EBB 373 – How to Confront Tokophobia and Clear Fears about Childbirth with Alexia Leachman, Author and Podcast Host of “Fear Free Childbirth”

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:00:00:

Hey, everyone. On today’s podcast, we’re going to talk with Alexia Leachman about tokophobia, the fear of childbirth. Welcome to the Evidence Based Birth® Podcast. My name is Rebecca Dekker, and I’m a nurse with my PhD and the founder of Evidence Based Birth®. Join me each week as we work together to get evidence-based information into the hands of families and professionals around the world. As a reminder, this information is not medical advice. See ebbirth.com/disclaimer for more details. Hi, everyone, and welcome to today’s episode of the Evidence Based Birth® Podcast. Today, we are so excited to have Alexia Leachman with us. Alexia is the founder of Head Trash and Fearless Birthing, two brands dedicated to helping people clear deep-rooted fears and emotional blocks, especially around pregnancy and birth. After overcoming her own tokophobia, or fear of childbirth, Alexia developed Head Trash Clearance, a unique trauma-informed healing method that helps people heal anxiety, OCD, and reproductive trauma, often in just weeks. Alexia is now working with women around the world to help heal tokophobia and reproductive anxiety, and she trains perinatal professionals, midwives, doulas, and birth educators in her fearless birthing approach. Alexia is also host of the popular Fear-Free Childbirth podcast, and she’s the author of Fearless Birthing and Clear Your Head Trash. Originally from the United Kingdom, Alexia now lives in France with her family. Alexia, welcome to the Evidence Based Birth® Podcast.

Alexia Leachman – 00:01:39:

Thank you so much for having me, Rebecca. I’m thrilled to be here. So excited.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:01:43:

So when we wanted to talk about tokophobia or the fear of childbirth on the podcast, you were the first person that, you know, we approached and we were so excited that you agreed to come on the podcast. So could you tell us a little bit about like what got you interested in this subject and what is tokophobia?

Alexia Leachman – 00:02:02:

Well, the reason I’m into all of this is because I had tokophobia myself. So I fell pregnant without realizing, without wanting to. And suddenly when I saw those two lines. My whole world just collapsed. And I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know what this terror was that suddenly engulfed me. All I knew was I was not okay with being pregnant. And so for the next two or three weeks, I was just in this state of terror and trying to navigate and figure out what I was feeling and why. And I thought, well, I’m just like weird and it must be crazy. Like, I didn’t know what was going on. And I had to go into the hospital quite a lot because we needed a due date and I didn’t know my last period date. So we had to keep going in. And it was during all those neonatal visits that I found out that I lost the baby. And that’s when I knew that something was wrong. The first thing I felt was relief at a miscarriage. And then I thought, what’s going on here? Like, how is it that I’m feeling relief at a miscarriage? This is not normal. Women love being pregnant. So that was the first clue. But even then I had no idea, what was going on. And when I was going through the whole of the healthcare system, trying to navigate all of this, nobody knew what I was going through. So I was surrounded by lots of nothingness in that respect, nothing to help me. And so when I got pregnant a year later, I’d worked a lot on my anxiety. I thought it was my anxiety. And it kind of is, it’s an anxiety disorder. But when I got pregnant a year later, I felt, you know, the healing had really moved things enough for me to think, okay, I can do this. But I still didn’t know that I had tokophobia, that it was a thing. And so I reached out for what I thought I needed to do to clear my fears, because anything that I discovered around that time was hypnobirthing, you know, clear your fears around birth. And that just did not hit the sides. I mean, I just it didn’t do anything for me. And I thought, whoa, due date’s approaching. Like I’ve got now six months left. How am I going to get through this? I can’t put this back. You know, you’re on a kind of a hurdling deadline coming your way. And so I thought, I’ve got to sort this out. I’ve got to sort this out.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:04:03:

So it’s like a roller coaster that you can’t get off of.

Alexia Leachman – 00:04:05:

Exactly. I knew I wanted to be mum at this point, because in the first time I was like, do I want to be a mother? I was wrestling with those kind of questions, whereas this time I was like, no, no, I want this. So I was like, I’ve got to find a way. To make it through. And so that’s what forced me to start developing my own way of healing this. And I tested it once in a hospital corridor on my first midwife appointment where she was going to give me loads of injections. And I was like, I remember saying in the hospital corridor to the technique I was playing around with, right, this is your chance to show me what you’re made of. Is it going to work? And in that hospital corridor, while she was getting all the needles ready, which is enough to send me over the edge, I was able to do enough so that when I got back in the room and she was like, oh, have you got a needle phobia? I was like, no. And I just answered it without thinking. I was like, well, hang on a minute. Was that me? Did I just say that? And I realized that what I’d just done had actually just got rid of my lifelong needle phobia. And I thought, wow. And I sat through the whole of that appointment having my injections and I did not faint. Whereas normally I would always faint at my injections. I never left a doctor’s surgery upright. And so I got home, I thought, oh, well, if I can get rid of a lifelong phobia like that, maybe I can sort out my whole pregnancy birth thing. And so I wrote out every single fear I had and I had pages. And then I spent my second trimester just working systematically through every fear using this way that I’d created. And every time I refined it, refined it until month seven, I thought, oh, well, I ditched my C-section with all the drugs planned. I just wanted to be knocked out cold at the beginning of my pregnancy. And then I was like, yeah, I’m going to have a home birth. So I had home birth and it was amazing home birth. It was pain-free, like it was intense, but I didn’t experience pain. And it was the most incredible experience of my life because I thought, wow, I managed to turn this situation around and I got through it and I had an incredible experience. And so that is how I got into doing this work. But even once I’d given birth, I still didn’t know that the thing I’d been wrestling with was tokophobia And it was only a few years later, I learned about this. And I was like, oh my goodness, I have that. That’s what I had. And I was like, I had that. And suddenly, as I looked back, it all kind of made sense. And so as I started sharing my work and what I did, loads of women just, well, for a start, when I had my second baby, and I thought, well, are those fears still going to be gone? Like, did this, was this lasting? Did it stick? Is it, they all going to come back? And no, they’d all gone, but I had new fears because I was a geriatric old mum at this point. And I’m sure as you’re aware, there are lots of fear-based messages that hit you when you’re an older mum. And so I had new fears to deal with this time. And so I was able to overcome those and have an incredible second birth. And then women who heard about my birth experience, and I don’t know why, how, they started getting in touch and wanted to know how I did it. And so that’s where this work started, where I started sharing through email. And then I wrote a book out of nowhere. And then I started sharing on a podcast, which has become the Fear Free Childbirth Podcast, which has now had nearly 2 million downloads. And so, yeah, suddenly I was like, I need to start taking this seriously. So I parked my head trash work at the time I was a business coach doing head trash clearance. And so I was like, okay, I’m going to do this birth work. So it feels like birth work is so important. And if you heal birth, the ripple effect of that across the community, across the family, across the world really is quite significant. So it was really like a mission for me to really try and heal birth. And so where to start with that was getting rid of fear, because fear is the main thing that really stops you from having that incredible birth experience. If your mindset, if you’re fearless, then a lot of things fall out from that in terms of having a positive experience. So that’s where it all came from. Sorry, did I rant on there a little bit for you?

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:07:51:

Yeah, no, I have so many thoughts while you’re talking. When you mentioned that hypnobirthing didn’t really work to fix your fears, it made me think it’s like you were trying to put a bandaid on a much deeper problem. So when you dug deep, what was the underlying cause of your this fear of birth that was so overwhelming to you?

Alexia Leachman – 00:08:12:

Well, when I was digging deep, I was working through all of my fear systematically using what is now head trash clearance. And so the whole thing was reducing significantly, but there was still this real heaviness. And then one day I had a hunch. I was like, I think I’ve got birth trauma. And so when I say that, I mean my own birth trauma, because I’d never, you know, I’d never given birth. And so my mum wasn’t around because she’d already passed. So it was a hunch. I was like, right, I’m just going to go in and heal my birth trauma. Like, and so-

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:08:39:

From when you were a baby.

Alexia Leachman – 00:08:40:

And so that’s one thing we all have in common. We’ve all been born, right? And the likelihood of that being traumatic is quite high. So, and it’s how the baby experiences, not how your mother experienced her birth, but how you as a baby experienced that. And that’s an important distinction. And so I went in and I cleared my birth. And as I was healing that, it took me about 20 minutes, half an hour, the whole thing. I was just crying in a way that I have never, ever cried. It just felt like it was this pain coming from the depths of my being. And I made a sound that I wasn’t human as far as I was concerned. It was just really deep pain. But just, I don’t know, it just, it needed to come out. And once I’d finished, I felt like I’d been through the ringer because it was exhausting. But I also felt this lightness. So I was like, oh. And that heaviness that I had, that had just lifted. And suddenly I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. I was like, yeah, okay, I’ve still got these fears. I’ve still got these ones to work through. But that’s all I’ve got. And then I’ll be free. Then I’ll be okay. And that’s exactly what happened. Then I came out. I’ve cleared all the rest. And I was like, yeah, I can do this. I’m going to have my own birth. And that whole heaviness, that terror that had been sitting over me like this heavy blanket had just lifted. And so for me, the root was my birth trauma. And that’s what I found with all the women that I work with. The root trauma, and there is one, is reproductive in nature. And it’s often your own birth. But it might also have other reproductive flavors, if you like.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:10:11:

Do you often meet people who maybe the deep fear comes from like they’re watching their mother’s experiences or family or sometimes I meet people who are in their late teens or 20s and they haven’t had children yet. And they tell me, Rebecca, I don’t want to have children because I’m so terrified.

Alexia Leachman – 00:10:28:

Yeah.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:10:28:

Of tearing. You know. During birth?

Alexia Leachman – 00:10:32:

Yeah. For those girls that are 15 and are terrified, the role that the media is playing, so social media, you know, the TikTok videos, everybody’s sharing their stories. And unfortunately, what’s really good about everybody sharing their stories is it, you know, women are learning about birth in all flavors because it isn’t all a nightmare and dramatic. It isn’t all, you know, roses. It’s everything in between. But we do hear a lot of the negative stories. And that’s why with my podcast, the Fear Free Childbirth Podcast, I really wanted to have a lot of positive birth stories because they were few and far between back then when I launched my podcast. It’s very hard to hear a positive story. And even if you shared it in a group, a lot of women just like shrugged that off because they didn’t want to hear it because that wasn’t what their experience was. So it’s very difficult to hear a positive story. And so we’ve got this, the media throwing so much information out there that it’s not really done in a mindful way, in a trauma-informed way. And so it often doesn’t have context. Or there is drama. I mean, shoehorned in all of it to make it click-baity and, you know, to get the views and to get all of that. So we have that piece going on. But then we also have where this has come from, the root of it, which is likely to be in a 15-year-old, her own birth. So you put the two together where she’s very vulnerable. She’s very sensitive. She’s got a wound there already. And then you overlay fear-based messaging that she’s getting from all sides. And now you have, now it’s solidified. Now she’s got a reason why she’s fearful because it’s like, well, no, I saw that video and so-and-so and my cousin did this and my da-da-da-da-da. So now she’s got reasons that she can remember in her conscious mind to attach to it. But the reason it was a wound in the first place was not conscious. It’s likely to come from somewhere very, very deep, especially, and this is how we know, because tokophobia isn’t just a fear. Using the word fear is not doing it any justice at all. It’s terror and it’s visceral body terror that you cannot explain. When you speak to women that have had tokophobia, that have it, they can’t describe why they have it. They don’t know why they have it. They don’t know where it’s come from. And it feels all body. It’s within your body. And so when you’re born, if that experience was traumatic, that will get locked in your body, in your fascia, in your, that’s your imprint. So you don’t have, it’s pre-verbal, it’s pre-anything. So this is how we know that it’s so impactful. And so that these birth experiences are so foundational in terms of our emotional blueprint is if that wasn’t a positive experience, you are locked into that emotional pattern. So the healing that needs to be done in order to release it needs also to be very, very deep. That’s why you can’t talk your way out of it. You can’t go to, you know, you can’t just think your way through tokophobia. It’s why many, many therapeutic approaches don’t seem to have an effect is because… They’re inviting women to talk about it or to change how they’re thinking. And a lot of women don’t know why they’re thinking the way. These thoughts just emerge. They’re not really in control of how those thoughts come through. So when we understand that this is coming from somewhere very deep, it leads us to realize that we need to take a very different approach in order to heal it. Does that make sense?

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:13:40:

And it almost makes me regret introducing you saying we’re talking about tokophobia or the fear of childbirth because it’s like you said, it’s more than just general fears. So is there a medical definition, and what do you think about the term tokophobia? Is that something that people understand or we should keep using?

Alexia Leachman – 00:13:57:

Well, I don’t like the term tokophobia personally because nobody knows what it is. So the toko comes from the word, the Greek word. But people can’t even guess at what it means. And also the problem is the word phobia in that word. So I’ve got a new podcast dedicated to tokophobia called TikTokophobia. And that’s not because I’m all about TikTok. It’s because usually when women, they decide to finally sort something out here is because their body clock is going, you’re going to run out of time. And it’s a TikTok of the body clock. And we had a phobia expert from Harley Street in London. Harley Street is an address where a lot of like you go for very expensive medical appointments and you get the best of the best. And he’d never heard of tokophobia. And I was like, well, what does that tell you if a phobia expert has not heard of tokophobia? And yet it affects, and depending on the research, anything from 10, 20, 30, 65% of women during COVID cited high, high levels of phobia of birth during COVID. So the range of the, in terms of the percentage, the levels that women are suffering is significant. And the penny drop moment for me came when I was in a training session with my practitioners that I train in my methodology. And we were having a tokophobia session. I said, okay, when it comes to tokophobia, ignore the name and just pretend that you’re treating anxiety. Just think of it as an anxiety disorder and use the way that we treat anxiety. And then you’re good. And I was saying this a few times and I was like, hang on a minute, why are we calling it a phobia? This is ridiculous. And the more I’ve worked with it, the more I’ve realized that actually tokophobia is not an appropriate term for what it is. Because really it rears its head at different points within the reproductive cycle. And so when you are in childbearing years, it shows up as tokophobia because this is the event that your reproductive cycle is primed for. You know, birthing a baby when you’re in your 20s to 30s, that’s what your reproductive cycle is all about. But it starts showing itself at puberty. And so when those that are wrestling with the anxiety disorder that kicks in at puberty, it’s where the body is doing something that you’re not in control of, which is what birth is all about. When I was drilling down, you know, when I work with women, the key themes that are affecting them with tokophobia is loss of control. It’s how nature is in control of something that they’re not. So they don’t know how their body is going to go when they’re pregnant. They don’t know if they’re going to be one of those women that you can’t see if she’s pregnant from the back or if she’s going to be more having morning sickness or all the things. You don’t know if, you know, you’re going to end up going into NICU at 30 weeks or if you’re going to be over, your baby’s going to be late. Or if you’re going to have a 30-hour birth or a two-hour birth, like all of these things are outside of your control. And that loss of control is a huge, huge part of that. But that wrestling with nature and nature being in control, that happens at puberty too. So a lot of girls that are having difficult puberty experiences, that might then show up as body dysmorphia or weight issues or body image, you know, all of those things. Because again, they don’t know how their breasts are going to develop. They don’t know how their periods are going to be. There’s all this unknown that’s going on. And then this happens again at perimenopause and at menopause. So we have this reproductive cycle where this anxiety rears its head at these key points. And a lot of that is rooted in a reproductive moment as well, which is our own arrival. Now, if you think that we arrive with, let’s say, a difficult birth experience already inside us, then we hit puberty and maybe our mother isn’t necessarily helping us with what to expect and helping us deal with all of that. Maybe there could be shame and all manner of things happening around puberty. So now we’re stacking a trauma on top of another trauma. And now we’re hitting, you know, baby making years and suddenly now you don’t want to talk about it or it hits you really late or whatever it is. And then maybe you do get pregnant and you’re now going to stack traumas up. And then so now by the time you reach perimenopause, you’ve now got a collection under your belt of these reproductive related traumas that you don’t even know you have. And maybe this is why women have twice the levels of anxiety that men do. No one’s really answered that question. Maybe it’s to do with this reproductive anxiety that is affecting us throughout all of these key stages in our life. And so that’s why for me, I think tokophobia is misleading. It’s not helpful. Whereas if we call it something like reproductive anxiety disorder already, if you say that to your therapist and she’s never heard of reproductive anxiety disorder, she can guess what’s going on and think, oh, right. Yes, I know what to do with anxiety disorders. Right. okay, I can sort this out. A lot of them have never heard of tokophobia. So these women are left with no one that understands what they’re experiencing, no real knowledge on how to sort it out or heal it. And so they feel alone. They think they’re the only one that have this. And so that creates a spiral, this mental health spiral of anxiety and depression. So I think the name, if we can change the name, already that creates a much improved support system that’s available to women that enables us at least point them in the right direction and for them to get the support that they need. Does that make sense?

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:19:05:

Yeah. You mentioned lack of control, and that really sticks out at me because I have witnessed many different women seem to really struggle with that in pregnancy so much that they’re trying to control everything. And then, they do have these like, it seems to manifest in high blood pressure, other issues, complicated births and someone who is otherwise healthy. And I’m not saying that, you know, their anxiety or lack of control is causing these things, but there seems to be this connection that I’ve at least seen on a personal level. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, how do we deal with the fact that we want to be in control? A higher perceived control leads to higher birth satisfaction, but then there’s also this paradox of also letting go and releasing control and surrendering. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Alexia Leachman – 00:19:59:

Yeah. Oh, I could talk for hours about this one, Rebecca, because it’s such a key aspect. Every woman I work with, we always work on control. And even with the clients I have when I’m working on anxiety, sort of outside of birth, control is one of the main tenets of, you know, the root of the problems when it comes to anxiety. And so with head trash clearance, when I heal control, what that enables you to do is to balance that seems to be the impossible place of letting go while also being in control. Because if you say to someone, you know, let go, well, no, I want to be in control. For them, it’s an either or, right? And so they’re like, well, I can’t do both. And it’s like, well, yes, you can. And so how do you do both? What you need to do is you need to retain control of your mind, but let go of control of your body. Because your body knows how to birth a baby. Your body knows that that’s inherent within the species. We know exactly what to do. But the mind needs to say enough onto what’s going on to say, oh, actually, I can feel something there. I need to let my midwife. Oh, I need to move my body. I need to do something. So I need to be enough of control to be able to reach out, say something, communicate, whatever it is, move. But you need to let go of control of your body. But you’re not going to release and surrender to nature if you have got this thing where you need to stay in control. And so this healing, that creating neutrality is what I call it around control is imperative, so that you can fully let go. Because when you fully let go, you’re able to, you know, the fear, tension, pain cycle isn’t there in the same way because you can relax your body. So you’re not holding on in your need to control. And that tension that you bring into your body and the physicality of it, because you can let go because you’re not worrying about not being in control, because you’ve got it up here. The control you’ve got is all in here. And the body can let go. Does that make sense?

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:21:42:

Yeah, I think so. It explains why I’ve never been able to put my finger on the concept, because it is a bit of a paradox.

Alexia Leachman – 00:21:48:

It is a paradox.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:21:49:

You let go in some ways, but you also stay secure, maybe is the good word, in your ability to react to whatever comes your way.

Alexia Leachman – 00:21:59:

Yeah. And a lot of women try to create this need of control manifests in planning everything to the nth degree, for example, because they think that all these plans are helping them to retain an element of control. And so planning, I advocate always having really three plans for your birth, the dream birth, the one that is your least preferred option and the middle option. You can then relax knowing that you’re covered, you’ve got your bases covered. There’s obviously a very good reason to be planning, but you spot the women that have got, let’s say, control issues or a very high need to be in control, because they plan a lot. There’s a lot of planning going on and they might plan, lots of detail. And so this need for control shows up in so many ways in our lives and be able to let go of that. And it’s interesting when I’m working with my clients, the beginning of our program working together, they might show up all like really makeup and nice hair and the nails and they’re all in control. It’s a very controlled look. And then the more we do the work that, you know, they come up with like, they’ve got their hair, like in a messy bun and they’re relaxed. And then there’s this real beauty that comes through because actually when there’s all this constructed controlled look. That’s telling me a lot already. Whereas when she’s happy to just rock up, she’s happy to look like things are out of control. Because actually inside, she’s got the safety, the control. Inside, she feels it. And she doesn’t need to make it look that way from the outside. And so it’s a really interesting observation that I see time and time again. As people find that sense of inner control, they need the outer control less. And actually, they can pivot a lot more. They can respond a lot more. They’re more nimble emotionally and mentally because they can change tacks. They know that wherever they go, they’ve got it covered inside. Whereas if you haven’t got it inside, you need to create this safety on the outside. And that safety on the outside shows up, has all these things that you’ve got control over. But actually, that’s quite exhausting to be able to have to hold all these pieces in play. Whereas if you can just let go of all that, then that’s completely fine. You can let go and truly surrender. So the control thing, it’s got these tentacles that just leak in all over the place.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:24:07:

So what you’re saying is that somebody’s trying really hard to display that they’re in control of their life and their appearance. They have everything under control. That’s, actually the one thing that they’re probably really struggling with?

Alexia Leachman – 00:24:19:

Yeah. Because we’re all about opposites. So if you haven’t got it the inside, you need it on the outside. That’s why that you tend to see that, people that need these zen environments, these really peaceful environments, where there’s not a crumb anywhere. Because they can’t handle mess on the outside, because it’s on it’s like that on the inside so they can’t have it inside and out. Whereas if you’ve got, you know, you’ve got this kind of peace on the inside, you can handle absolute chaos all over you because you walk around with peace inside of you. So it’s easy to spot these opposites in play. And I can spot that quite quickly with the clients that come to me. Immediately I can tell where we’re going to spend our time in the healing.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:24:55:

What are some of the other common signs or symptoms of tokophobia?

Alexia Leachman – 00:24:58:

So common signs, there’s going to be fear of medical environments. That crops up a lot. So the injection phobia that I had, that’s often, you know, the white coat syndrome, being in hospital environments. That can be, again, another paradox because they might feel like they need to be in the hospital for safety because, well, what if anything goes wrong? I need to be there because those guys are the professionals. They’re going to be able to help me out. At the same time, they don’t like being in a hospital environment because it’s scary because there’s authority and there’s, you know, there’s things go wrong and all of that. Yeah, the hospital, the medical fears. Another one is around avoidance of all baby topics and conversations and holding a baby, talking about babies, even family planning. Like, so for me, when I had tokophobia, and looking back now, it’s so obvious, but I could not see it. So I was with my partner and we’d been together, I don’t know, six, seven years. And I’m now 35 and I’ve accidentally got pregnant. The first panics that I have when I realize I’m pregnant is, I don’t even know if he wants kids because we’ve never had the baby conversation. Right. So now just, yeah, 35, no baby conversation. What does that tell you? Right. And so once we’d have the baby conversation, then I can move on to other aspects of my fear. But yeah, any conversation around planning the baby. So I see this with my clients where, you know, they’re getting married and then the wedding has been like two, three years. And now it’s like, well, we said we’re going to get married and have babies. That partner’s saying that. So are we going to start? And she’s like, oh. And really now thinking, oh, my goodness, this is now, oh, this is when the fear kicks in or the realization that she’s not okay with this because now her back’s against the wall. You know, she’s got married at 30. She’s now 33. She’s thinking about her body clock. Partner’s like, well, hang on a minute. You said we were going to have kids. And what, you’re telling me we can’t? And, you know, suddenly it becomes a very stressful situation because now there’s the pressure and they realize they’re just not okay with the situation, with the idea of pregnancy. So there’s this avoidance of conversations of baby holding babies. I couldn’t hold a baby, if you made me hold a baby. I don’t know if anyone’s seen what you might probably see Mr. & Mrs. Smith with Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. And they go to a party, there’s a scene and somebody hands her a baby and she’s just holding it like a dirty piece of laundry. And she’s like, the disgust on the face is like, I can’t hold somebody. Can I just pass this on? That was totally me. So, yeah, this avoidance of anything baby conversations of pregnancy is a big telltale sign. I mean, there’s also some women have a resentment of the inequality between men and women because they think, well, it’s not fair that I’ve got to go through pregnancy. I’ve got to go through childbirth because I might die because it’s awful. And so they have this real resentment that they’re the ones that got to do this. And so they might dream of, you know, artificial wombs or and then they’re likely to want to foster or to have surrogate or to adopt. So, you know, if there is somebody that’s really, really wants kids and they’re immediately opting for surrogacy or adoption or fostering. There needs to be a question there about, well why not your own, and because the chances are the reason is that they’ve got tokophobia, but they don’t realize it, then I just say, oh, you know, they’ll come up with some reasons. Another one is just, this avoidance, really, doesn’t really- Like for me, I was like, oh, EdGovX. I’m going to put my EdGovX first and, you know, independence and free woman and all of that. Because that’s how much the avoidance was. If you’d run some research at the time and gathered, you know, said, oh, we want to do some research around women who’ve got a fear of pregnancy or childbirth. I’m like, well, it’s not me. I’m over here doing this. I didn’t even think that I had it. So this is. Problematic if we want to do research around it because a lot of the women that have tokophobia don’t even know that they’ve got a thing called tokophobia they just think they’re not maternal they just think that that’s just not who they are that they’re just doing this stuff they’re making different life choices and yes there are lots of women that choose to be child free and and are absolutely doing that not from a fear-based place but there are many women making that choice from a fear-based place and so it’s helping those women to realize that that’s what they’re doing because i’ve also had a lot of women come to me to work they now can’t have children anymore and they now realize once the threat has gone and their reproductive system has kind of switched off then they go actually, I really did want kids. And now they’ve got to make peace with that. And so realizing early on whether your decision to be child-free is coming from a place of fear, whether that is truly what you want is really, really important. Because a lot of women don’t realize that’s why they’re making that choice. Yeah. I mean, there’s so many, does that answer your question? There’s a lot there. I mean, there’s more I could share, but that’s a good starting point.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:29:31:

You mentioned partners. Do you ever see partners have tokophobia, like particularly male partners? Is that a thing, even though they’re not the ones going through it?

Alexia Leachman – 00:29:41:

Yeah, well, I think it is a thing. Although one of the ladies I’ve trained who’s a midwife, I said, do you see many guys, you know, not being in the birth space? And she goes, I don’t really see that. But early on when I was first doing my own birth work with my Fear Free Childbirth podcast and I was recording videos, I hired a video guy to do some video stuff to record some of my online content. And we were only like, you know, half a day put aside to do this. I got hair and makeup done and all of this. We’ve got it all set up. And half an hour into the videoing, he’s like, you’ve got to stop. I’m going to be sick. I can’t do this. And he just had to leave. He couldn’t handle anything that I was saying around pregnancy and birth. He said, I think I’m going to faint. And so I was like, well, isn’t that interesting? So I do believe that men have tokophobia. But right now, my attention and focus is really supporting the women because they’re the ones that need the support. But I do. Yeah, I do believe that they do. Because obviously we’ve all been born, right? Not had a traumatic birth experience. I think that’s far more widespread than we realized, especially the way that birth has become more medicalized over the last 20, 30 years, and more C-sections and more, all of that means that a lot of those birth experiences are probably gonna be difficult for the baby, right?

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:30:50:

Right. What about, care providers, you know, how can the language or attitudes of the care providers we interact with influence our experience with tokophobia?

Alexia Leachman – 00:31:02:

Language is really, really important because language can be there to harm, but it can also heal. And just so just having an understanding person, somebody that is truly listening to what you’re saying. You know, there are so many women that have come to me and they say they’ve been to their doctor. They’ve been, you know, they’ve been to their therapist. They’ve said to somebody that they feel nervous about. They’re scared about birth. And then people go, well, well, it’s, you know, it’s natural to be nervous. Everyone’s a little bit scared of birth. And it’s like, no, this is not what I’m saying. I’m not talking about nerves. I’m talking, I’m absolutely terrified. And it doesn’t seem to land. People aren’t necessarily listening to the words that are being said when women are sharing that. And certainly when, again, I train midwives, I hear about a lot of what’s happening in the maternity ward. And when a woman comes in and she’s got tokophobia, they’ll just say, oh, she’s got anxiety. She’s got pregnancy anxiety. And then she’ll just be put into this anxiety group. And again, it’s very, very different to anxiety. So we need to be really, you know, there’s a continuum, a spectrum of fear. And we need to be really clear about what tokophobia is because it definitely, you know, yes, it’s an anxiety disorder, but it’s visceral, it’s terror, it’s full-blown, you know, it’s beyond the panic attack. Whereas anxiety is tamer in respect, in comparison. So it’s really important that the medical professionals understand the nuances and the differences at these levels of fear that women are experiencing, because you can be very, very scared. And then you can be terrified. And that’s a whole different level of fear. Like I think that a lot of women don’t really appreciate what tokophobia is like. I’ve had so many clients that have had terminations of babies that they want because they cannot handle being pregnant. And I had one lady that had three terminations and she told her husband each time that it is a miscarriage, because every time she’s like, it’s me or the baby and I can’t handle it and I can’t handle it. Now, what level of fear? Is she going through in order to make a decision like that? I don’t think people fully appreciate is the severity of this condition and how it manifests in women. And especially when there are those women that have had these terminations. How do you talk about this? Because other women don’t generally understand the decision that you’ve made. They don’t understand tokophobia. They don’t understand why you would have done that. How do you even share that with your partner and move on as a couple if you can’t share things like this? Because there just simply isn’t the understanding of exactly what this fear really feels like. And so the language, the way that these women are received or the responses they get from the healthcare professionals is absolutely crucial. That the healthcare professionals understand it. So this is why I’ve started creating tokophobia awareness training for professionals. So that I can share what I’ve learned over working with women for the last 10 years. So they can start to understand this condition a lot better. Because women need to be able to speak about it. And the first place they go to, which might be their doctor, the nurse at the cervical smear test, for example, or their therapist. These people need to understand what it is so they can listen and be there for them and signpost them somewhere they can get the support they need.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:34:16:

So what are the steps to healing if you realize you have tokophobia and you want to work on it. You know, maybe you have a supportive provider, maybe you don’t.

Alexia Leachman – 00:34:27:

Yeah.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:34:27:

Like, how do you go about that journey?

Alexia Leachman – 00:34:29:

I think one of the first things I would recommend is finding a support group. And there are many online. I’ve got mine, my own. There’s Facebook groups. So because that enables you to find other people that feel the way that you do. And I think that’s a huge healing step already, realizing that you’re not broken or weird or crazy, that this is actually a condition and what you’re experiencing. While it might not be normal, it’s widespread and it’s common. And it’s a lot more common than you realize. That’s a really, really important first step because that can really take the edge off, if you like. And then it’s about understanding, like, how important is this for me to sort out now? You know, I get a lot from women as well. Shall I wait till I’m pregnant to sort this out? And I’m like, no, like, sort this out as soon as you can, because one, you don’t know how long that healing journey is going to take. You don’t know, you know, what’s your fertility journey going to be like, you know just because you kind of get your fears out of the way, you might then hit fertility, which can be another whole adventure in itself. So, work on this stuff as soon as possible. But more importantly that, because you’re worth it, right. Because if you feel better, and you’ve lost, you know, you’ve healed your anxiety, and you’ve healed all your fears. You’ll be a happier person, so for me that’s the biggest reason of all. Right? Why wait to be happy? So, but you do need to make a decision, that you want to heal this, I’ve, I’ve have many, women that come to me saying, I just want to get through the birth, I just want to be okay with a C-section, I just want to get through the pregnancy. Just get me through the pregnancy. So they just want to, you know there are these different- not milestones, but different levels of healing, that you can achieve. You could, okay, you just don’t want to terminate the baby, I just want to be, okay with my baby, and get it through to pregnancy, and give birth. And I’m going to have a C-section. So it’s, okay, we’ll get you to that place. Whereas I’ve got other women they’re like, I want the home birth of all the twinkles fairy lights at home, and I want it to be amazing. So like, okay. Well, we have there’s more work to do on that. Because obviously, you have to really do a lot of the fear around the birthing process as well. So, it depends what she wants it’s, it’s important that she tunes into her. Sound and go what is it that, I want. And how important is this for me to do now. What’s my time frame, and what’s my priority, and what am I up for doing. Because it really does require you, to step up to the healing table, and do that inner work. And not everyone is up for that, I’m so grateful that that’s what was required. Because I’ve personally transformed so much as an individual, because of that and a lot of my clients have said the same, they are so grateful for their top of they’ve been a weird way. Because it forced them to do it, and now they’re, they’re better for it. But it does require you, to want to kind of head in, and go in and slay your dragons, and not everyone is up for slaying their dragons. Right? So, but if you have made that, if you’re like, yeah, yeah, bring it on, bring it on. Then, you know, that’s the work that I do with people, and I train other professionals to do that kind of work too. And we can do that, in, in a relatively short amount of time. You know, I’ve got a five-week, program where we can turn that around, in five weeks. More in-depth program for those that are wrestling with some bigger, bigger mental health challenges. So, so it can be done, in the space of a pregnancy. But you do have to be committed to that, and again not everybody is up for that kind of inner work, unfortunately.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:37:31:

Yeah, that makes total sense because I know there’s… For example, things from my life that I was not ready to tackle in my 20s. Timing is important. I think in understanding that, like you said, some people, their goal might just be to make it through the pregnancy. Make it through the birth, they might have to dissociate a little bit. They might have to, you know, remove feeling in some way from the process. But that’s their goal. And then we can support them in that. And then there’s other people, like you said, who are ready to clear all of the blockages and just, yeah, let it go.

Alexia Leachman – 00:38:06:

It’s an opportunity to just, and that’s what I chose to do. And I think when I, the more I was learning around pregnancy and I really got into prenatal psychology and the work of Dr. Thomas Verny and an understanding on, you know, what the baby is experiencing when you were pregnant. Once I got really clued into that, I was like, okay, now I’m healing my stuff. I just want to like go all in here because I know that this is really good for my baby. And, and also for me as a mother, you know, cause once you’re on the other side of that, there’s all this focus on the birth, but you know, the minute that baby’s out, you’re now hitting parenthood. And so now there’s a whole new barrel of fun weight if you’re on the other side of that. And that little baby is the only thing it’s trained to do is to push all your buttons, right? So why not work on that stuff before they arrive so that they are pushing buttons that don’t do anything anymore. And you don’t get so stressed as a mother. I think that all of my healing that I did in my pregnancy helped me to be a good mom, you know, because I wasn’t getting stressed, you know, with the lack of sleep and all of that, you’re in a vulnerable place. So if you’re also wrestling with levels of anxiety and postpartum depression, because your mental health is feeling low, then that’s not going to help you. Whereas if you’ve done the emotional resilience work, then you can handle the lack of sleep, you can handle those things a lot more easily. And you can tune into your intuition to be able to know what is the right decision for me and my baby, because all babies are different. So you don’t feel like, I didn’t realize at the time, but I didn’t read any parenting books. And again, when women have got this huge collection of parenting books, they’re looking for the answers, looking for the answers. And that’s because they don’t have it inside, right? Whereas if you have it inside, you don’t need a book. So you just don’t, well, what do I need? What does my baby need? Okay, I’m going to do that. And you trust it. Whereas if you, you know, if you don’t trust it, this is why you need the book. Well, so-and-so says we need to do this, so I’m going to do that. Actually, your baby might need something different and you need to be able to tune into that. So I think doing that work upfront pays off huge, huge dividends. But again, not everyone is up for that. And that’s fine. We go at our own pace.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:40:03:

That makes perfect sense, though, that if you work on mental health issues related to needing to feel in control while you’re pregnant and during the birth, that that could. Pass on benefits to the parenting phase when, you know, it’s impossible to control everything and you feel very out of control. So getting used to, like you said, using your intuition and accepting, you know, when things aren’t going well, instead of trying to fight it.

Alexia Leachman – 00:40:31:

Yeah. Yeah, that’s a huge, huge help. Would definitely recommend it. I know that the healing journey, can sometimes be this, wiggly line, that’s full of tears and mess. But you know, it you come out stronger, you come out, I think happier better person for it. But it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, so that’s also fine.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:40:49:

Yeah. And so you mentioned peer support groups, and I know you provide that service and others do as well. Can you give a brief outline of kind of the steps someone would need to go through to kind of clear their blockages related to tokophobia or extreme terror related to childbirth?

Alexia Leachman – 00:41:07:

So I’ll share the way that I do that because that’s the way I know and I don’t use any other methods. So it’s very simple. It’s a five-step process and I detail it in both of my books. So I have people reading my books that are able to just clear their tokophobia on their own if they want. So the first thing is just identify the fear, first thing. So fear of pain, classic, you know, it’s on everyone’s list, fear of losing control, that kind of thing. And then the second stage is like to tune into it. Like my fear of pain, if I was thinking about pain and birth, my legs would cross over, I’d be really tense, I’d be like tight and like, there’s all this tension in my body and I’m frowning and, you know, like that thought of pain would make my whole body want to shut down. Right. So for me, that feeling of thinking of pain would make me hit like intensity of 10 out of 10 easily. And so that’s what I’m looking for is a rating. It’s discrete thinking, how does this thing right now affect you in your mind, in your body? That’s what you’re looking for. Because, you know, now if I think about pain, I’m like, oh, it hurts, it hurts. I’ll deal with it. That’s a very different response to, oh, you know, the previous response, right? So we know very quickly what’s going on just based on how it’s, what’s going on in our head and what’s going on in our body. So that’s step two is tuning into it and then giving it a number out of 10. Because I love numbers, my background is business and marketing. And I love it when numbers go in the right direction and you know something’s working. So have a number at the beginning. And then when you do your clearance and you check in again at the end and you go, well, now how much is it out of 10? You know, you’ve done some work if it’s gone down, right? So that’s why it’s really important to get this rating out of 10 on step two. And then step three is the clearance process, which involves repeating some mantras that are in my book. They’re like fill in the blank templates. So if you’re working on fear of pain, you insert the word pain in the blanks and you use your hands in some acupressure points on your face, which is the tap pose, which comes from the tapas acupressure technique. And so you’re just, you know, repeating these mantras, thinking of the thing that you’re now working on, the fear of pain, while repeating these mantras. And that might take you 10 minutes, 15 minutes. When I cleared my fear of needles and injections, I didn’t have very long because she was getting the needles ready. So I had like less than five minutes in the corridor. So I didn’t do the full version. I just did an emergency part and I was able to get rid of that in under five minutes. Personally, I’m not saying that every clearance takes that long, but I was doing clearing fears in between contractions as well. So, you know, when your contractions are at three minutes, I was also clearing fears in that window. So you can clear stuff very quickly. But when you’re looking at something like tokophobia, you know, I had 40 different fears to be clearing. And so, you know, each one could take 15 minutes and then it could also take you 30 minutes because maybe there’s a lot of energy there that you need to kind of get out your system. So that’s how long it takes. So let me just get back to the process. So you’ve got step one, identify it. Step two, tune into it. Step three, the clearance method, which might take you 10, 15 minutes. And then step four is tuning into again, where am I now on the thing? So we tuned into it before. Now we’re going to tune into it, see if it’s gone down. And then the final step, step five is the opposite. And this is really important. You might’ve heard me speak about opposites already, how we have these opposites on the outside of our life because of what’s going on the inside. We always need to work on the opposite because there’s balance in the world. The world is always trying to put things into balance. So if you’ve just taken a lot of energy, because it’s an energy clearance method, out of one end pain, well, you need to now start looking at pleasure because that’s the opposite. Or if you’re looking at control, losing control, well, you now need to look at what you’ve got going on over being in control. And so once you clear this, both sides, you know, being out of control and being in control, letting go, holding on, this is where the magic happens. And when I talked earlier about this, you know, balancing that fine line in terms of being able to let go and be in control at the same time, that’s how you do it. It’s because we’re doing the opposites work. And so this is how it might take up to an hour to do one clearance because losing control might take you 20 minutes. And when you do, you know, being in control, well, then suddenly that’s going to take you 20 minutes to do so you could be looking at an hour. But it goes down the more you go through the process because you’re clearing more and more of your energy that’s been locked in for so many years. And so as you sort of maybe a week or two in of doing a clearance every day or so, you could be taking only 10 minutes over that clearance. So it is a consistent approach. Once you’ve mapped out your fears, you’ve written them all out, and you just literally tick each one off one by one. It’s just like a clearance to-do list. That’s basically what it is. That’s what I call it. And it’s very methodical. And before you know it, you’re sleeping better. Like after about a week, people notice they sleep less because their nervous system is being fired as often. And so they’re feeling calmer. They sleep, they fall asleep quicker because again, they don’t have all these stresses whirring around in their head. So it’s a system, a way of healing that works very, very quickly and has a really remarkable impact on all aspects of you. You know, you don’t just have to work on birth fears. I work with business owners and I work with sports people, like, you know, people in the performing arts. We have fears in all aspects of our life, but it all started in my tokophobia journey. And so, yeah, that’s how I created it.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:45:55:

Yeah. So people can find more details about that in your books, which we’ll link to in the show notes. And I think it’s interesting that the only way to kind of overcome it is to go through it. Because it sounds like what you’re doing in the process and steps two and four is you’re actually like initiating those feelings, like letting them bubble up, what you would feel when, you know, when you think about pain in childbirth and when you think about needles and actually feeling the feeling.

Alexia Leachman – 00:46:23:

Yeah.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:46:24:

And then you’re doing the clearing of it. And then you try to feel it again and see what you feel.

Alexia Leachman – 00:46:30:

Yeah.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:46:30:

Correct?

Alexia Leachman – 00:46:30:

Because the mantras that you’re saying, because that stuff is deep within you. Whereas you think about things like hypnosis, which is like putting information in or putting some conditioning and suggestion. This is not that. It’s the opposite of that. We’re pulling things out. And so the mantras are constructed in a way to kind of, they’re almost acting like little fishing hooks to go and find the thing. We’re saying certain things that will find the way that, so if you, you know, if you, one of the mantras is, you know, I use opposite states. I love pain and I hate pain. So as you’re in the top position going, well, I love pain. There’s a part of you inside going, no, I don’t. No, I don’t. And you’re saying it. And so there’s huge conflict between what you’re saying out loud and what the inside of you is like going no and putting the brakes on and like, you know, resisting.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:47:13:

You say I love pain as a mantra?

Alexia Leachman – 00:47:15:

Yeah. Yeah. And so, but eventually the resistance inside of you. Gives up and goes, oh, and then you realize, actually pain’s useful. Like pain is an important signal for my body. If I didn’t know, like if you were running along the road and then suddenly like whacked your foot and knocked your toe off and it was bleeding profusely and you didn’t know about it and you carried on going, you’d bleed out by the end of the day and you’d be dead. The pain is important and you go, oh look, I’ve hurt my foot, right, I need to go and get help. So in birth, if there’s something not wrong, you need to feel that and go, midwife, I’m feeling something, you know, you need to flag it. So that’s really important signal from your body. Your body’s not playing tricks with you and trying to be really awkward. It’s working with you. So the minute you recognize that and you go, oh, okay, well, I don’t have to like pain, but I understand it. And I’m not triggered by it. And that’s the big deal. That’s the real clincher that is, because a lot of women, they fear pain so much that even the idea of it. And we know this research. We know that when you just the fear of pain worsens your experience of pain. So the minute you don’t fear it, your body’s not primed in the same way. You don’t fear it as much and you don’t experience it as much. And that’s really crucial. So if you now have cleared your fear of pain around childbirth, now you don’t kick in the fear, tension, pain cycle in the same way. Your body’s not tense. We know that that has a huge impact on how things feel in birth already. So by working on your fear of pain is huge because you are accepting of it and you’re not fighting it because it’s the fighting. It’s that resistance force that’s not helping you and that’s triggering your nervous system and all of the physiological impact that that brings with it. If you like. Yeah, pain, whatever. Bring it on. I don’t care. Well, yeah, you’re not bothered by it. And actually it doesn’t really hurt as much as you thought it did anyway. You’re completely fine with it. It is, that’s what the mantras are doing. They’re beating down your internal resistance and kind of wearing that part of you out so that you’re like, oh, right then, losing out of control. Oh, I’m okay with that, actually, you know. And then you realize that there are so many situations where being out of control is actually brilliant, like sex, for example. If you were trying to control that to the nth degree, it wouldn’t be as fun. It’s when you’re out of control that that really is where it kicks in. So you start seeing these alternative perspectives that you didn’t see before because you were so rigid in your thinking. Does that make sense?

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:49:31:

Yeah, it’s fascinating. So Alexia, I feel like we’ve learned so much from you today. And I hope this is really helpful for people listening who have… really struggled with their fear or terror around all things related to childbirth and reproduction. Can you end by sharing with us maybe like an inspiring story of somebody who was able to clear their fears and kind of go through this process?

Alexia Leachman – 00:49:55:

Yeah, I have so many, but I’m going to pick one. And some of these are on my Fear Free Childbirth podcast. If anybody wants to hear any lovely stories, then head over to that. But my favorite story is Susie. And so Susie, you know, she said she had tokophobia and she was using my I think she’s my book and she used some of my online tools to help her to clear her fears. And so she went on to then have two babies. But in her second, like her first birth wasn’t, I think there was some aspects of it that she wanted to heal. So her second birth was very, very healing. And she loved it. Like she loved the pregnancy experience. She loved giving birth. She just loved everything about it. But they were like, no, we’re done with kids. No more. But about a year after that, she was like, I really like giving birth. I really like pregnancy. And so she decided to become a surrogate and said to her partner, yeah, I think I’m going to be a surrogate, I think I’m going to do it. What do you think? And he’s like, okay, right. So she went on to be a surrogate for two babies, having started her journey as being someone with tokophobia, which that’s just for me, that’s mind blowing. Because, you know, just getting over your fear to be able to have your own babies is, you know, I think that’s brilliant. But to then go, I’m going to now do this for other people. I just think it’s nuts. So, I mean, what an incredible turnaround for Susie. And what an incredible thing to be able to gift other people as well. So, yeah, I think that’s going to be my favorite story.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:51:13:

Well, thank you so much, Alexia, for sharing your wisdom with us and your gifts. And we definitely encourage everybody to go to check out your podcast and your resources and we’ll put everything in the show notes. So thanks again for joining us.

Alexia Leachman – 00:51:25:

Thank you, Rebecca.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:51:27:

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