Hypnosis during Fertility Treatment (IVF, Insemination)
There is the calendar on the fridge, with the dates circled. The fridge itself, where the medication has taken its place next to the milk. The seven o'clock appointments before work, with no way of saying why you are late.
There is the countdown. The fourteen days after a transfer, when every sensation becomes a sign to interpret, and you watch yourself from morning to night.
There are other people's announcements. A colleague's pregnancy, the birth card on a friend's fridge, your mother's question at Christmas. And that double blow: being sincerely happy for someone and devastated at the same time, then feeling guilty about it.
There are the phone calls with a result. And there are the times when it is no.
If you are reading this page, you are probably exhausted. Not fragile. Exhausted, which is not the same thing.
Read this before anything else: it is not your fault. You have no doubt already been told to "relax", to "think about something else", to "go on holiday". You may have ended up wondering whether your stress was working against you. There is no evidence that stress causes infertility or makes a treatment fail. A meta-analysis of twenty prospective studies covering 4,308 women found no link between anxiety, depressive symptoms or perceived stress before treatment and achieving a pregnancy. At a session of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology congress devoted to this question, the two specialists arguing opposite positions agreed on one point: the fault never lies with the patient, and it is never appropriate to tell someone to "relax". So this page is not offering to improve your chances. It is offering to ease what you are going through, which is already a great deal, and which is something else.
What is Fertility Treatment?
Not in medical treatment yet? If you have been trying for months without treatment, or you are at the assessment stage, the page for you is Hypnosis for Fertility. This one is about the protocol itself.
Medically assisted reproduction brings together several techniques: ovarian stimulation, artificial insemination, in vitro fertilisation, donation of gametes or embryos, fertility preservation.
No two journeys are alike, and this page is addressed to all of them. In France, the bioethics law of 2 August 2021 opened assisted reproduction to female couples and to unmarried women, alongside couples formed of a man and a woman. In Quebec, a parental project may be carried by a woman-man couple, a woman-woman couple, a man-man couple, a single woman or a single man, and the public assisted reproduction programme has been available since 15 November 2021, subject to age and eligibility conditions.
A point that is rarely made: infertility is not a women's matter. The causes are spread roughly evenly between the two members of a heterosexual couple, with a share left unexplained. Yet the medical journey rests overwhelmingly on women's bodies, and male partners often end up in the position of silent companion, carrying a real distress that nobody asks them about.
What weighs most, according to the people going through it
- The duration. Treatment is counted in years, not weeks, and every stage has its waiting times.
- Losing ownership of your body. Tests, injections, scans, retrievals. The body becomes a file managed by other people.
- The repeated waiting, the hardest of which is the wait after a transfer.
- The failed cycles, which do not add up so much as multiply: each failed attempt eats into confidence in the next.
- The isolation, often reinforced by the secrecy many choose to keep at work and sometimes in the family.
- The couple, where the two do not live the same thing at the same pace.
What we do not do. Our hypnotherapists make no diagnosis, assess no medical situation and intervene in no way in your protocol. Your fertility team remains your only reference for everything concerning treatments, dosages, scheduling and decisions. We will never ask you to change, interrupt or supplement a treatment with anything at all. If any practitioner offers you a product, a supplement or a diet meant to improve your chances, talk to your doctor first. Speak to your team or your doctor if you feel a persistent sadness, if you can no longer sleep, if you are withdrawing, or if you have dark thoughts. Most clinics have a psychologist, and that consultation is part of the journey.
The impact of Fertility Treatment on daily life
The body first. Hormone treatments have effects of their own: fatigue, bloating, mood swings, feelings close to the surface. Add to that the pain of the injections, the apprehension before retrievals, and for some a real fear of needles that turns every evening into an ordeal. Sleep is almost always affected, especially during the waits: the subject of our page on sleep disorders. And since tiredness makes everything else harder to absorb, it is often the first lever worth pulling.
Work. Unpredictable appointments, absences to account for, tiredness to hide. Many people say nothing to their employer, which adds a burden of concealment to everything else.
The couple. Intimacy becomes a calendar. Desire gives way to protocol. And the two partners do not move at the same pace: one wants to continue, the other is thinking of stopping, and the subject becomes impossible to raise without it going wrong. Our page on love life and relationships covers that side.
Your relationship to other people. The pregnancies around you, the well-meant questions, the unsolicited advice. That line about going on holiday.
And trust in your own body, often damaged. Many women describe a kind of resentment towards a body they see as having failed them. The tension that settles over all of this is what we call stress and anxiety management.
The resources that exist outside Hypnosis
- The psychologist at your fertility clinic. This is the first resource, it is built into the journey, often free or reimbursed, and massively under-used. Ask for it.
- Patient associations, which run support groups and moderated forums. In France, the federation of patient associations in assisted reproduction. In Quebec, the groups attached to the clinics.
- Outside psychological care, when a depressive state sets in.
- Adjustments at work, where they are possible.
- Gentle movement and sleep, with no performance goal attached.
- And sometimes, permission to pause. Interrupting treatment for a few months is a legitimate medical decision to discuss with your team, not a surrender.
Hypnosis adds itself to that list. It replaces neither your medical team nor the clinic's psychologist.
Video available in French
Video transcript
Bonjour à tous. Quand on parle de fertilité, on pense souvent au moment où l'on décide d'avoir un enfant. Mais la réalité est un peu plus nuancée. Ce n'est pas seulement une question de décision, c'est aussi une question de timing. Aujourd'hui, il y a plusieurs façons de devenir parents, les parcours sont plutôt multiples et quand on décide enfin de se lancer, c'est après avoir coché un certain nombre de cases : des études terminées, un niveau de carrière que l'on souhaitait atteindre, une situation plus stable, un logement, une forme de sécurité.
Surtout on veut se sentir prêt, aligné, installé. Et c'est tout à fait logique. Simplement le corps lui, évolue avec le temps. La fertilité change avec l'âge. C'est progressif, heureusement ce n'est pas brutal mais alors le temps devient un paramètre. Au début, on est confiant et les mois commencent à passer. On commence à compter, à observer, à se poser des questions. Chaque cycle devient un planning, on commence à tout observer, à tout analyser et on perd un peu en spontanéité.
Donc avant 35 ans, il est plutôt courant qu'un projet bébé puisse prendre jusqu'à un an. Après 35 ans, on va plutôt recommander de consulter au bout de six mois d'essai. Ce n'est pas parce qu'il y a forcément un problème, mais justement vérifier que tout fonctionne. L'ovulation, la réserve ovarienne, les trompes, la qualité des spermatozoïdes. Parfois tout va bien et parfois c'est plutôt un accompagnement médical qui va pouvoir être proposé.
Ce qu'on appelle la PMA : la procréation médicalement assistée. A ce moment là, le projet devient plus encadré, plus médical. Tout est programmé et alors le rapport à notre corps peut changer. Il y a aussi les fausses couches précoces. Elles sont plus fréquentes qu'on ne le pense. Dans la majorité des cas, elles sont liées à des anomalies chromosomiques. Ce n'est pas provoqué mais beaucoup de femmes se sentent responsables.
Il peut y avoir la culpabilité, une peur que ça recommence. Alors finalement on se rend compte que la fertilité, ce n'est pas juste une question de décision. C'est un équilibre entre le projet de vie, le temps biologique et le médical qui vient parfois s'intégrer. Et surtout tout ce que cela va remuer intérieurement. Et aujourd'hui j'aimerais vous expliquer comment l'hypnose peut accompagner ces moments là. Tout d'abord une chose importante, l'hypnose ne va pas modifier la biologie, elle ne débloque pas une infertilité, elle va agir ailleurs.
Elle va agir sur le système nerveux. Quand on traverse un parcours de fertilité, le corps peut rester en état d'alerte : on observe, on anticipe, on attend, on redoute. Le stress n'est pas toujours spectaculaire, il est surtout discret et constant. Et cet état influence notre sommeil, la respiration, la tension musculaire, le rapport au corps. En hypnose, on vient réinstaller un état de sécurité intérieure. On aide le corps à sortir de cette hyper vigilance.
On travaille aussi sur la culpabilité, les pensées en boucle, la peur de l'échec, que ça recommence, comme dans le cas d'une fausse couche précoce. Parce que souvent, ce n'est pas seulement le corps qui s'épuise, c'est l'esprit. On va aussi agir sur la projection. Dans un parcours de fertilité, l'imaginaire peut devenir anxieux. On anticipe l'échec, on va se préparer à la déception, on rejoue même des scénarios difficiles.
Et là on rentre plutôt sur l'aspect négatif des pensées. En hypnose, on va pouvoir rééquilibrer tout cela. Non pas en niant les difficultés mais en permettant au mental d'envisager aussi que les choses peuvent bien se passer. On restaure une forme de confiance intérieure, une sorte d'apaisement, de capacité à se projeter avec plus de sérénité. L'hypnose ne promet rien mais elle accompagne et elle aide à traverser. Et parfois, c'est déjà beaucoup.
Je me présente, je m'appelle Charlotte De Joybert, j’accompagne notamment les parcours de périnatalité, désir d'enfant, la PMA, la grossesse et le post-partum. Et au sein de l'équipe Solutions Hypnose nous sommes plusieurs hypnothérapeutes à accompagner ces sujets avec douceur et professionnalisme. Si vous traversez un parcours de fertilité ou si ces questions résonnent pour vous, nous restons à votre écoute.
Hypnotherapy is a complementary form of support and does not replace medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you have any concerns about your health, please consult a physician first.
Hypnosis during Fertility Treatment: aims and benefits
Let us start with what it does not do, because this is where many sites go wrong.
It does not improve your chances of pregnancy. A 2006 Israeli study is often cited on this subject: it is a case-control study, not randomised, never reproduced since, and the group receiving hypnosis obtained a pregnancy rate far above that of the whole programme over the same period, the sign of an unusual group rather than of an effect. The only randomised trial published since, on 94 participants, found no difference in pregnancy or birth rates between hypnosis and the usual premedication at the time of transfer. So we will make no such claim.
It does not act on your hormones in any way useful to fertility. The idea that lowering cortisol would improve fertility is appealing and unproven.
It replaces nothing of what your medical team does.
What an accompaniment can legitimately aim at
- Getting through the injections differently. Hypnotic techniques for managing discomfort are used in medical settings, and this is probably the most concrete use here: making the evening's act bearable rather than dreaded all day.
- Approaching tests and retrievals more calmly, with an anchor prepared in advance.
- Recovering sleep, often the first change noticed, and the one that changes the rest.
- Getting through the wait. The fourteen days after a transfer are a time when there is nothing to do and nothing else to think about. A self-hypnosis tool gives that energy something to do.
- Taking in a failed cycle. This is probably the most useful use and the least talked about. After a negative cycle it takes time, and sometimes help, to find the wish to start again or to decide to stop: the ground covered by our page on grief and sadness.
- Finding a calmer relationship with your body, after months in which it has become an object of examination.
- Putting dialogue back into the couple, including on the difficult question of how far to go.
On visualisation, a point that matters
You will often read that you should visualise an embryo implanting, a successful transfer, a healthy baby. We do not work that way, and we invite you to be wary of anyone who offers it.
The reason is simple. If the cycle fails, and statistically most do, that visualisation becomes an accusation: you did not believe hard enough, you did it wrong. The same reservations apply to affirmations along the lines of "my body is ready to welcome life", which turn against you on the day the result comes.
Work in imagination bears instead on what genuinely belongs to you: a resource place, a state of calm you can call on, an image of yourself getting through the stage ahead. What does not depend on you must not rest on your shoulders.
An example of accompaniment
*An illustrative example, built from situations frequently encountered. It is not the testimony of a real person.*
Inès was on her third round of IVF, and what hurt most was not what she had expected at the outset. It was the seven o'clock alarm. The same sound every evening, and the same half-hour of tension before the injection her partner gave her, hands shaking slightly. They had ended up not speaking during that moment, each busy not showing the other how hard it was. The rest of the evening carried the mark of it, and the next morning already began with the countdown to the following one.
She came after a second negative cycle, not knowing whether she wanted to start again. The work had nothing to do with her fertility. It bore on the half-hour before the alarm, on an anchor of calm she could set up as she sat down, and on a recording she listened to again during the fourteen days of waiting. Her partner came to one session, and said out loud for the first time that he dreaded that act as much as she did.
This example describes one possible accompaniment. It predicts nobody's. Pace and experience vary from one person to another, and hypnosis has no effect on the outcome of a treatment.
How a Hypnosis session on this subject unfolds
The conversation. Where you are in your treatment, what weighs most right now, what you are hoping for. The practitioner will not ask for your medical file and does not need to know your protocols in detail.
A concrete aim is set, and never an aim about the outcome. Not "that it works", but: get through the evening injections, sleep during the wait, go to my sister's christening, decide with my partner whether we continue.
The induction, then the work itself: a resource place, an anchor of calm, work on the discomfort of medical procedures, or accompanying a grief depending on the moment. The general shape of a session is described on the page what to expect in a hypnosis session.
Carrying it home. Many practitioners record part of the session so that you can listen to it again, on the evening of an injection or during the wait. That is often the most useful part of the accompaniment, because it makes you self-sufficient.
The pace. It follows your treatment, not a programme. Some people come before each stage, others occasionally, others after a failed cycle.
By video. Many people in treatment choose this format, and the session unfolds in exactly the same way.
How many sessions? That is discussed at the first conversation. Nobody can know in advance.
Book an appointment
Wherever you are in the world, video consultation changes everything here. Most of our practitioners in perinatal care and fertility offer it, and it asks for nothing more than a quiet room and a connection: we see people in treatment from Europe, North America, Africa and well beyond. It is often the format people in treatment prefer, and it is easy to see why: one more appointment to fit into a diary already saturated with medical appointments is sometimes one too many. Here is how it works.
In person, the practitioners who cover perinatal care and fertility in English see clients in Quebec, in Montreal, Laval and Sherbrooke. Your partner can come to a session, alone or with you: partners go through the treatment too.
Write to us if you are unsure. Ask us your question describing your situation. We will tell you frankly whether hypnosis seems suitable, and if the psychologist at your clinic would be a better starting point, we will tell you that too.
Where would you like to consult?
All areas
Annie Mayrand
Gatineau - Cumberland (ON)
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Christian Rocher
Beloeil
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David Veilleux
Montréal - Anjou
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Florence Aton
Sutton
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Sherbrooke
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Julie Rocque
Montréal - Jean-Talon
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Nuria Pérez de León
Montréal - Rosemont - Saint-Lambert
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Réjeanne LeBlanc
La Prairie
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Frequently asked questions about Hypnosis during Fertility Treatment (IVF, Insemination)
No, and we will not let you believe otherwise. No solid study supports that claim. What hypnosis can ease is what you go through during treatment: the injections, the waiting, sleep, the failed cycles.
Nothing supports that, and it is one of the most widespread and most unjust misconceptions on this subject. You do not have to add the guilt of coping badly to the difficulty of coping at all.
It interferes with no treatment, since it is not a treatment. Do mention it to your medical team all the same, as you would for any complementary approach.
Hypnosis is generally well tolerated. In some people it can bring up strong emotions, which is precisely a reason to practise it with a professional rather than alone with an app. If you are going through a depressive episode or a recent bereavement, say so at the first contact.
Yes, and it is a good idea more often than people think. Partners go through the treatment as well, with little room to say so, and almost nobody asking how they are.
Yes, once you have learned the basics, and that is in fact the aim: that you have a tool you can use on the evening of an injection or during the wait, without depending on an appointment.
This page only partly concerns you. What touches on waiting out a cycle, the fertility assessment, intimacy turned into a calendar and the myth of a psychological block is covered on our page Hypnosis for Fertility. And the first step remains a medical assessment for both partners.
That depends entirely on your situation and your treatment, and is discussed at the first conversation.
Take the time you need. If you would like support, the psychologist at your clinic is reachable, and so are we. There is nothing to make up for and nothing to do quickly.
Sources and references
The legal framework, in French
- What the law says. Agence de la biomédecine, the French reference site on assisted reproduction
- Assisted reproduction: the steps and the public programme. Government of Quebec
On the link between stress and outcomes
- Nicoloro-SantaBarbara, J., Busso, C., Moyer, A., & Lobel, M. (2018). Just relax and you'll get pregnant? Meta-analysis examining women's emotional distress and the outcome of assisted reproductive technology. Social Science & Medicine, 213, 54-62: 20 prospective studies, 4,308 women. Summary from the authors' university
- Stress and Infertility – The Chicken or the Egg: the European Medical Journal's report on a session of the 2020 ESHRE congress
The two studies cited on Hypnosis
- Levitas, E. et al. (2006). Impact of hypnosis during embryo transfer on the outcome of in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer: a case-control study. Fertility and Sterility, 85(5), 1404-1408: a case-control study, not randomised, never reproduced.
- Catoire, P. et al. (2013). Hypnosis versus diazepam for embryo transfer: a randomized controlled study. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 55(4), 378-386. The only randomised trial: no difference in pregnancy or birth rates.
If you are going through a dark period. Quebec: Info-Social 811 option 2 · 1 866 APPELLE (277-3553). France: 3114, free and around the clock. And the psychologist at your fertility clinic, who is part of the journey.
Before the protocol, the road has a page of its own: hypnosis for fertility, for those trying without being in treatment yet. And after treatment, if a pregnancy comes: hypnosis for birth preparation.
Hypnosis as practised by the members of Solutions Hypnose is a complementary support approach. It is neither a medical act, nor a diagnosis, nor psychotherapy in the regulatory sense, and it in no way replaces a consultation, follow-up or treatment prescribed by a health professional.
Our practitioners do not assess and do not treat mental disorders or illnesses. They never ask for an ongoing treatment to be stopped or changed: that decision rests exclusively with your doctor.
No result can be guaranteed. The testimonials and examples presented on this page describe individual experiences and do not predict what you will experience.
In case of significant distress, unexplained physical symptoms or suicidal thoughts, contact a doctor, emergency services or a helpline without delay.
Page written by Charlotte de Joybert
hypnotherapist and sophrologist
partner at Solutions Hypnose.
English version reviewed by David Veilleux