Tokophobia Support

Tokophobia, the fear of childbirth, is severe enough to interfere with your quality of life! It doesn’t have to be that way! Find out more about it’s causes and how to overcome it here;

Tokophobia is a fear of childbirth and can be a debilitating condition that affects many women.  It can be accompanied by anxiety, depression, avoidance behaviours, excessive worry or intrusive thoughts and phobias.  Having this fear can prevent you from starting the family that you may want, or impacting your ability to have a healthy pregnancy and delivery.

78% of women report generalised fears associated with pregnancy and childbirth, but often those fears are not listened to and are therefore left untreated and unsupported.  However, it is important to recognise that tokophobia itself, is a rare, but treatable condition, as with any other type of anxiety, fear or phobia, but it is unlikely to go away without professional support.

Some women are so afraid of giving birth that they don’t want to go through with a pregnancy even if they really want to have a baby.  This severe fear of birth will have a direct impact on how a woman prepares for and makes decisions about her pregnancy and birth leading to other mental and emotional health issues postnatally. 

Tokophobia can occur during pregnancy, and can even exist as far back as early adulthood or as a teenager. 

Causes of tokophobia?

One of the biggest influences on your perceptions and expectations of pregnancy and birth is what you have heard and learnt from those closest to you about pregnancy and birth.  Those that you know, trust and love have profound power over your own birth mindset.  This essentially has trained you to fear childbirth long before you were at a point in your life when you felt ready to have children. 

Your own perceptions and expectations of birth will also be largely influenced by your own feelings of yourself.  So what you think and feel about yourself as a person, wife, mother….generally every aspect of yourself will feed into your phobia, how you view yourself and what you think of your ability to cope.

The other two common causes of tokophobia are women who have had a previous negative birth experiences that have gone unresolved or unprocessed, or those who have experienced sexual abuse, assault or rape and the thought of your body being occupied by a baby or experiencing childbirth feeling vulnerable, can expose or re-trigger those past experiences. That is where my emotional health programme really helps to support women with strong fears and phobias, as we will breakdown all life experiences that have created how you feel today, and not just the immediate problem that presents itself.

Treatment and Support for Tokophobia?

First of all don’t suffer alone.  Reach out for emotional health support as early on in your pregnancy as possible, if not before.  Through my Mother Nurture Method programme, I help new and expectant mums overcome their anxiety, depression or trauma, so that they can lead a more balanced and emotionally in control life and be able to make decisions that are right for them, not led my traumas, fears or phobias.

Through my programme, we look at your core belief systems about yourself and birth, your negative internal commentary, perceptions and expectations of birth, your natural thinking styles and how that’s impacting what you believe to be true, how to declutter your mind, the impact of stress and anxiety on your mind and body, and many other areas that will help you to be more in control of your thoughts, feelings and emotions both in life and in pregnancy and birth. 

At the same time we will also develop your inner confidence and self-worth, because ultimately what you think and feel about yourself will have the biggest influence on your journey.

A lot of the time, women who are experiencing tokophobia, feel that their treatment and even decision making about their bodies, pregnancy, birth or motherhood journey is in someone else’s hands and under someone else’s control which can heighten the feelings of fear and your deep rooted phobias. 

To take back control of your journey, you need to feel emotionally in control which is what The Mother Nurture Method emotional health programme will do for you. 

To find out more, book in for your FREE tokophobia support call here:

Support available in North Herts (Stevenage, Letchworth, Hitchin, Baldock, Knebworth, Royston) and online nationwide across England.