Infertility Counseling Services

Specializing in mind-body behavioral medicine, experiential psychotherapy, and other powerful trauma-informed methods clinically proven to reduce levels of emotional stress, build resiliency and even increase pregnancy rates in certain patient populations.

Confidential sessions with Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Dusty Williams, can be done face-to-face in the Jacksonville, FL office or via secure videoconferencing and telephone from any remote location.

INDIVIDUAL COUNSELING FOR INFERTILITY  

You feel like you are on an uncontrollable emotional rollercoaster and can't find a way off. Triggers are everywhere that set you off down a dark, spiral of distress.  

Hope feels too dangerous, but pessimism is only stealing your joy. You feel helpless because no matter how hard you work, you can't control the outcome. 

The isolation from feeling like you don't belong in your social group is becoming unbearable. The invasive, expensive, all-consuming demands of fertility treatment are becoming so disruptive and emotionally taxing that you just want to quit.

Infertility seems to have just magnified all your other problems and now life just feels unmanageable. You think you should be handling all this better, but nothing helps and you are losing hope.

Does this sound like you?

Then, one-on-one individual sessions would be a prefect fit!  

Here you will receive genuine support, build resilience, and develop skills to feel better no matter the outcome...all the while increasing your chances of pregnancy if you are reproductively sensitive to emotional distress.

In this specialized counseling you will learn how to: 

• Reduce emotional and physical stress through a variety of scientifically proven relaxation methods

• Eliminate negative self-talk and destructive core beliefs that cause feelings of depression and anxiety

• Process through feelings of sadness, loss, guilt, and shame in a safe, empathetic environment

• Reduce isolation and learn how to reconnect to family and friends

• Add back self-nurturing skills that help you regain joy and hope

• Learn how to set healthy boundaries around people and events that trigger your stress

• Equip yourself with effective coping resources when discontinuing anti-depressant/anxiety medications

• Achieve mental clarity and perspective needed to evaluate all treatment & alternative family building options

• Find help in reaching resolution and closure when ending fertility treatment

couples counseling for INFERTILITY 

You and your partner are are fighting more than ever. You don't feel that the other empathizes with or understands your feelings and needs. 

You have mismatched ways of coping and communication styles that cause conflict. Feel that all you ever talk about now is fertility. 

You sexual intimacy feels strained, tainted by failure, or filled with pressure that takes all the fun out of it...it might even be non-existent.

You have different levels of comfort and willingness to explore certain family building paths...one might simply be done trying and the other is not, leaving you at an impasse.  

Sound Familiar? 

If so, couples counseling sessions would be a great place to land.

Here you will have a safe, confidential space with a non-bias party to help you to use this crisis as an opportunity to strengthen, not weaken, your relationship.

Counseling can help you become a strong team by leaning how to:

• Optimize partner support by learning how to meet one another’s needs

• Refocus on nurturing the relationship and not just fertility goals

• Learn healthy, effective ways to communicate feelings and resolve conflict

• Resolve problems affecting the sexual relationship

• Develop tools needed for treatment decision-making process

PCOS counseling

You are trying to get pregnant but can't even track your ovulation because of how irregular your periods are.

On one hand you feel like a teenage boy with the acne and facial hair, and on the other you feel like a middle age man who is balding...super frustrating! 

And we can't forget the ever present battle with weight loss. It seems like nothing you do gets the weight off.

The only diet that works is no-carb...but yikes, NO CARBS!! It seems impossible to adhere to a no-carb diet, especially when your emotions are high and all you want to do is self-sooth with comforting sweets and bread.   

All this results in struggling with low self-worth, intense shame, and an unhealthy body image.  

Can you relate?

If so, counseling that focuses on PCOS can be a benefit.

Here you will find a non-judgmental, supportive atmosphere with someone has walked the road of PCOS and can help you:

• Overcome the psychological barriers to weight loss

• Eliminate disordered eating using effective, transformational techniques that get down to root cause

• Develop healthy ways to cope with negative emotions and stress

• Improve body image and self-esteem

• Reduce shame by learning the art of self-acceptance

• Receive accountability in reaching your goals

• Get nutritional guidance and support

DOnor Recipients & Intended Parents

For those partnering with a gamete or embryo donor, or gestational carrier, I provide the psycho-educational consultations required by agencies and clinics.

This is an interactive session where we will discuss many different areas of life and that will help you successfully navigate treatment and parenting in these unique arrangements. You can ask any questions you have while learning about:

• Emotional readiness in proceeding forward with alternative family building

• Grieving the loss of genetics or pregnancy, and the fantasy of the biological child experience

• The current research on the topic of "disclosure" - whether to, when & how to tell your child their full story

• Picking the right donor or carrier to partner with, according to your needs & values

• Appropriate expectations, boundaries and healthy communication with open/known donors and carriers

• How to increase your support system

• At-home exercises to reduce depression, anxiety & stress

Donors & Gestational Carriers

Providing the mandatory psychological evaluation for gamete donors and gestational carriers, which includes an in-depth clinical interview and objective personality testing. Also, provides gestational carrier home studies when requested. 

For embryo donors, I provide the an in-depth psycho-educational consultation similar to what intended parents receive. It is usually not required by the clinic or agency for embryo donors to have psychological testing.