Episode 173 – Conflict in Surrogacy

Welcome to Surrogacy Australia’s podcast series. I’m your host Anna McKie. Thank you for sharing your time to listen to this episode. These recordings are from the regular one-hour free webinars that I run, which I invite you to attend if you haven’t already. They take you through how surrogacy works in Australia, including how to find a surrogate or intended parents. There are opportunities to ask questions and you hear from a co-host each time about their own journey.

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This episode, recorded in October 2026, is slightly different to our standard webinar series as I had a special guest co-host, Dr. Julian, to talk about conflict in surrogacy. Dr. Julian Pascal Saadi is a psychologist and psychodynamic psychotherapist based in Sydney who works with individuals, couples and multi-partnered people. He has a particular interest in surrogacy and fertility and working with surrogacy teams as they move through their journey.

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He is also an IP, intended parent, himself. At the center of his work is the guiding question, how can we use conflict creatively to deepen connection and trust? If you’d like to arrange your own session with Dr. Julian, you can find him on his website, drjulianpascalsadi.com, that’s all one word. We will hear from Julian as he explores what is unique about the IP surrogate relationship, what are the hidden feelings, the structure of conflict, the cycle of conflict,

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relational templates, and where did your template come from? My dream when I coordinate guests like this is so this recording could be of use to future surrogacy teams and perhaps even psychologists who are new to surrogacy. If you listened to this episode and it has helped you, please send me a message and let me know. In this episode, we mentioned SASS, which is Surrogacy Australia’s support service, which I manage. If you’re looking for more individualized support,

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To be connected with a mentor and as IPs to potentially be connected with a surrogate, head to Surrogacy Australia’s website to register. SASS is also open to teams who know each other before surrogacy and they would join for the mentorship, agency support for the IPs and surrogate and to have me as your guide. You might think of me as your Siri for surrogacy or your chat GPT. I hope you enjoy this episode and please reach out to me or Dr. Julian if you have further questions.

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So I’ll just mention if you’re looking for some links and resources, head to our Surrogacy Australia website. The webinar section within there is a link called further reading. And then there’s a list of the links that you might like to work your way through a bit of homework if you like. The order of steps in Australia. Usually in the webinar, I go through this in half an hour, but we’re just going to do a very quick crash course. These steps assume you’ve found a surrogate. And if you haven’t found a surrogate and you want to hear more about that, join us in a regular webinar. Or these episodes of webinars are saved on a YouTube channel and as a podcast series. I’m sure you’ve all got your phones.

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within reach or in your hands. I’d love for you to subscribe to the podcast series. I’m a high school maths teacher’s mother job so I issue homework. And episode 23 goes into much more depth about how to find a surrogate. So if that’s what you’re looking for. In terms of finding a surrogate, known surrogate, you either need to tell your friends and family that you have a need. For one, about 80 % of teams, one in five, find a surrogate that they know beforehand. There’s about 100 to 150 births in Australia each year. So 80 to 120 of those teams know each other beforehand. Finding an unknown surrogate means either joining

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online groups like Facebook groups or SASS, which I run, Surrogacy Australia Support Service. Those steps are there that you have to go through. So once you have a team you need to go through before trying for a pregnancy. So there’s counseling and legals and usually engaging in an IVF clinic unless you’re doing traditional surrogacy. And once you’ve done the counseling and legals and your IVF clinic approves you, then you aim for a pregnancy in surrogacy. After birth, some states have relinquishment counseling around six weeks after birth and that’s required before the parentage order. Okay, so there you go. There’s your crash course.

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In terms of just a few things to remember here, the further reading section, we have one of our Zoom monthly catch-ups this Friday night, 8pm Sydney time. The main section goes for two hours, the bottom left-hand corner is roughly what they look like. So unlike tonight, your camera will be on. I mean, you can have it off if you want, but we also do little breakout rooms which go for sort of 15 minutes and that’s a chance to chat to of four people a bit more privately and ask your questions and then come along and make friends. Even if you’re doing overseas surrogacy, you’re very welcome there. Talk about surrogacy to normalise it and subscribe to the

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podcast series. Right. So that’s all the bits that I need to go through. So maybe just a little bit about me before I begin so that you have an understanding of where I’m coming from and what I’m bringing to this conversation. So as Anna very kindly mentioned, I’m a psychologist and a psychotherapist, and I specialize in working with individuals, with couples, with multi-partnered people, and I’m an IP myself, and I’ve got a real interest in this field.

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professionally as well. And maybe that sort of sets the scene for how it’s all sort of linked, I guess, in my mind. Because when we think about the relationship between surrogates and intended parents, what we are essentially just talking about is a relationship where the stakes are really high.

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It’s a very particular type of relationship as well because it’s not, you know, we sort of were socialized into a world where we divide people into family members, romantic or friends. So the surrogate IP relationship is kind of a category of its own. And so it kind of, needs its own sort of attention because it’s just a slightly different domain. However,

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It’s still just a relationship. So all the same dynamics that emerge in any relationship are relevant to the surrogate intended parent relationship. So I very much approach it from the perspective of, what do I know about how relationships work and how can we use that learning to safeguard and protect and help develop the relationship between surrogates and intended.

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And I guess the key idea for me is that conflict is an inevitable part of any relationship. But it’s also the key to deepening intimacy and we’ll get more to that in a moment. This is just from my Instagram account. I thought it kind of shows a little bit about how my thinking works. So people tend to think that intimacy looks like being on the same page with things. We all like to feel like we’re in agreement.

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You know, no one likes to feel like they’re in disagreement with people. The problem is, is that disagreement is where people meet in their differences. And that’s where we get to know who the other person truly is beyond who they feel like they need to be for us in order to keep the agreement and the safety and the happiness alive. So hence the second picture, how intimacy actually looks. It’s these points of divergence between two.

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or more that create conflict. But as I’m sort of showing in this diagram, it creates a whole new wave. These two, if you think about it, these two energies coming together, something else can get created, which is an incredibly creative process if you allow it. The problem is, is that we’re not taught to do conflict very well. Conflict is scary, our defense mechanisms go up, and we just repeat patterns all over the place. That in a nutshell is why conflict is important.

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important and something you’ll hear me say a lot is we need to be leaning into it to deepen intimacy and connection. So what is unique about the IP surrogate relationship? So part of this, part of my thinking here is, you know, it’s based on my own experiences as an IP and I’m happy to go through some of those if you’re curious, if you want to know more, but also from my work.

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with IPs and surrogates as well. And Anna will have things to add in as well, I’m sure. I mean, it’s an asymmetrical relationship in many ways, which complicates matters quite significantly. And of course there are gonna be, you know, we’ve got domestic surrogacy, we’ve got international surrogacy, the states are different, the systems around the relationship are also different, which have a bearing on communication and how things feel and, you know.

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There was an IP, was Anna very kindly shared this, IP that said to her, you know, what if she changes, you know, she could change her mind at any point and we will lose our baby. Talking about a potential surrogate that this unintended parent wanted to connect with. And if you really think about that for a moment, I mean, it really, what it really illustrates is the terror that a lot of IPs are holding going into this. Am I gonna be able to have my baby? Is someone gonna stick with me enough to help me?

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baby. It’s an incredibly difficult thing to hold. mean, Anna, I see you nodding. Do you want to share something there? Yeah. And when we were planning this webinar, I told you about the first set of IPs that I was dating that ultimately called it off with me. And I remember one of those two dads said, the motivations to coming to surrogacy are different. Surrogates come because they want to do surrogacy. I want to be a surrogate. This is a

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thing I want to do in life. IPs come because they need it. They can’t have a baby through other means. I mean, there’s other options in some ways, biologically, they need this and needs and wants are different motivators there. And so a surrogate could walk away and go in the planning stage and go, I choose not to do this anymore. But in my regular webinars, we talk about…

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trust so much in terms of the IPs trust us that we’re going to stay on this journey with them and that we’re doing the right thing in pregnancy and that we’ll hand over the baby and then for surrogates we’re trusting them that they will maintain contact with us for the rest of time because there’s no law to force them to.

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our continual friendship with us. So yeah, it really isn’t, it’s all about trust and it’s complicated and this is great to talk about because you know, I’ve often wondered if there was some similarities with almost like the polyamorous open community because I felt like I had three husbands for two and a half years. I had three men in my life that I was in daily contact with when I did this. And yeah, so it’s an interesting dynamic to have conflict, not just with your intimate life partner, but you’re doing a very intimate thing to have a baby. I’m enjoying having you here and the

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you’re going to take us on with our thinking. Thank you for that. For me, it really brought to mind the the difficult, the distinction between need and want and how difficult that is to actually navigate and to be upfront about that difference rather than trying to pretend again like we’re on the same page, but in fact, we’re not. And that’s okay. And it just it just needs to be creatively engaged with in a way within the sort of psychological field. We talk a lot about how needing something is incredibly hard because it makes you vulnerable.

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Wanting something is very hard because there’s a risk that you don’t get it. And so needing and wanting a very vulnerable states to be in. And when we feel vulnerable, we reach for our defense mechanisms and that’s where things can get a little bit tricky. So we’ve kind of gone through this a little bit that did the idea of different wants, know, something really important in those early stages is to be upfront about those differences, you know, do.

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both want the same thing. If not, is that okay? Can we survive that? Can we find a way to do this together so that all of our needs are satisfied? Often in that negotiation process, there’s a real anxiety that I’ll say something and the whole relationship will crumble and then I’ll lose the thing that I either want or I need.

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you know, on the side of the surrogate, the investment in getting to know someone and that the future that gets imagined and how the families are going to blend. And I mean, all of that emotional investment goes into it. So if the relationship crumbles from the surrogate’s perspective, it’s a huge loss as well. It’s a different loss, but it’s a loss nonetheless. And losses have to be more. There’s something that’s that often comes up is something about control and autonomy and particularly, and it comes back to trust, maybe what you were saying, Anna.

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You know, I can vouch for this myself being an IP and I’m personally, going through it internationally, which adds a whole other dynamic to the situation really in terms of do I even know what’s going on with my baby at this moment? You know, and I can’t check because the system means that I’m not in contact. So, you know, there are all sorts of very complicated things, but something about being able to trust that the other is on your team.

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You know, in every sense of the word, you know, for the IP to be able to trust the surrogate that she’s got this, you know, and that the surrogate can trust the IP that they are in it as well, you know, that there is this commitment. And maybe this is why we talk a lot about sorrow dating, you know, really trying to build a relationship to allow these kinks and grooves, I guess, to emerge and to be worked through so that the foundation is strong enough for what is arguably going to be a very modern family constellation.

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It’s going to be a modern, you know, not necessarily one family, but it’s a modern permutation and combination of different people that are suddenly all linked up that wouldn’t have been linked up. And it’s tricky. It’s tricky. It’s different. We’re not, we’re not taught to do it. So it takes that extra effort, I think, to really kind of solidify the foundations. Definitely. A little bit on the hidden feelings. I mean, I love this slide. I mean, because just in terms of my professional training, I trained in a strand of psychotherapy that talks all about the unconscious mind.

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And in other words, all the things we don’t like to think about in our conscious minds, all the painful feelings, the resentments, the jealousies, all the sort of darker stuff that I’ve, for whatever reason, gravitated towards in my career. But I think it’s because I know that those are the parts that have the potential to destroy relationships when they’re not owned. And so I actually see the creative potential in all of those sides of us.

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So just something, a few words on, you know, what might be happening for the IP. And this is by all means not the totality of the experience. These are just some key themes that have come up in my experience and maybe you will have others in mind and please do pop them into the chat. There’s obviously the gratitude, you know, my gosh, you know, someone’s doing this for me. I never thought I’d be able to have my baby and someone’s willing to do this.

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But it also comes in the backdrop against the backdrop of loss and grief because we’re all here because something didn’t go to plan, particularly for the IPs anyway. Something didn’t work, whether it’s there’s been a fertility issue or maybe it’s two men or whatever it is, something didn’t work the way that it was quote unquote supposed to work in terms of how we are socialized to think about having a baby.

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And it’s a huge loss. And I think it’s an important loss to face actually. And particularly when there’s fertility related trauma as well, multiple, multiple attempts and failed attempts, you know, it’s all there in the mind and it shapes how relationships are then handled with the surrogate, for example. So really paying attention to those parts of the mind and really inquiring, well, how does my experience of this potentially, I mean, how’s that going to shape how I relate to my surrogate, for example?

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Resentment at having to depend, to have to need someone to do something that quote unquote, you know, we’re told we should be able to do. It’s hard. You know, how could you not feel resentment about something?

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But again, resentment is so normal. It’s a normal feeling and it doesn’t have to be scary. It just, becomes problematic when we try and pretend like it’s not there because you know, the mind has all sorts of fascinating ways of making sure that people feel it. But we can sort of say, you know, we don’t have to own it. You know, we might be subtle with our behavior or we might use a particular tone of voice or whatever it is. You know, things like jealousy and envy.

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as well, particularly for women sometimes as well, a sense that how am going to bear that this other woman is going to be carrying my baby in a in core, you know, well, yeah, so there’s all sorts of potential feelings there and, you know, anger and sadness after the setbacks as well miscarriages, things like that. sometimes the intended mothers that come to surrogacy will actually all of them come from medical reasons. So they have

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there’s some grief or a journey that they’ve been on. So moving to that level of acceptance of this new path that can be a beautiful path of many hearts coming together to create their child. Sometimes if they’ve been able to get pregnant but have had miscarriages, they might often have a lot of anxiety at around the 10, 12 week mark of pregnancy, perhaps when they lost their babies. And I like what you’re saying here. It’s about being able to just name the feelings.

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no feelings are good or bad feelings, that it’s just being able to bring language to them and name them. So saying, yeah, I feel disappointed or that I…

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can’t do this as a woman, I can’t carry my own child. And it doesn’t mean that she’s not a good intended mother or she’s not gonna have a good surrogacy journey. In some ways it’s actually empowering her emotional maturity to be able to own what she’s going through. And for the two dads to be as well, that they can’t do this intimately on their own. They have to involve another person or her family as well. Absolutely. You know, I never thought I’d have to mourn not being able to have a baby with my husband because of course I knew I wouldn’t be able to have a baby with my husband.

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but I had to face the fact that I wasn’t going to be able to have a baby that combines my husband and myself.

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You know, rationally I knew it, but emotionally I didn’t know it. And it sort of only came later on that I sort of had to face that fact and so did he. You know, I’ve been around 10 years, but I haven’t thought about it in that way that often for the hetero couples, if they’re able to create their own embryos, even if another woman carries them, genetically it’s still theirs. But for the two dads, unless perhaps, you know, the sister of one of the dads is the egg donor, this idea that every other…

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quote unquote normal couple gets to have a genetic combination half half of them and their partner that you as two dads don’t get that when everybody else does well not everybody else but it’s yes there’s beauty because the egg donor potentially can become a part of your life too and the story that your child

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tells us all these people came together to create me, gosh I was very wanted. And that’s all true, but at the same time you can still have grief for the fact that it’s different. Absolutely, it’s the mixed feelings of it all. It’s such a beautifully complex picture. Pain and joy, all kind of coexisting really. On the surrogate side, and again this is not an exhaustive list, but of course you know excitement, but also sometimes a lack of recognition.

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Do they really recognize what I’m doing? And we’ll come to a question around, well, how does recognition look like in this context? But you know, it’s so common to feel guilty for surrogates when things don’t work the way that, quote unquote, the body is supposed to do things, you know, or in terms of miscarriages, for example, but even so, you know, if things aren’t working relationally within the team, it’s easy to feel.

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Like there’s a sort of a failure that’s attributable to me. And I think that’s something that we can all relate to. We all have a tendency to sometimes think that we’re at fault for things or the opposite will be, no, it’s their fault for sure. I’ve done nothing wrong and we’ll get to that because that’s the first red flag. And that’s what we need to look inwards really. But yeah, so the idea that things get buried and when they get buried, they shape relationships in way that are then harder to pinpoint later on.

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And, you know, I would always advocate for ongoing counseling, or if not ongoing, then at least sort of semi-regular consultations to have a space to make sure that you are in touch with these feelings. Because in my years of clinical experience, I know that these feelings wreak havoc when we are not in touch with them. So it’s just really kind of paying attention and normalizing the fact that this is a part of our mind.

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you know it’s it doesn’t have to be scary although i appreciate that these feelings are scary for various reasons i will second that that although in

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The lead up to pregnancy, have to do mandatory counseling. Legally, you don’t have to have any more, but I strongly recommend all teams to do that through SASS that I run, Surrogacy Australia Support Service. The sort of a rough recipe we would recommend for teams is once a trimester in a perfect world, the surrogate would have a session, the IPs would have a session and you’d have a joint session. And so you’re managing your own emotions and as a team and then post birth at regular intervals, particularly for the surrogate, but then also for the team to have a debrief at some point in time to celebrate this enormous journey.

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journey that we’ve been on together. As someone that’s had a lot of counseling in life and for surrogacy, yes, I’m an advocate for this. And yes, it’s okay to be nervous about it at the beginning if people have not done much counseling in their life before. But as you’re saying, Julie, there, we embrace it if you can. It’s ultimately, think of it as an opportunity to get to know yourself very intimately, which I get can really terrify people. But I promise you’re not as scary as you think. It’s kind of like sort of

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diving into the water and you sort of realize that the depth looks dark, but the further down you go, the more your eyes adjust and the more you can see where you’re swimming. That’s the kind of image that comes to mind. We could talk for hours on this. This is great. Something about this point about recognition and how to show appreciation within the context of altruistic surrogacy, it’s about time. It’s about friendship. It’s about

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love. These are very different things than say the international route, which is a monetary transaction. It’s more black and white. This is a rel- these are relational qualities. Time is about spending time with someone. So there’s something about making sure that surrogates are held in mind as an equal partner.

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in this in a sense, rather than someone who is being used. And of course it becomes complicated because of the need want distinction. There is an element of I need this, but it doesn’t have to feel transactional. So long as the relationship is the thing that is prioritized in a way. mean, Anna, did you want to add anything, anything to that or? Oh, you speak my language that yes, altruistic surrogate in Australia involves time, friendship and love. And that’s almost the currency for the surrogate in many.

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ways that for her to come away with her cup feeling full, that it was worth doing it, she wants to feel appreciated and valued in her way and that might be learning about love languages of each other but just also getting to know each other and having a genuine friendship so even if the surrogacy team ended and there was no baby, to know that you actually valued my friendship as a person even if we weren’t doing surrogacy and those friendships take time to build.

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We briefly touched on losses, but previous losses are so important to mourn. If there’s one thing that I have learned from my career is that every new loss activates a previous loss, so no new loss acts on its own emotionally. It taps into our earliest experiences of loss and it opens up an entire network in the mind, which is why some losses can feel far more devastating than others even though they’re not necessarily

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any bigger quote unquote, it’s because of what they trigger beneath it all. So when going into this process, if you know that there’s been an intense history of loss, it’s a good idea to just spend some time with that part of yourself, that really vulnerable part of you to make sure that it feels held moving into this because there will be other losses in different ways, in different forms. So getting ahead of the game there is a tip I would say.

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And that’s handy for the surrogate to get to know mainly in this case the intended mother and her partner so that she’s perhaps aware of some of the triggers and that the intended mother is practicing talking about it being vulnerable and connecting with her team there. That’s very handy to hear. So the next bit is a little bit about conflict. What does conflict actually look like in relationships? So this is very much from the field of couples therapy, but I have adapted it to

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this as much as I can. Ultimately, again, it’s just about relationships and all relationships pretty much function the same. It’s just that the stakes are different, but it’s the same patterns in a nutshell. And you know, as I’m talking about this, you know, please pay attention to, know, what, where, where does your mind resonate to? What do you sort of notice in yourself? What, you know, see what parts of yourself you can recognize within this cycle, I guess. Let’s just start from the top. Whenever we experience

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someone’s behavior or their words or opinions or maybe their gestures or tone or volume of voice, whatever, as unacceptable or frightening. Unfortunately, our minds are not very good at distinguishing between a real threat and a thing that feels like a threat. In a world in which our lives could be at stake, it’s a shortcut in thinking that our minds does, that our minds do to protect us.

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So if something feels unacceptable to us, maybe someone’s spoken to us in a way that makes us feel really disrespected or whatever it is, you we’ve all got our trigger points. The mind behaves as though there is a real threat. The reason for that though is because of the feeling that someone else’s behavior triggers in us. So we hear it all the time when people say, well, you made me feel like this. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

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That’s not how it works. The way that it works is that people will do something and it triggers things that exist in us already. Now, of course, people do behave in very questionable ways and it’s not about that. It’s more about being able to own that whatever they do is doing something that then triggers something that exists for me already. And the thing that might be getting triggered might be fear. You know, oh my God, is this surrogate gonna pull away from me and now we’re not gonna have

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baby and now suddenly we’re never having a baby, you know, it could be, it could be that or shame or, you know, jealousy or envy or rage. And you’ll notice that those feelings tend to be the feelings that we have been socialized to repress. You know, we have been taught that it’s, I don’t know, what, what are some kind of harsh descriptors that it’s pathetic to feel fear, for example, or it’s embarrassing to feel this or

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You know, we’ve been taught all of these things that over time shapes how we handle those emotions. Sometimes they might have been classed as weak if you feel emotional or that you have anger management issues if you can’t handle these sorts of things. That’s exactly it. Exactly. Yeah. These social messages that we get that shape our capacity to sit with and understand our feelings and then make use of them in a creative way.

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So when those feelings get triggered, that’s the thing that makes our mind think that there’s a threat. It’s the feeling that feels threatening, which is a different frame of reference to seeing the other person as the threat. In that moment, the threat is actually the feeling that we can’t tolerate. And that’s where our defenses go up, right? So adrenaline floods the body, and then we pretty much take the other person on either as an opponent or we try and avoid it.

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So that’s where you’ll see in the middle there, I’ve made a distinction between fight and flight. So if we start with the fighting response, I mean, hopefully, I don’t know, has everyone heard of the fight, flight, freeze response? Maybe, yes. Yeah, yeah. I feel like that’s a sort of a common one nowadays. If we think about the fight response, you know, things like blaming or bullying or rudeness, mocking, condescension.

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Essentially any kind of response that we have that in other circumstances we would have seen as pretty unacceptable. That’s when we know we’re in the kind of fight response. The flight response is the opposite. We’re sort of avoiding, we’re withdrawing, we’re cutting off, we’re ignoring messages, we’re numbing. Maybe we turn to drink or food as a way of regulating, or we go passive to keep the peace, for example. So have a think within yourselves. What are your fight styles? What do you…

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lean towards in moments in which you feel as though you need to shield yourself in relationships. Because the way that we either fight or flight in our most intimate relationships is how we’re going to do it in friendships, in family relationships, and in these surrogate IP relationship as well. Now where this gets really complicated, just to add on this final little layer, is that every single time

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we go into this response, of course the other person’s gonna have their own fight or flight response, which may then reinforce a sense in us that they’re, I don’t know, cruel or selfish or bad or whatever the story is that we tell ourselves in our mind. The story is the thing that flattens people. So people go from being these complex beings with feelings and emotions and desires and, you know, motivations to do things and they become a caricature.

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And we know that they’ve become a caricature when we start to use restricted language to describe them. Suddenly we always see them as judgmental. Suddenly we always see them as this. Suddenly we always see them as that. We know that something has happened there where we’ve turned them from 3D to 2D. That’s kind of how I like to kind of think about it. And so the whole cycle kind of reinforces itself in a way, because once we see them like that, then we hear everything they say through that lens and we get stuck in the loop over and over again.

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And the story I’m telling myself sort of. And the story I’ll get onto this in a moment. The story we tell ourselves is the story we’ve always told ourselves about a lot of people. And that’s the thing to sort of hold in mind. It’s deeply familiar. These things are not random. We tell stories based on how our minds already operate. It’s not, it’s nothing more than that. We’re doing what we always do when we’re storytelling.

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So the last bit is essentially what’s the thing creating the stories and I like to think of them as relational templates. So templates of relationships in the mind in a sense. In every relationship we all arrive with a different template. I’ve got my template, you’ve got your template and…

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There’s always gonna be a little bit of overlap between these templates. There are gonna be things that we agree on. We both agree that we gotta take the bins out in the context of romantic, or we both agree that this is important, or we both value this. There are gonna be really nice little bits of convergence, but a lot of it is really not gonna fit at all, actually. The problem is, is that because we like to pretend, like we’re always on the same page, we also pretend like we don’t have different templates.

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And so there’s something about really asking yourselves, how do I think relationships should work? You know, and where did I learn that from? And what were my parents like? You what did I observe with them? You know, what did society tell me? I mean, there are so many things that shape what we call the ideal that lives in our mind, that directs and dictates how we do relationships, essentially.

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And in a sense, what I sort of notice a lot is just the tendency to try and either avoid the conflict, let’s pretend that we don’t have differences in our templates, or we try and force the other person to align with us. Let’s get on the same page with this. But they’re both missed opportunities for something new to be created. You know, what happens when you bring in two different belief systems? What can be created in the process? There’s a whole world of missed opportunity.

31:08
when we default to avoidance or force to get people on the same page. So thinking about the surrogate IP relationship, you know, there might be a desire and a tendency to pretend like we’re on the same page again, but what if something new could be created that isn’t yet available to either mind involved? You know, when you hash out those differences, you’d be surprised by the kinds of solutions that become possible that wouldn’t have been thinkable.

31:35
without that kind of conflict in a way. It makes me think that surrogacy teams potentially, if they do this work and ongoing, wow, how these teams could be in terms of well-rounded adults and the children that are created through this, they’re very planned and considered. They’re not just accidental pregnancies type of thing with couples that haven’t worked on all of this. If four people can, you know, three or four people can come together to work on this and…

32:01
this level of self-awareness. It’s just so valuable, not just in terms of the surrogacy team, the surrogate ship, but each of them in their own lives and their friendships and connections that they have. And it’s just connecting to my years of ongoing counseling. My counselor would say changing shoulds to coulds, Anna.

32:17
My partner should do this. And it’s like, Oh, because you said before, Oh, this is what relationships should look like. And I’m like, he said should. And it’s like, well, they could look like this. There’s lots of valuable takeaways here for us as our partners in life, but also the surrogacy, course. Absolutely. It’s yeah, the tyranny of the shoulds. We often say in the field because they are tyrants. Absolutely. I guess these are more reflection points for you. Where did your template come from?

32:44
You know, and look, this is again, it’s not an exhaustive list and there are going to be other things, but parents, for example, you know, how do your parents exist in your mind? When you think of mom and dad, who are they internally? Is one of them controlling? Is one of them, I don’t know, passive, you know, whatever the descriptors are, just wonder within yourself, who are your parents?

33:06
because their way of being shapes our way of being and the way that they argued tends to shape how we argue as well. That’s something that we sort of always find in couples therapy or relationship therapy in general, this sort of moment of realization that we’re sort of replaying the parental dynamics in the current relationship. It’s a whole thing.

33:28
And it’s a thing. So please give us a thought. Oh, no, I’m just like my parents. I tried so hard not to be, but oh, look at me. Here I am. Literally, even just earlier, I was working with someone and then she sort of said, oh my God, I’m just like my father. And, know, but it was this beautiful moment of realizing, oh, wait, hang on. I’m not actually my father. You know, it just helped to kind of really create a bit of distance. Thinking about your parents, are they together? Are they still apart? What happened if they separated? What were the circumstances around the separation?

33:58
because that’s how we learn about how separation is done. If separation is tinged with trauma and loss, separation tends to be harder as adults as well. So just think a little bit about that, the dynamic there with the parents. Rules and expectations, you know, what rules and expectations did your parents have for you? Because inevitably that shapes what we expect of others as well. Even though we all like to think that we’re not at all like our parents, we absolutely are.

34:27
Unfortunately, we absolutely repeat things that we would rather not. So getting ahead of the game is what I’m saying here with this relational template idea. And siblings, you know, if you have siblings, what’s the relationship like? Particularly when it comes to feelings like jealousy and envy, which is all about rivalry, the sense that someone has something that I desire, which within the context of the IP surrogate relationship could really be a thing. So how do I relate to rivalry?

34:55
could come up and there might be a sibling dynamic in that as well. Once you understand those things, you can discover why you’re really getting into these conflicts in a way. And I really loved your point, Anna, about the potential of surrogacy teams. There is so much learning possible that comes from doing things in this way because it forces us to confront the limits of our kind of characters in a way.

35:22
The commitment to the other is what allows us to grow from it. So back to this idea of trust. I’m not sure if now’s the right time to ask this particular question or you might be getting to it, but it ties in with a question that’s been typed in that we’re talking about conflict styles there, but it’s also something to bear in mind that in surrogacy teams at the beginning.

35:39
we often talk about there’s the rose coloured glasses are on and everybody’s enjoying getting to know each other. If it’s a team that didn’t know each other beforehand or it’s all exciting because the family or friends have decided to do surrogacy and there might not be much conflict.

35:53
And so the question that’s typed in is what if there hasn’t been conflict or there are not really examples of that? I think that slide that you’re on before about digging deeper about asking about the conflict growing up between parents, between siblings, even perhaps, you know, discussing a time in your workplace where you have been frustrated with something that somebody’s done. then in theory that’s in opposition to your values. And then that might be some ways to discuss it because how did teams practice conflict before they’ve had it?

36:23
of resources, I created a list of suggestions in things like you could do an escape room together or build IKEA furniture together or move house and or cook in the other person’s house and then clean up the dishes and see if you’d put them away in the correct order. It’s one thing to be aware of this conflict, but then it’s a harder thing to practice until you’re in it, isn’t it? Absolutely. And I guess I would say what is your relationship to conflict?

36:49
How does conflict show up in other areas or not? You could argue that it’s sort of impossible to be perfectly on the same page with anyone if we kind of return to that idea of the two waves that are perfectly in parallel. There are inevitably going to be differences in values, differences in belief, differences in something. So the question then becomes, why isn’t it showing up? I don’t know, but I’m just, it’s just to prompt some further thinking there to sort of apprehend it. What would happen if it did show up? How would you feel?

37:15
How would you manage it? How, yeah, this example of the colleague at work, how has conflict been dealt with outside? What do you know about your conflict style from there? And how can you sort of use that to then apprehend what could show up in the surrogate IP relationship? If you’re noticing conflict showing up or not showing up, but you feel like it could show up and you’ve been holding back and you didn’t want, know, just ask yourself, when did you start to feel like that?

37:40
Has your view of the other become more 2D? Am I now seeing them as the baddie in a way with more negative qualities than at the beginning? And this relates to the rose tinted glasses thing. The rose tinted glasses idea is so perfect because you know…

37:54
within the context of romantic relationships we talk about infatuation. A lot of relationships start off idealized, partly from an evolutionary, developmental point of view, it’s designed to make people bond. We all know that it eventually collapses once reality hits us like a ton of bricks and we realize that they’re not the perfect person. And then the question is, well, how am going to face reality?

38:16
How can I deal with reality here? And am I reacting with fight or flight strategies in a way? So if you’re noticing that you’re reacting with fight or flight, there are other options. know, step one is understand what’s being triggered. Step two, learn to tolerate it, whether that means pausing, going for a walk, you know, doing whatever you need to do to regulate, and then thinking about what the thing is that you actually need to communicate.

38:39
So start with yourself, figure out what relational templates exist in your mind and what might be getting triggered. Lead with curiosity always. If you notice yourself getting into that cycle of conflict, pause, because once the cycle is activated, you are no longer seeing the other person as separate in their own right. They then become a canvas onto which we project parts of our own mind.

39:05
our own internal dramas, our histories, our past, it all plays out in these big conflicts. And the key thing is repair, repair, repair. I cannot state that more concretely. The research with infants and mothers in sort of the developmental research shows that it doesn’t matter how much a mother

39:27
doesn’t understand what her baby might need or is going through. What matters is that she can recognize that she’s misunderstood and repair. So the mismatch has nothing to do with the quality of the bond. What

39:41
does though is can I recognize that there’s been an issue and can I go and repair the bond? The more the bond gets repaired, the stronger it gets over time. So don’t worry about the mismatches, don’t worry about the conflict. That’s really not the key thing. The key is can I repair it afterwards? And if you can, you’ll be creating really solid foundations. Yeah, making me feel good as a parent to a 10 and 12 year old.

40:05
As a mother, it’s about that repair, which is something I have been working on. So that’s good to know. Thanks. It’s roughly the research is saying that it’s 70 % of the time we don’t understand what children need, particularly babies that can’t talk. saying those very early years. It’s 70%. I mean, that’s a huge amount of time, but it doesn’t matter so long as there’s repair. That’s what the research suggests. So.

40:28
It’s a very calming thought for me too. Yes. And yes, because most people here are either parents as surrogates or wanting to be and it’s learning to be a parent is hard work, even though it’s wanted. And it’s just the practice that they’re doing here with their surrogacy teams and just being attuned with yourself and the feelings that you’re feeling, but then also trying to be attuned to the other person, even if it’s a baby, this is all good practice and skills for life. Absolutely. Absolutely.

40:53
And then the final slide here, know, something about owning your feelings. It’s so fine to have your feelings, you know, and going through a process of thinking, is this something that I need to bring to the team? Do I need to bring it to the IP? Do I need to bring it to the surrogate? Or is this something that belongs to me and I need to do some personal work on this? To really have some time to think.

41:16
And of course not to use the latter option of I’m going to do some personal work to avoid potential conflict. You know, we’ve got to be careful what our motivations are. We need to be thoughtful about what we’re choosing and why we’re choosing it. There’s no gold standard team with this. Just like there is no perfect relationship. Relationships become strong through engaging with each other’s differences. And I would say that that’s just across the board.

41:40
Considering, you know, again, ongoing counseling only if you feel like you need just another mind to help you figure things out. There’s real value, I think, in having another mind do that, especially if you find that you’re someone who has a tendency to get caught in these cycles. Look, we didn’t talk really much about international today, but if you are considering the international route, then my personal tip for you would be the importance of community.

42:09
Before my husband and I started this journey, I’d never met another gay dad in my entire life. So I had absolutely no template in my mind for one, what another gay dad does, but two, how on earth they became a dad. So, but once we had met other gay men going, you know, suddenly it became a reality. So I cannot stress that enough that the importance of community, which I know is also really key within the altruistic context as well. Definitely. And I’ll add to that, that balance between

42:37
seeking out professional counselling, almost booking it in as a check-in. You think, oh, we don’t need it, but there’ll always be something to talk about, particularly once you’re pregnant as a team and that balance between community and peers as well. Sometimes there can be some negative stories if they help to encourage your story that if you’re stuck in a negative loop, but hopefully you can find enough people. so through Surrogacy Australia, we run the Zoom monthly catch-ups. So I encourage people to come along to those. It’s always scary coming along the first time, but there’s only ever one first time. And there are people that are doing

43:07
international surrogacy through that so you can hear from them and all the domestic as well and connect and build those other IP connections and surrogate connections. And it’s also very handy for IPs to have other surrogate friends to sound off ideas. It’s like, oh, my surrogate’s going through this at the moment. I’m not sure how to support her. Have you got any tips? Having friends on the other side, so to speak, can be really valuable.

43:30
One question typed in by Lisa and Stuart, who are some of my regulars to these webinars. Do you have any advice about indicators that it might be time to consider engaging professional support when navigating conflict within a surrogacy relationship? Are there any triggers or warning signs? I think if you start to feel as though your view of the other person is becoming 2D. So that idea that you’re starting to form a fairly fixed view of who they are, I would say that that is a good warning sign.

44:00
And vice versa, if you feel that their view of you is starting to become 2D. Perfect. That’s exactly it. If it’s becoming 2D, that’s your cue. Get another mind to come in and help you make it 3D again. Because the other mind will help you to explore and open up the curiosity again, because this issue with the 2D thing, once it kicks in, we lose our curiosity and then the other person disappears from view.

44:23
So that would be maybe something to look for. It’s that curiosity. It can then be hard if you want to do the counseling, but the other half of the team are not so open to it, trying to pitch it in such a way for our team. Even if in your head you’re thinking, you, you, you, you’re the one with the problem. You’re looking at me 2D. If you can come in it with, I feel we trying to find your language and you could use it.

44:45
You know, if you haven’t done your official mandatory counseling, you could use it as a chance to say, let’s get to know one of the psychologists that we’ll use ongoing in our journey. So almost treat it as a, let’s get to know each other, fight off the scaries type of thing of seeing a professional. Yeah. I think there’s something about reframing the idea of getting another mind as an investment in the team.

45:05
and an investment in the journey. If you’re committed to it, then it’s an investment for that commitment. I like it. Ultimately, surrogates in Australia does cost less than overseas. And I would say almost this is the investment. The overseas, they have agencies and they’re helping navigate it for the surrogate. And they’re being that third party that helps manage the relationship. Because as you say, there is less of a relationship because the agency provide the trust.

45:29
to both halves in some ways. Yes, SASS we run in Australia, but it’s not a full agency in that sense. Whereas a professional psychologist who understands the dynamic of surrogacy is not necessarily someone that’s just a psychologist. Ideally somebody that specializes in surrogacy or these multi-layered connections is somebody that I would recommend. Good question there. Another one has been typed in by Alison. In terms of overseas surrogacy, how do you relinquish control, so to speak? What a beautiful question. Not easily.

45:58
Not easily, and I would say definitely not a state of mind that is a permanent one. Depending on how anxious I feel at any one particular moment, my mind reaches for a need for control.

46:10
I don’t know what your situation, but in my case, you know, my husband and I have a nice balancing dynamic in that regard. seem to either he’s anxious or I’m anxious and the other kind of tries to soothe. So we found a dynamic that works with any kind of theme like this. I would, you know, open up in my mind a question about.

46:28
What is it about relinquishing control and surrender? Is it about an absence of trust? You know, I remember in the very early stages of the journey, was, even when the embryos were getting created, I was anxious that, you know, the lab technician was going to drop the Petri dish and all of my embryos would die and all of my future babies were suddenly dead in the space of five seconds. You know, and I sort of, I almost fired out an email to the clinic and sort of…

46:54
You know, obviously didn’t because I understood that it was anxiety that was driving the show. I would say that, you know, this question about surrendering control is maybe part of being a parent, actually, perhaps.

47:04
Good point. It might depend on the country, but I’m not sure if some of the overseas agencies offer ongoing counselling for IPs to tap into or not. Not sure. It depends on the agency. Yes. And can be interesting if somebody like yourself in terms of your values and the work that you do, I imagine a large part of you would navigate a relationship model of surrogacy very well, but it must be quite interesting dealing with overseas in terms of perhaps.

47:28
maybe wanting more of a relationship with a surrogate, but depending on which country and if there’s language barriers as well, in terms of working with what you’ve got. That’s just this morning, my husband and I were talking about our wish for more connection to our surrogate that we feel like we’re missing out on something really vital, comes with major drawbacks going down the international route. And I didn’t think I’d want the connection.

47:51
And here I am feeling like I’m deprived of something that I didn’t even realise I wanted. but this is all part of the journey and these are choices that have been made and that I’m facing now as a reality. Alison’s typed in that she met you at the Sydney Growing Families Conference and is appreciating all your advice here tonight.

48:08
Good, good, good. So that’s how, yes, Julian and I connected. We met at the Growing Families Conference and then connected over social media when I shared a post about how sometimes the relationship dissolves in teens post-birth. And you reached out and sang your passionate sort of, how can we?

48:24
bring some education to this and to potentially help more teams or have less teams fall apart after surrogacy. And I’d like to think we’ve made our contribution here tonight. I’d like to think that this recording as a YouTube and as a podcast will be something that I certainly share among in the surrogacy community and among SASS teams. I can see the value of if both halves of the team listen or watch this and then almost is a set of homework almost and then come together having heard your message and.

48:52
gives them almost a framework to talk about. I think that’s sort of been the why that we’ve done what we’ve done tonight. Would you say that that’s about speaks to your message you’re trying to put across here? Absolutely. Absolutely. Please don’t be afraid of conflict. It’s normal. It’s part of the process and it can be this journey can be one of the most creative if you allow it to. Thank you for joining me. If you’d like to see other recordings with photos, head over to our YouTube channel to watch other webinars.

49:19
You can head to surrogacyaustralia.org for more information about surrogacy. Also check out our Zoom monthly catch-up sessions, which are a great way to connect with others in the surrogacy community. Attending a Zoom is scary the first time, but there’s only ever one first time. We have all been beginners at some stage. As we say, it takes a village to raise a child, and in the case of surrogacy, it takes a village to make a child. So welcome to the village.