Tokophobia & RAD Awareness Training for Professionals
Professional Certification for Those Supporting Women Through Fertility, Pregnancy, Birth, Postpartum, Hormonal Health, Trauma & Reproductive Wellbeing
A clear, trauma-aware training that finally explains why so many women feel unsafe in their bodies – and what professionals can do to support them.
Created by the leading voice in tokophobia and Reproductive Anxiety Disorder.
Become a RAD-Aware Professional
Access the training and certification today.
Reproductive fear has been quietly shaping women’s lives for generations. Most professionals have never been taught how to recognise it – until now.
The Silent Truth About Women’s Anxiety
Women experience twice the levels of anxiety that men do – across every life stage. But the part we rarely talk about is this: A significant portion of that anxiety is reproductive in nature.
Not the “head” kind of anxiety. The embodied kind.
The kind that shows up as:
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dread, overwhelm, panic
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avoidance, intrusive thoughts, shutdown
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decision paralysis, fertility anxiety
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perimenopausal spirals
This is not “just stress” or “just hormones.” It’s fear woven into the body – shaped by cultural conditioning, medical experiences, puberty imprinting, hormonal change, identity shifts, reproductive trauma… and yes, pregnancy and birth.
And most professionals have never been given the frameworks to understand any of this.
That’s why this training matters.
At the Severe End of This Spectrum Lies Tokophobia
The Hidden Reality of Women’s Reproductive Anxiety
❊ Women experience anxiety at more than twice the rate of men.
❊ Up to 35% of women experience tokophobia – most of them silently.
❊ 1 in 3 women describe birth as traumatic.
❊ Anxiety can spike 3–5× during perimenopause.
❊ Most women with reproductive fear never tell a professional, meaning it goes unnoticed and unsupported.
These are the invisible realities that sit beneath tokophobia, and at the heart of Reproductive Anxiety Disorder (RAD).
Tokophobia – the extreme fear of pregnancy and birth – affects an estimated 5% to 35% of women. And yet most people – including professionals – have never heard of it.
But tokophobia is just the tip of the iceberg. Beneath it is something much bigger, more patterned, and more clinically meaningful: Reproductive Anxiety Disorder (RAD)
A trauma-linked, culturally conditioned nervous-system pattern that affects women:
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long before pregnancy
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during pregnancy
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after birth
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through fertility struggles
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during perimenopause
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and across later reproductive years
Most professionals don’t know how to spot it. Even fewer know how to talk about it. And almost no one knows how to support it safely.
This training changes that.
Why Tokophobia Is an Anxiety Disorder. Not a “Fear of Birth”
Tokophobia has been misunderstood for decades.
It’s not a simple phobia.
It’s not cognitive.
It’s not irrational.
Tokophobia is an embodied anxiety disorder shaped by:
❊ implicit trauma
❊ early puberty imprint
❊ medical trauma
❊ boundary trauma
❊ reproductive shame
❊ hormonal shifts
❊ identity fears
❊ nervous system overwhelm
Once you understand it through the RAD lens, everything changes:
Your assessments change.
Your questions change.
Your care changes.
Your clients feel safer, sooner.
This Training Is For You If You Support Women Through:
❊ Fertility: including TTC support, IVF guidance, fertility coaching.
❊ Pregnancy & birth: midwives, doulas, antenatal educators, perinatal mental health specialists.
❊ Postpartum: therapists, counsellors, postpartum practitioners, maternal wellbeing coaches.
❊ Hormonal transitions: perimenopause coaches, women’s health practitioners, nutritionists, mind-body specialists.
❊ Mental health & trauma: somatic practitioners, trauma therapists, bodyworkers, anxiety specialists.
If your work touches any part of a woman’s reproductive, hormonal, emotional or embodied life – RAD is already part of your world.
This training simply gives you the language for it.
This isn’t just a course. It’s the new professional language that finally explains what women have been experiencing for decades.
Why This Training Exists
You are already working with women who carry RAD – they just don’t have the language for what they’re feeling.
Women don’t always say “I’m afraid.” But their bodies do.
The client who freezes when pregnancy is mentioned.
The fertility client overwhelmed by fear they can’t explain.
The pregnant woman who seems “fine” one minute and panicked the next.
The new mother drowning in intrusive thoughts and shame.
The perimenopausal woman whose anxiety suddenly spikes out of nowhere.
RAD is not a niche problem.
It is a lifespan issue.
This training gives you the clarity and confidence to finally understand what’s really going on – and how to respond safely.
This training helps professionals see what has been missed, misnamed or misunderstood – often for a woman’s entire life.
What You’ll Learn (and Why It Matters)
This is not a surface-level tour of “fear in pregnancy.”
It is a deep, robust, trauma-aware professional training grounded in:
- two white papers: The Case for RAD + Fear Sells: But It Doesn’t Serve
- Betrayed By Your Biology; my book on tokophobia and RAD
- the RAD Responsible™ Storytelling Framework
- more than a decade of therapeutic and perinatal experience
- thousands of women’s lived stories
This training gives you the clarity professionals tell me they wished they’d had years ago.
You’ll learn:
The Hidden Roots of Reproductive Fear
The developmental threads most professionals never connect:
- In-utero and birth imprint trauma
- Puberty shame and reproductive trauma
- Sexual, medical and procedural trauma
- Body distrust
- Intergenerational fear
- Cultural conditioning
- Media-driven fear cycles
You will finally understand why women feel what they feel.
The Nervous System of Tokophobia & RAD
How fear becomes embodied, and why the body speaks before the mind:
- Panic, dissociation, shutdown
- Fight/flight/freeze/fawn patterns
- Chronic activation
- Somatic markers
- Why cognitive therapy often fails
This helps you recognise when a nervous system is overwhelmed – and how to respond safely.
The Impact of RAD on Fertility, Birth & Motherhood
This is where the “fear story” becomes a life story;
- Fear-based infertility
- Avoidance cycles
- The illusion of choice
- Fear-driven C-sections
- Postnatal anxiety
- Bonding disruption
- Relationship rupture
- The impact on creativity and life trajectory
This goes far beyond pregnancy.
How RAD & Tokophobia Present
Across all life stages:
- Women who “aren’t ready” for pregnancy or who are avoiding pregnancy altogether
- Women who collapse into terror with a positive test
- Pregnant clients with acute anxiety
- Those with birth trauma
- Women who appear “fine” but are physiologically overwhelmed.
You’ll gain the clarity to recognise what’s really happening behind the words.
How to Spot It Early: Screening & Red Flags
The questions that reveal more than questionnaires ever could.
You’ll learn:
- RAD-sensitive screening questions
- Red flags and subtle cues
- What not to say
- How to avoid client shutdown
- How to validate without overwhelming
This alone is worth the training.
What Actually Helps (and What Doesn’t)
You’ll learn:
- Why CBT and exposure therapy can do harm
- Why talking is not enough
- Why body-first approaches work
- The principles of trauma-aware support
- When to refer out
- How to stay within scope
This is not about fixing women. It’s about understanding them – safely, ethically, and without bypassing the body.
This training helps professionals see what has been missed, misnamed or misunderstood – often for a woman’s entire life.
What RAD Looks Like Across a Woman’s Life
RAD is not a pregnancy problem. It is a lifespan pattern of safety, fear, and embodiment.
And it expresses differently at every stage:
Puberty
Puberty is often the first place RAD roots itself.
This is where girls absorb messages of shame, danger, and distrust.
Body image anxiety, painful periods, medical or procedural trauma, and eating disorders often emerge as early coping mechanisms.
For many, this is the moment their body first stops feeling like a safe place to live.
Before pregnancy
Fear shows up as avoidance, ambivalence, overthinking, and panic.
Women may experience disgust, shame, or OCD-style rumination around pregnancy, sex, or bodily change.
“I’m just not ready” becomes a protective strategy, not a preference.
This is the stage where RAD hides in plain sight.
During pregnancy
The body-level fear becomes harder to hide.
Panic, dissociation, overwhelm, intrusive thoughts, and anxiety around responsibility or loss of control are common.
Women may gravitate toward hyper-medicalised choices, rigid plans, or extreme information-gathering – not out of preference, but survival.
Birth
For many women with RAD, birth feels like an uncontrollable event.
Fear-driven C-sections, collapse, freeze responses, dissociation, and decision-making overwhelm can dominate the experience.
Even medically “straightforward” births can feel terrifying when the underlying anxiety has never been understood.
Postpartum
Postnatal RAD often shows up as bonding anxiety, intrusive thoughts, shame, hypervigilance, or a sense of emotional disconnection.
Women may feel stuck between “I should be coping” and “I don’t feel safe,” with little language to explain what’s happening inside.
Perimenopause
Hormonal shifts during perimenopause can unmask reproductive fear that has been dormant for decades.
Old anxieties resurface, identity feels destabilised, and women often describe an overwhelming sense of “not recognising themselves.”
It’s one of the most misunderstood expressions of RAD – and one of the most important for practitioners to recognise.
Why This Training Matters Now
The rates of reproductive fear are rising.
Birth outcomes are worsening.
Anxiety is at an all-time high.
And more women than ever are silently avoiding pregnancy – not because they “don’t want kids,” but because their bodies have never felt safe.
RAD finally gives us a name for this. And naming it is what changes the trajectory.
Professionals who understand RAD change outcomes. Not by doing more, but by seeing differently.
Professionals who understand RAD are better able to:
- identify hidden fear patterns
- prevent escalation and shutdown
- support informed, self-led choices
- reduce re-traumatisation
- protect a woman’s long-term mental health
- create safer emotional environments for birth
This training fills a gap that no other training covers.
RAD is a framework I’ve developed through research, clinical experience, case studies, and the lived stories shared inmy book, Betrayed By Your Biology.
This is original work.
And it’s work that professionals worldwide are hungry for.
Meet Alexia Leachman
Author, researcher, practitioner – and the woman who turned her own severe tokophobia into a global body of work.
My work began with my own lived experience. I had severe tokophobia – a level of reproductive fear that shaped every part of my life. When conventional support failed me, I developed my own trauma-informed approach to healing. That process became the foundation of the methodology I now teach – Head Trash Clearance – and the beginning of a decade-long exploration into how fear lives in the body.
Since then, I’ve supported thousands of women through my digital programmes, books, resources, and tools, helping them unravel deep-rooted reproductive anxiety in a way that is gentle, embodied, and non-cognitive.
I am the host of two leading podcasts on this subject – Fear Free Childbirth and Tik-Tokophobia – which together have reached over 1.8 million listeners worldwide. Through these conversations, I’ve gathered a unique and wide-reaching understanding of women’s fear, trauma, and nervous system patterns across every reproductive life stage.
I am the author of Betrayed By Your Biology, the first book to connect tokophobia to a wider, lifelong pattern I named Reproductive Anxiety Disorder (RAD). My white papers – The Case for RAD and Fear Sells (But It Doesn’t Serve) – introduce a new, trauma-aware framework that is now shaping professional understanding of reproductive fear.
I developed the RAD Framework, Fearless Birthing, and Head Trash Clearance, and I train practitioners, birth workers, therapists, and reproductive health specialists worldwide in how to support women safely, ethically, and effectively.
My mission is simple: To make women feel safe in their bodies again, and to give professionals the clarity and language that has been missing for decades.
Professional Certification & Recognition
After completing the training, you’ll receive:
✼ Tokophobia & RAD Awareness Certification
✼ A digital badge to display on your website/socials
✼ Recognition as a RAD-Aware Practitioner
✼ Permission to use RAD Responsible™ principles in your work
✼ Access to updated modules as the field evolves
This certification is a marker of integrity, safety, and professional excellence – especially as the RAD movement continues to grow.
“After decades working in therapy, education, and ancestral healing, I thought I’d seen it all. Alexia has revealed what every practitioner needs to understand – and what most of us have missed.”
Ready to See What’s Really Driving Women’s Anxiety, Avoidance and Overwhelm?
Join the professionals who are transforming their work with the RAD lens.
What You’ll Walk Away With
You’ll walk away with a radically clearer understanding of reproductive fear, a trauma-informed lens that elevates your entire practice, the ability to identify tokophobia and RAD early, and a gentler, safer way of supporting anxious clients.
You’ll gain a language you’ve never had before, and a skillset that distinguishes your practice in a field that desperately needs more nuance.
Most importantly, you’ll gain clarity that helps women feel deeply seen – often for the first time in their lives.
What This Training Qualifies You To Do
✼ Recognise RAD & tokophobia in clients
✼ Respond safely and trauma-aware
✼ Ask the right questions
✼ Avoid triggering or overwhelming clients
✼ Offer clear, compassionate first-line support
✼ Build safer reproductive conversations
✼ Integrate RAD awareness into your existing work
✼ Support boundaries, choice, and emotional safety
✼ Know when to refer clients for deeper work
This is not a practitioner-level clearance training.
It is the expert awareness training that every professional needs before deeper work is possible.
Your Investment
£697 Early Bird Pricing
This includes:
✻ Full online access (self-paced)
✻ Professional certification
✻ Lifetime access
✻ The complete RAD framework library
✻ Downloadable screening tools
✻ Access to all updated modules as the field evolves
You’ll gain a training that continues to grow with the RAD movement – one that will deepen your work for years to come.
If you support women through any part of their reproductive, hormonal or emotional lives, this is not optional knowledge.
It’s foundational.
“Alexia’s framework connects the dots that every other modality leaves scattered. It’s the missing piece – the bridge between emotional healing, body wisdom, and generational trauma.”
Women have been waiting decades for professionals who can recognise reproductive fear for what it truly is.
If you’re ready to support them with clarity, safety and integrity – this training is your next step.
FAQs
Is this training only for birth or perinatal professionals?
No. RAD affects women across their entire reproductive lifespan – puberty, fertility, pregnancy, birth, postpartum and perimenopause.
If your work touches women’s bodies, hormones, anxiety, identity or trauma, this training is for you.
Do I need prior trauma training?
No. This is an awareness-level certification, not a practitioner-level clearance training.
You’ll learn how to recognise RAD, respond safely, stay in scope, and know when to refer.
How long do I have access?
Lifetime access – including future updates as the RAD framework evolves.
How long does the course take?
Most professionals move through the content in 4–6 hours, but you can go at your own pace.
It’s designed to integrate easily into a busy practice.
Is this relevant if I already work trauma-informed?
Absolutely.
RAD sits at the intersection of trauma, anxiety, reproductive psychology, and women’s identity. Therapists and trauma practitioners consistently tell me this training fills gaps they didn’t know they had.
Is this the same as practitioner training?
No.
This training gives you the awareness-level foundation needed before deeper work is possible.
If you want to become a Fearless Birthing or Head Trash Clearance Practitioner, this is a good starting point.
Does the certification carry professional weight?
Yes. It’s a demonstration of your commitment.
As RAD grows in recognition, this certification signals clarity, safety and excellence in a field that is rapidly evolving.
Can I start today?
Yes – access is immediate.
A New Standard of Care for Women – And You Can Be Part of It
Reproductive fear has shaped women’s lives for generations.
Not because they’re “anxious women,” but because no one ever taught professionals what to look for.
RAD is the framework that changes that.
If you want your work to be safer, clearer, more embodied, and more aligned with the real emotional landscape women are navigating…
This is your next step.