If you’ve ever found yourself wrestling with fears around pregnancy and birth — perhaps so strong they shape your choices, shut down conversations, or push you to avoid motherhood altogether — you are not alone.
In this episode of the Tik-Tokophobia podcast, I’m diving into something that rarely gets discussed, even among birth professionals: how the trauma of our own birth is often the root cause of intense fears like tokophobia.
This isn’t just theory. It’s something I’ve lived, worked through myself, and now see echoed in so many women I help daily. We owe it to ourselves — and to those we serve — to recognise how much our earliest experiences shape everything that follows, especially around birth.
Why Talk Trauma at the Very Beginning?
When I was on my own healing journey, trying to find a way out of the darkness of tokophobia, I realised I couldn’t ignore the moment my own life began: being born. For 80% of the clients I support, birth trauma—their own birth trauma—is the main thread holding up their reproductive fear.
Here’s what I want every woman and birth worker to know: healing starts with honest, curious conversation. I hope this episode inspires you to ask brave questions—of yourself, your clients, and perhaps even your own parents.
Key Themes from This Episode
1. Your Own Birth: The “Hidden Root” of Tokophobia
- Most conversations about birth trauma centre on women’s birth experiences, not the trauma we may have sustained as babies being born. This is a crucial distinction.
- I share how I had zero details about my own birth (my mum had sadly passed away), but when I set an intention to heal any trauma that might be lurking there, it unleashed an avalanche of old pain… and unshackled me from a lifelong weight I couldn’t name.
- JJ, my cohost, reveals how learning she’d experienced a traumatic birth (cord around her neck, separated from mum, no cuddles, no breastfeeding) finally made sense of the “tidal wave of terror” she felt when she saw a positive pregnancy test—even though she’d never consciously understood why.
- Takeaway: Even if you (or your clients) don’t remember a traumatic birth, or if family stories are absent or vague, the body remembers. Trauma embeds itself in our cells—often shaping our identity and choices for decades.
2. It’s Not (Just) About Avoiding Pain — It’s About Control, Safety, and Survival
- For many tokophobic women, it’s not simply fear of pain or labour, but the terror of being out of control—trapped, overwhelmed, or forced to endure something beyond their power to escape.
- We draw direct lines between the themes of our own birth experience (feeling pressured, induced before we’re ready, getting stuck, not having a say, being separated), and the adult experience of tokophobia.
- This is especially true for women who were born by c-section, forceps, or with medical interventions—they may struggle later with initiating action, feeling ready, or finishing big transitions.
3. Why Birth Professionals, Therapists, & Support Partners Must Look Farther Back
- Too often, therapy and support for birth fears start with childhood memories at best, or with recent trauma. But as I say in this episode: “We need to go way further back.” If we’re not looking at birth and pre-birth, we’re missing the point (and possibly leaving women to struggle alone).
- There’s mounting evidence (see The Case for Reproductive Anxiety Disorder white paper) that these early traumas underpin not just tokophobia, but wider reproductive anxieties and mood disorders.
- As professionals, we must get comfortable talking sensitively about a woman’s own birth—not just the births she’s attended, witnessed, or heard stories about.
4. Language Matters: Primary and Secondary Tokophobia—Let’s Get Specific
- The language we use about birth trauma is muddy. “Primary tokophobia” is usually defined as “fear of birth in someone who has never been pregnant”—but if her own birth was traumatic, that is a major trauma!
- We call for more clarity and nuance in how we discuss and document “birth trauma”—not just for our clients, but in research and professional training.
5. Healing the Root—What’s Possible?
- You don’t have to know every detail of your birth to heal it. In my work (and through the Head Trash Clearance method), we often clear old trauma “blind”—by setting an intention to heal anything that’s still driving anxiety or avoidance. The shift can be profound and life-altering.
- Once I healed my own birth trauma, the “heaviness” lifted and the exit appeared—for the first time. I see this in my clients again and again: clear the foundational wound, and everything else starts to collapse.
- Fearless Birthing is built around this emotional clearance work—practical, fast, and deeply respectful of where you are and what feels safe.
What Does This Mean for You—or the Women You Support?
If you feel paralysed by birth fear (even if you don’t consciously know “why”), there’s likely an old, unprocessed memory at work.
As a professional, if you’re working with women who seem “irrationally” afraid, disengaged, or angry about pregnancy and birth, it may be rooted in their own earliest experience.
You don’t need all the details to help—the body carries what the mind cannot remember.
Gentle Next Steps
If this resonates, I want you to know you’re not alone — and you’re not crazy. Whether you’re a woman struggling with reproductive anxiety, or a professional witnessing it in others, healing is possible.
👉 Listen to this episode of Tik-Tokophobia:
If you’d like more tools, support, or professional training on how to safely address these deep-rooted fears, Fearless Birthing is here — with programmes for both women and practitioners. And for those who want the science and evidence behind it, explore the white paper The Case for Reproductive Anxiety Disorder.
Let’s rewrite the story of birth fear — starting at the very beginning.
With warmth and fierce hope,
Alexia Leachman
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Written by Alexia Leachman, creator of the Head Trash Clearance method and the Fearless Birthing framework. For more resources, visit FearlessBirthing.com or join our next practitioner training.