look like to convince myself everything is going to work out.

What would it look like to have my own back?

Maybe that means recognizing that you've already gathered the information you need for today.

Maybe it means allowing yourself to be hopeful without demanding that hope become a prediction.

Maybe it means reaching out to someone and saying, "I don't need you to tell me this is going to work. I just need you to sit with me while I'm scared."

Maybe it means noticing that you're looking for reassurance again and responding with curiosity instead of criticism.

And sometimes it might mean deciding that you do want more information, because there genuinely is something you need to understand or a decision you need to make.

There isn't one correct response.

That's the whole point.

We're practicing the ability to respond to ourselves based on what we actually need, rather than automatically returning to the same strategy every time uncertainty becomes uncomfortable.

And I want you to remember:

Self-trust doesn't require you to predict what will happen. It allows you to include yourself in the picture of what happens next.

Because when we're borrowing certainty, it's easy to become so focused on what might happen that we lose sight of the person who will be there experiencing it.

You.

And you're not simply a passive recipient of whatever happens next.

You are a person who can make decisions, seek support, experience emotions, change your mind, learn new information, and respond to your circumstances.

That doesn't mean you can control the outcome.

And it doesn't mean you'll always know how to respond.

But you don't have to know all of that today.

CLOSING: You Don't Have to Know Yet

So I want to bring us back to where we started.

The Googling.

The Reddit threads.

The Facebook groups.

The searching for someone whose numbers look like yours.

The friend who tells you she just knows it's going to work.

The doctor who feels optimistic.

The part of you that wants so desperately for someone, somewhere, to tell you how this story is going to end.

I want you to know that it makes sense.

Of course you want certainty.

Of course you want reassurance.

Of course you want something that makes the waiting feel more tolerable.

You're navigating something that matters deeply to you, and there are so many parts of this experience that you cannot predict or control.

But the next time you notice yourself looking for borrowed certainty, I want you to get curious.

What am I hoping this will give me?

Do I need information?

Do I need reassurance?

Do I need connection?

Do I need a little relief from the discomfort of not knowing?

And is there a way I can offer myself some of what I need without requiring an answer that doesn't exist yet?

Because sometimes the most supportive thing we can do for ourselves is acknowledge that we simply don't know.

Not because we've stopped caring.

Not because we've stopped hoping.

And not because we've given up.

But because we recognize that we don't currently have enough information to know how things will unfold.

And we don't have to turn that absence of information into a prediction.

We can be hopeful without being certain.

We can be afraid without treating that fear as evidence.

We can seek support without requiring someone else to promise us an outcome.

And we can begin developing the self-trust and self-loyalty that allow us to remain in relationship with ourselves while the future unfolds.

Because you don't have to know how the story ends to have a relationship with yourself while it's unfolding.

And that, my beautiful friends, is where we're going to leave it today.

As always, take such good care of yourselves, and I'll talk to you soon.

Bye-bye.