Happiness Anxiety During Our Surrogacy Journey

Ever get anxious that things are ‘too good to be true?’

It turns out that experience is called ‘happiness anxiety,’ and I have developed it during our surrogacy journey.

I’m a doctor, and I had never heard of happiness anxiety before.  It seems counter-intuitive.  After all, if you are happy, then why are you also anxious?  

Happiness anxiety has developed out of humanity’s pre-civilization survival mechanisms.  Humans had thousands of years of evolution focused on one thing:  Not dying.  Anxiety for one’s surroundings can aid one’s survival, as one will be more vigilant and constantly monitoring for danger.  This is useful in an ancient world where almost everything poses a threat to your existence, but this constant anxiety becomes less helpful in a world where we are not just surviving but navigating the stressors of a modern world (1).

I admit that I have a predisposition to anxiety in general.  I also admit that this has served me well in certain aspects of my life.  I believe my anxiety made me train harder at gymnastics, and it led to me double and triple checking my work as a doctor so as to avoid mistakes.  This anxiety-driven behavior has led to ‘success’ in some aspects of my life, but it has come at the price of constantly anticipating what can go wrong or needing to ensure I do ‘enough.’

Combine this mentality with the challenges of our surrogacy journey thus far, and you have the perfect recipe for happiness anxiety.  

Psychologists claim that happiness anxiety often appears when someone has experienced past disappointment (2).  This makes sense, given that if something has gone wrong, people are more likely to increase their awareness to try and identify other potential pitfalls or issues before they can further impact a situation.

I have spent the last two years and over twenty articles writing about our surrogacy journey.  This started as a way for me to process our own experience and document it for our future child.  In looking back over these articles, I see a trend of challenges and anxiety:

• The Beginning of Our Surrogacy Journey

• Masturbating in a Clinic as a Queer Dad-to-Be

• How to Navigate Picking an Egg Donor

• As Alabama Essentially Bans IVF, My Husband and I Write a Thank You Letter to Our Egg Donor

• The Waiting Game of Having a Baby Through IVF and Surrogacy

• Contemplating Life, Death, and Divorce while Reviewing Our Egg Donor Contract

• Our First Bump in the Road of IVF and Surrogacy

• Struggling to Showcase Ourselves to Potential Gestational Carriers

• My Right Time to Become a Parent

• The Embryonic Olympics: Making Our Embryos for IVF

• My Mom Died, and I Didn’t Cry…

• We Matched with a Gestational Carrier!

• Unmatching with our Gestational Carrier Because of Newborn Insurance

• It’s a Surrogate Rematch with a Couple!

• Medical Clearance for Our Surrogate

• Our Surrogate Got Pregnant…By Her Husband

• Letter to Our Future Child

• We Moved from America to Sweden to Have a Child

• Third Time’s the Charm for Our Surrogacy Matching?

• Our Final Surrogate Match

• The Longest Legal Document of Our Lives:  The Surrogate Contract
  

While there have been various delays and some disappointment with not getting as many embryos as we had hoped, I believe the main stressor has come from our repeated matching and unmatching with potential surrogates.  

This came to a peak when our second potential surrogate became pregnant with her husband.  We were so close to medical and legal clearance with her that her unplanned pregnancy was a truly devastating blow.  I can confidently say that since that experience my anxiety increased exponentially, and I have wanted to ask every question and do everything possible to ensure we would not be in that situation again.

In addition to the surrogacy journey, I have also had to deal with the death of my estranged mother.  While I have and continue to process this event and what it means for my own role as a parent, it has definitely added stress to the process of building a family.

I think both my husband and I have now normalized anxiety, delays, and issues in the surrogacy journey.  We are constantly trying to identify potential pitfalls to prevent them, but we have also accepted problems as part of the process.

However, that brings us to our current milestone of an embryo transfer.  We are in the final stages of preparing for our first embryo transfer with an amazing surrogate.  Medical and legal clearance finished a couple weeks ago, escrow is filled, and we have bought our airplane tickets from Stockholm to Los Angeles for the big day.  

Everything seems great.

Enter the happiness anxiety.

Our current surrogate is amazing.  She has been so great to talk to and text over the last couple months, and the medical and legal process was as painless as possible.  She is excited and eager to get going with the pregnancy, so everything feels like it is finally aligning for us.

Given my default anxious state and track record of challenges with the surrogacy process, to finally almost be pregnant does feel too good to be true.

But it is true.  It’s really happening.  

I keep telling myself that.  My husband keeps telling me that.  Yet, I am still trying to navigate through the anxiety to find more of the happiness.  I don’t expect my anxiety to completely go away because it has been with me long before I started this journey, and the journey itself has done everything possible to re-enforce the ‘survival’ instinct for increased anxiety.  However, I do believe there is a way to balance the feelings of happiness and anxiety so as to not suffer from happiness anxiety.

I don’t have a silver bullet, but there are things I am trying that have helped during this time.

• Therapy:  I have been in talk therapy for over a decade.  Recently, I have been able to focus on the surrogacy journey with my therapist, which has been very helpful.

• Exercise:  I restarted gymnastics, have been swimming with my husband, and I do crossfit/yoga at home.  For me, stress is definitely lower when I am active and physically exhausted.

• Familiar TV shows:  Millennials are often mocked for rewatching our favorite shows from adolescence and early adulthood (i.e. Sex and the City, Gilmore Girls, etc.), but I find that this is actually comforting and feels like a safe space to decompress.

• Finding calm in my husband:  My husband and I are very different (opposites attract and all that).  Actively listening to him tell me it is going to be okay definitely helps.  

• Trust that it will work out:  The power of positive thinking is a real thing.  I have to believe - even with the challenges and delays - that we will eventually be fathers.  It will all be worth it, but I have to believe we will eventually get there.

Happiness anxiety, like all mental health challenges, is not something to be dismissed or minimized.  The struggle is real, but I hope that ultimately I can continue to enjoy this process of becoming a father and not let the anxiety overwhelm all the positives that we have and will continue to experience on the path to fatherhood.

References:

1. https://www.mindfulcaretherapy.com/blog/happiness-anxiety-anticipation

2. https://therapyforwomencenter.com/2024/09/10/what-is-happiness-anxiety-and-how-to-cope/