Hi Gargy (and everyone else),

First of all, I'm sorry to hear that you're having a rough time.

I thought I'd respond seeing as I wrote a whole chapter on Anger in Swimming Upstream, but also because it was something that we dealt with a lot when we were on IVF. So I've had a look at anger and how it relates to fertility problems.

When talking to couples having trouble conceiving, I found that anger was actually quite a commonplace reaction. It's quite normal to feel angry at life, the injustice of everyone else doing what you seemingly can't, other people when they say thoughtless things ... even God.

I know we did. I particularly would get angry after yet another failed IVF cycle (which always seemed to coincide with someone else we knew getting pregnant).

I don't agree that anger is negative and should be avoided. This whole Partridge Family-style psychology (come on, get happy!) about avoiding all the negative emotions like anger, sadness, disappointment etc is dangerous. It denies a significant part of the human experience and a real part of the healing process. And I found that trying to be happy all the time when you patently aren't can cause more confusion and despair than the actual situation itself.

Anger is a part of the process. As some others have pointed out, it's not the anger that is the problem, it's what you do with it. It's fine to be angry, to sit back and take stock and decide what you're going to do with it and then work through it and move on. It's not fine to be angry, stay angry and then unload on everyone around you like a mini-Hiroshima.

Our infertility counsellor - and now my co-author - talks a lot about taking control of these emotions and situations rather than trying to think of them as a choice and avoiding them. Especially when your whole life is seemingly out of your control during a time of fertility issues, taking charge of what you can is important. She even has a list of things you can do to let the emotions out, which is better than denying it's there in the first place or worse, letting it simmer under the surface until that one last straw causes you to explode, damaging everyone around you, or imploding and doing great damage to yourself.