I want to share Becky’s story of clearing her pregnancy and birth fears. Everyone’s experience is different and we’re all a bit nosey – or is that just me 😉
Becky came to me for help with her tokophobia.
The thing about tokophobia is that it can often be accompanied by other mental health conditions like anxiety or depression. At best this exacerbates the tokophobia, and at worst, it prevents the tokophobia from shifting.
So when Becky told me that she was also suffering with OCD, I knew that we would have to deal with that in order to address her tokophobia.
I want to share Becky’s story with you because it has a happy ending, in more ways than one. I hope that by sharing it, it will give you hope if you too are someone who suffers with either tokophobia or OCD.
Meet Becky
I’ve struggled with my anxiety and OCD for as long as I can remember. Over the years by trying numerous different methods of therapy, I’ve learned techniques that I continue to use today but still struggled off and on. I have general anxiety (crowds, enclosed spaces, unknowns) and OCD (fear of contamination) and when the thought of getting pregnant was a reality I developed tokophobia. I always felt like I would never overcome these anxieties. I also always felt alone with my struggles and that no one else experienced or understood the struggles.
My general anxiety and OCD have been going on for basically my whole life and tokophobia for about 3 years. I felt like no one understood as it’s always been hard to find someone who specialises in OCD and when I started researching tokophobia I found that it was even harder to find someone who specialised it it.
Becky, what support were you looking for?
I have OCD and over the last 20 years I had tried numerous methods of therapy-talking to psychiatrists, taking medications, cognitive behaviour therapy, hypnotherapy, neurofeedback/biofeedback.
I got married almost 3 years ago at the age of 37 and wanted to try for a baby, but as that desire became closer to a reality I started to experience extreme fear about pregnancy. I began searching the internet for information around this fear and found the definition of tokophobia and realized that was exactly what I was experiencing. I started to research therapists in my area and found that a lot of them were not familiar with tokophobia and had no experience in helping someone with tokophobia. I was extremely discouraged as I’ve struggled with OCD, general anxiety and now tokophobia.
I was looking for someone who had experience with tokophobia because I wanted someone who really understood the issue and had experience with the issue. That was what I found so inspiring about Alexia, was that she just didn’t have knowledge of tokophobia, she had experienced it herself.
Where you were at pregnancy and birth wise?
I was planning on pregnancy, and started to track my fertile window. But when I got within the fertile window, I was too scared to try and get pregnant.
How did you feel about pregnancy and birth?
Since I’m now 40 years old, I have extreme fears about pregnancy/birth. My fears are mainly around complications happening during the birth.
At what point did you decide to clear your fears?
I was trying to work up the courage to TTC (trying to conceive) and I decided to try it because I felt desperate to try again and figured even if it didn’t work, it wouldn’t hurt to try something new.
Upon researching tokophobia on the Internet, I came across Alexia and her Head Trash Clearance method. I was skeptical at first because I had tried so many other methods over the years that I felt didn’t work. I am in the United States so wasn’t sure if doing something online would work.
Head Trash Clearance is the method I came up with to clear my fears when I had tokophobia, You can find out more about it here. I share it in both my books, Clear Your Head Trash and Fearless Birthing,
What made you choose to give Head Trash Clearance a go?
It was something new and someone who had tokophobia created it, used it and it worked for her. That’s why I decided to work with Alexia because she had first hand experience with the anxiety and technique.
What fears did you tackle using Head Trash Clearance?
- Fear of needles and injections
- blood,
- unknowns
- contamination
- diseases
- complications
What was your experience of clearing your fears like?
Some took longer than others, sometimes I’d try and clear something and it didn’t feel like I cleared it so I would stop for the day and try the next day. Usually within that 2nd try it would be cleared. I also felt there was power within me when I would say the fear in my head or out loud, as just thinking about it no longer had a hold on me if I could say it and acknowledge it.
By working with Alexia I was able to acknowledge my fears but at the same time acknowledge a love/hate side of those fears. I achieved that by identifying numerous layers to those fears. Then once I was able to identify and acknowledge all the layers I could let go of the control they had over me.
How did you feel about your fears after clearing them?
I felt like they don’t have control over me. I felt like I could acknowledge they are there but didn’t affect me like used to.
Now I feel like either I no longer have those fears or if those fears creep back up I can dismiss them more easily.
How long did it take you to clear your fears?
Most things took 5-10 minutes, some of the bigger ones for me took up to 20-30 minutes but I would break up that 20-30 minutes over two days.
How do you think Head Trash Clearance has helped you?
I think it gave me the power to face my fears head on and acknowledge that for every fear there is a good and bad side to it which diminishes just thinking of only the bad.
And it’s really helped with my OCD.
I was officially diagnosed with OCD at the age of 20, once I was able to find someone who specialised in OCD. I’ve been on and off different medications over the years, spoken to psychiatrists, psychologists, done Cognitive Behavioor Therapy, hypnotherapy, neurofeedback/biofeedback. Over the years I feel I’ve been able to take a tid bit from here and there to use when my OCD flared up, but nothing really seemed to help completely. Head Trash Clearance is the only thing that has really made a difference.
I feel like my OCD has gone down by 80 percent!
I used to struggle with lots of anxieties and obsessions/compulsions and have found that with the Head Trash Clearance method I can comfort those thoughts and subside the fears that come along with them much quicker. Before I would dwell on those obsessions/compulsions for hours, if not days. But now I feel I can subsidy those thoughts and feelings within minutes.
So how are things now for you, Becky?
I’ve been off birth control for almost 3 years but have only started TTC within the last month due to tokophobia. I worked with the HTC method for 7 months and in the 7th month I feel ready to TTC. I’m easing into it by tracking my fertile period and actively TTC within 1 or 2 days within that window to see how I felt.
To my surprise instead of feeling more fear than excitement, I felt more excitement than fear!
Would you like to overcome your tokophobia?
If you would like my support in overcoming your tokophobia or anxiety, then please visit here to find our more about working with me.
If you would prefer to tackle your fears yourself, then I’d like to invite you to check out my Fearless Birthing program. This self-paced online course guides you in overcoming your pregnancy and birth fears, anxiety and tokophobia.
Alexia supports families planning pregnancy and birth. She helps them to overcome their fears and feel calm and confident about birth and pregnancy.
Alexia also trains birth professionals in the Fearless Birthing, a unique approach to birth preparation that is ideal for those who have fears around birth.
- Erin’s Tokophobia Healing Journey - 6th March 2024
- How Unhealed Tokophobia Can Affect You In Unexpected Ways - 27th February 2024
- Overcoming Birth Trauma: Heather’s Journey to Positive Birth - 14th December 2023
