Enter Label: 6 emotional tools for when your desire is gone

round #4

Dear Companions,

The difference between something hard and very hard rests in one’s desire. I’ve discovered that entering into this latest round of IVF is remarkably more difficult.

Desire, like faith, can evaporate in an instant.

Suddenly the weather doesn't matter. The books before you seem distant, cold, and unknowable. I have to read more voraciously just to stimulate the sensation of desire.

I remember gleefully telling the nurse that was my last blood draw. I am trying not to dwell on the fact that we changed the protocol at the last minute. Maybe—just maybe—I’d be done by now.

Instead, I’m marching back into a room full of needles while it gets warmer, heavier, and stickier outside.

The oasis of healing remains out of reach.

So, here’s what I’m doing to tackle this—mind, body and soul. It’s not an earth-shattering list but it’s an effort at this moment to win myself over.

1. Chunking, Rehearsal, and the Embers of Desire

First order of business: to kick up some sort of semblance of desire. One tactic is simply reminding myself where I was one year ago. Unable to conceive of even one round, let alone multiple. This is an ongoing testament to my healing journey. I’m grateful to qualify.

Another tactic is visualization. Specifically chunking and mental rehearsal— effective CBT-style tools.

Chunking helps to manage big tasks, decisions, or processes by segmenting them into smaller phases or steps.

I visualize how the first blood draw leads to the next and from there I can count on one hand how many blood draws there are. How the worst parts of the journey, toward the bloated end, signify the end.

This framing helps me split up the experience into segments and build up an incremental desire simply as a matter of expertise.

---

It reminds me of the math story my dad shared.

The legend goes that when Carl Gauss was six or seven, his teachers tried to keep the class busy by giving them a task: add the numbers from 1 to 50. They expected it to take a long while.

Gauss solved it in seconds.

1+50=51

2+49 = 51

3 + 48 =51

25 pairs.

25 * 51 = 1275

I’m no Gauss, but the logic has stayed with me.

Recognize a pattern to simplify the hard thing.

The beginning and the end are already entangled.

Start something, and you’re already touching the other side.

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2. Accoutrements

I have collected a veritable assortment to hit every conceivable mood. A mixture of high brow and low brow is critical.

• Funny TV – Fleabag, Hacks, The Bear, The Rehearsal, Feel Good (

  Wabi Sabi
  🙏), and garbage like Love Hotel and Love Island

• Weird TV like non narrative movies Koyaanisqatsi and Baraka

• Books are currently steeped in political systems, AI, psychology, philosophy, and innovation theory, so expect some of this sprinkled into future posts.

  • Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

  • Awareness: Conversations with the Masters

  • To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism (incredibly detailed history I am reading front to end again)

  • Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective

• Sexy stuff: a series by Elsie Silver, starting with Flawless was recommended. Nice adjunct to rising estrogen levels?

• Headphones Therapy -

  • Anthem music like Unstoppable by Sia

  • Overcoming-trial stories on Tim Ferriss

  • Political deep dives (Moynihan Report, Trigonometry,

    Konstantin Kisin
    etc.)

  • Joshua Citarella for diving into Gen Z politics (hint: they don’t like Ayn Rand)

  • Lex just put up an in-depth one on WWII with James Holland

  • Renewed my Sam Harris subscription

• Finishing a series on the Roosevelts on Amazon. I’m just at the part where FDR comes back from 7 years of crippling Polio. #InspiringAF.

• Entering Flow States with Prompt engineering, AEO, vibe-marketing, playing around with 20 wellness and AI apps for the Healingvrse.

• Walking through the park between appointments. Keeping the body moving even in just cleaning is good.

• Antique/vintage shops are low pressure, and provide keepsakes.

• Eastern medicine says avoid beloved cold drinks during fertility; opt for anything warm like ginger-honey tea instead. Hot comfort.

3. A Sense of Abstraction, Absence, Vacancy: The Anti-Moment

A certain level of abstraction is necessary. I refer to it as the anti-moment. Maybe the technical term is disassociation?

You always hear about Flow States, but those are associated with productivity and joy.

Most mindfulness rhetoric is pro-presence. It frames detachment as failure. Or as a trauma response. But it can be a wonderful strategy.

The body shows up. In fact, the body is cared for but there’s a certain vacancy. The sadness is addressed but it also sits in the corner. I feel like Bryan Johnson lives in this type of world to sustain his lifestyle.

4. Finding Agency

Austere measures are useful. Let me tell you—the 25+ bottles of supplements I’m taking are getting more difficult to swallow. I take them at odd times. I take them in one swoop. I skip a day. But they give me agency.

Same goes with acupuncture. Or eating healthier and going to sleep earlier—all protective measures that narrow focus from a bleak environment to one that is controllable until smoother air. But the trick is to stop short of becoming maniacal.

5. The Way – Accessible Meditation

Suffering is not necessarily the time to impose a new or difficult ritual. But finding accessible ways to do difficult things is key.

I’m using The Way app recommended by Tim Ferris. It’s a step-by-step approach to Zen Buddhism. You can do one session a day on a guided pathway. The teacher is well-known.

The best thing about it: It takes the guesswork out of developing your practice.

If you start before you stick on an estrogen patch, you can have a standing two-week practice well underway.

6. Targeted Therapy

When I first began this process, I experienced terror. I consulted a dream therapist to handle the anguish I felt. Now I’m feeling something different. Less fear, but something dragging me down, down, down. Perhaps I’ll need something targeted to this experience. Currently researching names in perinatal mental health in NYC. If my mood gets worse, I’ll set it up, but for now, full steam ahead on my measures and grinding forward.

With much love from the Healingvrse,

Rebecca