Can your negative thoughts really cause a miscarriage?

Can your mindset and your thoughts really cause a miscarriage? 

As an educated, evidence-based, practical person, my first reaction to this question is – definitely not!  Of course, your thoughts aren’t the reason for your miscarriage. That’s the most ridiculous thing. This is biology. It’s genetics. And I’d like to think that our fertility and our reproductive system are a little more complicated than that. Plus, a quick google search of possible causes for miscarriage (as I’m sure you’ve done yourself), does not include negative thoughts. 

But when you experience a miscarriage or pregnancy loss.  When the doctor shrugs their shoulders and says – we don’t know why this happened, but it’s really common – 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage.  And then when you see someone else get to the end of their pregnancy and hold their baby in their arms.  You begin to take it personally.  If you’ve had to struggle to get pregnant in the first place, or if you’ve suffered multiple miscarriages, it begins to feel like you are the common denominator. Your monkey mind starts to kick in.  You start to ask that dreaded question – why me?  Why did this happen to me?  We take responsibility. We blame ourselves. And we try to control everything around us.

Then when people say things like – just be positive.  Or when you start to express your fears and someone says – try not to think about it.  It makes us question ourselves.  We take the blame.  And because the doctor doesn’t have a medical reason, we figure that it must be because we were thinking about it.

So, I’d like to bust a little myth right now about pregnancy loss -

Just because you're worrying about it, or thinking about it, doesn't mean it’s true, or that it’s going to come true.

Nor does it mean you're going to attract it. Manifesting is more than just thinking about something good or bad.  

It may feel like you’re attracting it because it’s everywhere all of a sudden. Your social media feed is filled with people who are going through pregnancy loss (this is due to the algorithm by the way), you may hear stories of a friend of a friend who is currently experiencing this grief, the movie you’re watching may include a woman who has a loss, or you could even see a poster for miscarriage recovery on the toilet door in the rest room of your local café. 

All of a sudden, it feels like it’s everywhere, and we panic. But there is a logical reason.

This is called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.  It’s similar to when you’re looking at buying a red car - all of a sudden all you see are red cars.  It’s not because there’s an increase of red cars on the road. It’s because your awareness of it has increased. Your brain is merely reinforcing newly acquired information.

We worry that these kinds of stories keep showing up for some reason. But I can tell you that this is not a sign that this is your fate, just because it keeps showing up around you.  Nor does it mean it will rub off on you. It isn’t a sign, it’s the Baader-Meinhof effect.

Then of course, because we get told to stop thinking about it, we can’t. When we restrict something, we want it more.  Take for example diets (which I don’t condone in any way).  If you’re on a diet and it tells you that you can’t eat carbs……what do you want the most?  The most addictive food is the one you tell yourself you can’t have. 

And so if you continue to tell yourself that you cannot think those thoughts, it will become more and more intrusive. 

It’s like meditation. As soon as I sit down and commit to doing 5 minutes of meditation and tell my thoughts to stop, guess what happens?  All of a sudden, I remember the errand that I forgot to run, the bill that didn’t get paid, and my mind starts creating a shopping list for tomorrow.

So how do you “just stop thinking about it”?

You don’t. But you can limit the time spent dwelling on it, and you can create some boundaries or guidelines around the way you think about it.

Give yourself permission to think about the fear – because it’s a real fear and is a normal part of pregnancy after infertility or loss. You can acknowledge the thought exists, without being convinced that this is your fate.

Instead of forcing ourselves to be positive, we can aim for neutral. You can state – I don’t know what this cramp means, I don’t know if this is going to work out in the end. 

We can ask ourselves if the thought we are having is true.  We can find evidence to the contrary.

And we can prepare ourselves for when the fear comes in, by creating some guidelines of things we can say in that moment and the things we need to avoid.  The things you can say are based on fact, and acknowledging your emotions.  The things to avoid are statements that you don’t know are true, or that ask a question that doesn’t have an answer.  When we ask leading questions, our mind keeps searching for an answer, and it enters a loop.  This is what keeps us stuck. For example –

The things we CAN say – I’m scared / I don’t know what’s happening right now / I don’t like this feeling / I hate that I don’t feel – connected, excited, etc / I’m frustrated I don’t get to have a normal pregnancy experience.

The things we should AVOID saying – this is never going to work out / why does this keep happening to me? / why can’t I have a normal pregnancy experience / what’s wrong with me?

This is a slow exercise in retraining the pattern of your thoughts.  And while I do believe we can attract things into our lives (I’m a big fan of manifesting that perfect parking spot), I don’t believe we can attract the bad stuff.  Because you’re not willing into your life. It is present because of your previous experience.

It also helps to have a gateway to express the thoughts that come up, with people who aren’t going to tell you to “just be positive” or “just stop thinking about it”. Because those things don’t work, and from my own personal experience, it causes more damage.  I tried to “just be positive” and it caused repressed trauma and grief that I’m still trying to unpack today.

And that is exactly why I created Your Pregnancy Haven.  Because it helps to know that you’re not alone in your thoughts.  We talk about the scary thoughts inside our chat group because it helps to normalise them.  And when we speak about it, it helps you realise that you are not your thoughts.  You are completely separate from them.

So if you’d like some support to retrain your brain, and get the encouragement, validation and relief in your pregnancy.  Join us today.  Because you deserve to stop punishing yourself, find some peace from the intrusive thoughts, and find joy in your pregnancy.

You can join us HERE.

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