ABSTRACT
Anxiety and a tendency toward perfectionistic qualities can intensify and lead to feelings of shame if a woman struggles with an eating disorder and fertility. This chapter looks at how perfectionism, anxiety, and shame can be at play when a woman struggles to conceive or if she has an eating disorder while pregnant. The author explores the difference between self-oriented perfectionism and being high achieving, as well as types and categories of shame. It looks at how an eating disorder or infertility can affect couples trying to conceive and offers tools for them to use in therapy to reconnect and reset. It also offers hope that shame and perfectionism do not have to be at the forefront of the fertility process and that connection and acceptance may be strong and resilient.
