Healthy Mindset Miracles
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Healthy Mindset Miracles
Ep.009 - Alexia's Triumph Over Tokophobia: Empowerment Through Fear Free Childbirth
Episode _ 009
When fear grips the heart at the thought of childbirth, where does one turn? Alexia, our esteemed guest, bravely lays bare her struggle with tokophobia and the journey towards healing through the head trash clearance method she pioneered. Her soul-stirring tales in "Clear Your Head Trash" and "Fearless Birthing" resonate with anyone who's faced the paralyzing force of fear. But Alexia's narrative doesn't halt at personal victory; it's a beacon for countless women worldwide, their path illuminated by her "Fear Free Childbirth Podcast."
Transforming fear into empowerment, Alexia recounts the seismic shift from the security of a planned C-section to the embrace of a home birth, with hypnobirthing as her guiding star. The podcast sails through her story of personal triumph to the collective triumph of women empowered through her work. Each download of her podcast, which has surpassed the 1.6 million mark, represents a heartbeat of change in the narrative of childbirth, and it's a testament to the potency of sharing one's story.
The scope of Alexia's influence extends beyond expectant mothers to the healthcare professionals who stand by their side. With tocophobia often misunderstood and underserved, Alexia's insight is a clarion call for awareness and compassion in perinatal care. As her anecdotes about business growth and athletic prowess suggest, the principles of conquering fear have far-reaching implications, proving once more that the courage found in the delivery room can echo through every facet of life. Join us and witness the transformative power of facing one's deepest fears with grace and determination.
Alexia Leachman Mental Fitness - Emotional Health - Head Trash Clearance Specialist - Mindset Alexia is the founder of Head Trash, and the developer of Head Trash Clearance, a potent clearance technique for getting rid of fears, anxieties, traumas, self-doubts and sabotage. She is the author of Clear Your Head Trash: How to Create Clarity, Confidence and Peace in your Life and Work which teaches how to use Head Trash Clearance. Her book Fearless Birthing shares how this technique can be used to overcome pregnancy and birth fears. Alexia hosts two chart-topping, award-nominated podcasts that together have been downloaded over 1.5m times and are listened to in 180+ countries. The Head Trash Show helps her listeners to improve their mindset while her Fear Free Childbirth podcast helps women prepare for a fearless birth. Both podcasts empower listeners with knowledge, inspiration and mindset techniques, and feature expert guests sharing their wisdom. Alexia is also sought out by those who want to clear the head trash that’s affecting their lives. She has worked with people from all over the world including A-listers and TV personalities to help them lose their fears and anxieties to find calmness, clarity and confidence in their lives. As a trainer, Alexia trains coaches and therapists, doulas and midwives in Head Trash Clearance so that they can help their clients t
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All right. So welcome to healthy mindset miracles. I am Tanisha and I'm so excited to bring you guys our newest cast member. She is on here to talk about her book, to talk about her website. Her name is Alexa and she is a mental fitness, emotional health and a book writer. So she has written a book called health head trash, which is clear your head trash, which is like a very amazing title for this book, and she is also one that talks about getting rid of fears, anxieties, traumas and self doubts, as well as sabotage.
Speaker 1:So she's the author of clear your head. Clear your head trash how to create clarity, confidence and peace in your life, work which teaches how to use head trash clearance. Her book, fearless birthing, shares how the technique can be used to overcoming pregnancy and birth fears. I am so excited to have you with us, alexa. Thank you so much for being a part of our podcast and your story of what you went through with your pregnancy was profound and I know that when you went through that and came through it, that you use that to be able to help others. Let's talk a little bit about that and introduce yourself.
Speaker 2:Sure, well, thank you for having me here to meet you. I'm really thrilled to be here. Yeah, so it all happened for me when I was a business coach and fell pregnant. And what I didn't realize at the time was I was suffering from tocopobia, which is the extreme fear of pregnancy and birth. But because I didn't know that was a thing that existed, I just thought that there was something seriously wrong with me. And so how that felt was when I saw the positive pregnancy test, I just felt this huge pit of terror in my stomach. It just felt so all consuming and that I did not know. I just I couldn't function, basically, and it took me a long time to get over the shock of that being pregnant.
Speaker 2:I say long time. It felt a long time, but we were in out of hospital quite a bit in those early weeks and then, at month seven, I found out I had a miscarriage, which, yes, that was like a gut punch and there was a lot of loss. But the overwhelming fear I felt at that point was relief. And so when I felt relief, I was like whoa, what is wrong with you? Why? How is it that, as a woman, you're feeling relief? Miscarriage?
Speaker 1:Of course this is psychophobia right.
Speaker 2:But again I didn't know that this was what was going on, and so I just thought I was a total mess. So I thought I was suffering from depression. Anyway, I had a lot of anxiety. I've not long lost my mental cancer very suddenly, so I had a lot of grief. I mean, I was really a mess emotionally, and so I just thought it was symptomatic of all of that and I therefore decided I really need to get to the bottom of my anxiety. It was the easiest thing to try and tackle in that moment, and so I hired people.
Speaker 2:I got help to help me feel better, and then, a year later, I got pregnant again, and while I didn't feel the enormous despair and terror this time around, there was definitely a sense of this is a total nightmare. I'm not going to be able to get through this. The only way I'm going to be able to birth is baby is you're going to have to knock me out cold because I cannot be awake or conscious for any of it, and of course you can't do that. You have to kind of be.
Speaker 2:Even with a C-section, you still have to come there, but at least, I wasn't wanting to fall into a pit in the ground and not want to continue life, as it were. Not that I was suicidal, but and some women who suffer from tachyphobia reach such a high level of anxiety and terror that they do feel suicidal. So that is something that women do experience. But that was not my experience, and so at the time I was like so I looked for help, I wanted to try and get the help I could, and I came across it in birthing, and so I tried a lot of that, but it just didn't seem to make any difference to me whatsoever. And I was like this is there's nothing for me here? There's nothing for me. The only way I'm going to be able to deal with this is if I kind of figure this out myself.
Speaker 2:And so I decided I would try and find a way for me to get rid of my own fears, and I'd already trained as a coach. I trained in some therapeutic methods, some techniques, and so I felt like I knew little to make me think, like I could actually sort this out Enough to be dangerous, as it were. So, and that's what I tried to do, and I tested it one day at my first midwife appointment. When she announced in the midwife appointment that I was going to have several injections, I had a massive injection phobia at the time. I'd never every time I would see a needle, I would faint. I'd never be able to leave the doctor's surgery.
Speaker 1:I think that's called white coat syndrome, right.
Speaker 2:Well, the injection phobia is specifically around needles and injections not the doctors.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah I would always faint.
Speaker 2:I never would leave the surgery walking. I'd be carried out or dragged out. So when she announced in the middle of an appointment that I was going to have all these injections I was. The beginnings of a panic attack were kind of very, very evident and she said oh, don't worry, it's not straight away. I've got to get all the needles ready, which did not help at all.
Speaker 2:So, she made me wait outside while she got the needles ready, and while I was waiting outside, like really having a bit of a panic attack, thinking, ok, right, I'm going to try this out, I'm going to try this thing out, and I almost I got appointed to it. I was like you're really good, this is your chance to prove that. And so, yeah, so I did. And then she called me back in and she said, obviously having seen the state of mind I was when she sent me into the corridor and I wasn't there long you know, maybe five minutes Cause there was only three needles actually, which it doesn't take that long to compare so she called me back in and went oh, so you're scared of needles, are you?
Speaker 2:And I was like no, I was like who said that, hang on a minute? Like that was an instant reaction which really caught me by surprise. And so at that point then I was then in a kind of a very weird state. I was like, oh, what? Well, I didn't say that. I said I clearly said that where did that come from? And then we carry on and she goes. I said that, but I was scared, oh, she probably saw it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, did you think she saw it in your face.
Speaker 2:She said what did you do to get over it? And I was like, oh you know, because I was still processing the fact that I just done something and it appeared to have worked, yeah. So we carried on and I put my arm on the table and she went ahead and did all the injections and I'm sitting there and I'm like, wow, I've never made it this far, like ever.
Speaker 1:I mean ever since I was a child.
Speaker 2:I've never, ever had an injection and been okay, so this was a totally new experience for me. And then that's it. I had three injections, we chatted and then I went away. I was like, oh my God. So that kind of made me think, wow, this thing does work. I'm gonna do this for all of my pregnancy fears, and so I decided to write every single one of them down. Now a lot of them, about 30, maybe 40 even.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And so I then tackled everything on my list using the same approach, and then by that was during my second trimester. I did that and then by month seven, I was like, hmm, you know what, I'm gonna ditch that C-section plan and I'm gonna have a home birth. And so that's what I did. I had I decided to go for home birth and then I went to hypnoburthing class to help me prepare, because I was now fear free, as opposed to terrified, and so I could handle hypnoburthing and all the things that hypnoburthing is supporting me. And then I had an amazing seven hour home birth, which was incredible, pain free, really amazing experience. That's an amazing experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, At the bottom of my mind, at the back of my mind, I was like, well, did I do anything there? Was it my thing that worked, or you know, was it? I mean, women have great births all the time. Maybe it was just a fluke, Maybe that was just gonna be my experience anyway. Maybe I didn't do anything at all from that experience. I just think I kept myself busy during my second trimester. But actually maybe it had their impact.
Speaker 2:I don't know, it's hard to tell. Tell me really no. To test it, I needed to get pregnant again, which wasn't at the forefront of my mind at this point, so yeah, so I didn't realize that because I didn't know I had tocopherphobia.
Speaker 2:I didn't know at that point that you can't do anything about it either, and so I didn't realize I'd done anything. That was not, if you like, and so I just went back to business coaching after my baby was born and then carried on, and baby number two came around four years later and I was able to kind of get a handle on whether or not the fears that I'd cleared four years prior were still gone or whether they would come back. And yeah, they'd all gone. I was still. I was really excited about being pregnant again, but this time because I was an older mom, I had a lot of fear-based messaging coming at me from various health care providers because of the high level of risk they perceive women my age to have, and I wasn't like, oh, but that's how it's presented to you.
Speaker 2:And so I had new fears this time round, which I then proceeded to work on, and the second birth I had was I really wanted to at least have the first birth that I had, but if I didn't have that again, that'd be amazing, because obviously there's no guarantee with birth. You don't know how it's gonna go Exactly. But the second one was even. It was euphoric. It was the most incredible experience that I can ever I will ever have, I imagine. And my baby was born in under three hours, arrived still in the amniotic sac, and it was euphoric, it was just an incredible experience.
Speaker 1:Your body and your mind were ready for it.
Speaker 2:Totally aligned. There was no fear, it was just amazing. And I don't know what happened after that, but word got out, let's put it that way, and I don't know how it got out, because I'm not one for. I wasn't one really, for, yeah, I didn't know that many mums or other women that were pregnant.
Speaker 2:So yeah, word got out and I started getting emails from women asking me how I did it, and I didn't know these women. So I started writing explaining a bit in an email what I'd done, how I'd unpacked my fears and a bit of the method that I used. And they were quite long emails, because then it's not a straightforward process to kind of explain to somebody how to unpack your fears and all of that.
Speaker 2:But I just kept getting more of these emails and it was like and I remember one day they'd be like I get another one of these emails, I'm gonna write a book.
Speaker 2:And then I got more, and so that became this book here Fearless Burthing, fearless Burthing. I started writing that when my daughter was three weeks old and once I started writing, that's it, within three months I had 108,000 words and I was like, wow, that just kind of came out all on its own, like the birth, and then I thought, well, hang on a minute, there's a bit of work here because obviously editing and all of that. So then I decided I would share some of the insights and some of the key parts of the book as part of a podcast, because I still had some of these women that wanted answers, that had emailed me and they were pregnant and I was like can't wait to edit the book and publish it and they need to know now because time's ticking. So podcast was an easy way to disseminate the information.
Speaker 1:And so.
Speaker 2:I launched the podcast like a month later or something. In fact, I launched the podcast Once. I decided it's gonna be a podcast. It was between idea and launch. It was less than a week. I just decided I was gonna do it. And then it came out and that podcast just went nuts from the outset, just kind of I don't know if it hit a vein, it hit something, but people were clearly looking for that kind of information.
Speaker 1:And it's cool, it went viral.
Speaker 2:Yeah, fear Free Childbirth Podcast, and that's what women were searching for. That's what they wanted and there really isn't a lot out there for women to experience high levels of fear and birth. So, yeah, it really was satisfying the need. There's a lot of fear around birth because of the way that birth is portrayed in film and TV and in the media.
Speaker 2:And so and we don't get a lot of education around birth in terms of preparing us for it. So that's what I sought to do with the podcast was help women to prepare but also share positive birth stories of women that had overcome fear to have positive births and that really that's clearly what they wanted to hear and that today we've hit over 1.6 million downloads on that podcast.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:I'm going to be like yeah.
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so women were like Women are part of the help and heal themselves of their fear. The book wasn't quite ready yet, so I did online courses. I created some clear clearance MP3 tracks. Then I had dolers and midwives saying, well, we want to use this, we want to use this in birth. So then I came up with some professional training. It really snowballs from there really. Then my business clients that I'd abandoned because I parked on my head trash work when all this birth stuff went a bit crazy, they're like well, we need like well, hang on a minute, we still want your help. That's why I bought out the head trash book.
Speaker 2:So in both of my books I share the method head trash clearance, which is now called which enables people to clear fears, anxieties, triggers, sabotage, all of that themselves. And that's what I used on myself in my second trimester. It's what I use it while I was in labor. So there's an emergency version that you can use in between contractions. It works very quickly. It's the emergency version that I use in the corridor to do my injection phobia. And then the more in-depth version takes more like half an hour, 45 minutes, so yeah, so now it's kind of become much bigger than I ever imagined it would be.
Speaker 2:Now I've got like trained dealers and midwives and therapists. Some of my clients who came to need a topophobia who were therapists. They experienced more reduction in their anxiety in their four weeks with me than they had in 15 years of being therapists. So then they wanted to learn the method to be able to give that enable to use it so they can use it with their clients. So it's really kind of become so much more. But it all arose out of that, that, that topophobia experience, and so the topophobia which is, it's the extreme fear of birth and pregnancy and it affects, I would say, between at least 30% of women, which is staggering considering.
Speaker 1:I would think that it would affect more than 30%.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, fear of birth is around 80% of women, but obviously you've got mild fear, moderate fear, but pathological fear where women seek to avoid the experience of pregnancy, of birth. The accepted estimate is around 14%, but I think it's much higher than that Because when they do in the research they're probably asking pregnant women, Whereas a lot of these women won't ever get pregnant because they're too terrified, most of my clients.
Speaker 2:I thought I'd be working with pregnant women, but most of my clients I'd say 90% of my clients they can't even get pregnant. They can't even have sex with their partners because they are so terrified that sex might lead to pregnancy. So then they can't hold relationships because they might have to have the sex conversation which leads on to the baby conversation. So you know, these women have. Those that suffer with this are really struggling a lot because just imagine not being able to see a pregnant woman without being triggered. So what about seeing baby scan photos on Facebook?
Speaker 2:go to the supermarket and see who will move into the crowd, being at work and having somebody on maternity leave or somebody bringing the babies in or being pregnant next to you at the desk. How can you live a life without bumping into a pregnant woman? You can't, and so this triggers huge anxiety, depression. And these women aren't being supported, because a lot of people don't, and when they don't know that this condition exists, doctors and therapists and healthcare providers don't really know a lot about it. They don't sign post them. When they're coming to help and support, they get dismissed with their fears oh, it's all right, you'll get over it. It's natural to be a little bit fearful that women have been giving birth for millennia. You'll be fine, and none of that helps, right?
Speaker 2:It doesn't validate how their feelings feel, like they're crazy, which is how I felt.
Speaker 2:I thought I was a lost cause. So I really want to raise awareness of tocopherophobia so that the women can get the support they need, and I want to train more therapists so that, when they do go to therapy to get the help, the therapist can actually understand what they're going through and then support them with a technique that works. Unfortunately, a lot of therapy doesn't work on this condition and I seem to have developed a modality that works brilliantly and actually very fast, to the point that you can heal the phobia while you're pregnant and still have time to prepare for birth. Now, typically when I work with women, it takes around four to five weeks to help them get over it. Some need longer because they're also resting with anxiety and depression, but not everybody has anxiety and depression. Some of these women it's just this tocopherophobia that seems to be this, and they're confident, they're happy, and then they've got this weird thing that they're like I don't understand what they're saying, I'm okay, but this is weird, I can't hold the baby, I don't want to go near them.
Speaker 1:So I think I just read recently that Paris Hilton, it took her a whole month before she could even change her baby's diaper. Yeah so, paris Hilton, it was all over the news about how she had this baby and of course we know that it was through a surrogate mother but she was fearful of changing this baby's diaper because he was so little, and I know there's a lot of moms that are that way. When I had my second daughter, she was a lot smaller than my first daughter, so I actually had that fear of holding her because I was afraid I would break her or, you know, drop her or something, because she was so little.
Speaker 1:So I comprehend that. I quickly got over it, thankfully, but there are so many mothers that feel the same way and I'm certain that you can relate to that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when I was pregnant I didn't want to.
Speaker 2:Even before I was pregnant, for a long time I wasn't interested in holding any babies. I remember when somebody came into work once when I was in my mid-twenties and they had twins and they came into work and everyone's like cooing over the babies and so I'm standing around just being polite, really, because I really wasn't interested. And then one of them was sick on her shoulder so she was standing next to me, so she just passed one of the babies to me so she could deal with it and I was just like if you've seen, mr Smith, when Angelina Jolie gets handed a baby and she just looks at it, this is some weird kind of like. And I was like. I was like and then just like no, no, I can't hold this. And I just passed it on and I had to go running to the toilet because I just burst into tears and at the time I was like what is wrong with you, lex? Like this is ridiculous, like what was that? And I had no idea what that was. But now I know that was my topophobia.
Speaker 2:You know, I just wasn't comfortable with yeah, with babies. And then when I was pregnant in my first trimest, when I was still wrestling with how I was going to deal with it, and my sister-in-law was like six months ahead of me on her pregnancy and she's sort of sitting there rubbing her belly, babies moving, and I'm being like I cannot look at that Because just seeing a baby move in a tummy was just repulsive to me. It just reminded me of, like you know, when you think of aliens or ex-files episodes, and it's like moving and it's like, oh, I can't do that, it was horrid. And so and this is very, very common for a lot of women's talk of over the, you know, a lot of women will use words Like it's, like a parasite feeding off the host. It's. They'll refer to it as a niche or dehumanize the baby because it just feels so threatening to them to have something that's moving and alive inside of them that they don't have control over. So yeah, it's very unpleasant condition to have to hunt, go through and deal with. But thankfully there's, we can sort it out now, and so that's what I want to make sure that women can access that kind of support. So if you're a therapist, a perinatal therapist, listen to this and you want to train and learn more about it, then please do go in touch, because I've got women all over the world that like, oh, I haven't got anybody near me that can do this. And you know, I'm like I'm trying, I'm trying to get more people to do this, and I'm not a therapist, I don't want to be a therapist, I just want to get this technique into the hands of therapists so that women can be supported in this world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not just women that have it, guys have it too. I remember hiring a videographer when I first started my business around the birth stuff, and so I hired him. He's like a 22 year old kid at college kind of thing, and after I've been talking like half down to the camera and he's like I've got to stop, I'm going to be sick, I'm going to faint, I can't, oh, no, and he's like, yeah, guys have this stuff too. They just don't have to confront that, right, because they don't get pregnant. So yeah, I don't think it is just a female thing and it won't be, because the root trauma at the root of Tocquefogue for many women is their own birth. So obviously we've all been born, so there's no reason why this is just a female condition. It's just women are the only ones have to deal with it, because guys never.
Speaker 2:You do get dads in the birth space. That can't handle being in the birth space, so, but they don't have to go through the experience that we do as women, so they get a free pass in that sense.
Speaker 1:Did you have a traumatizing birth when you were born? Do you remember? Did your mom ever talk about your traumatizing?
Speaker 2:or I don't remember my birth. I've never heard stories about my birth, so I but it was because it was a trauma and that was I cleared that trauma. I had a. How did you find that out? I didn't. I had a hunch. My intuition said I think you've got a trauma in your. I was crying for about 45 minutes and it was really mind blowing that experience, just crying over someone else. I was like I don't remember this what's?
Speaker 1:going on.
Speaker 2:And then once I healed that after I was like, oh wow, I feel so much lighter. Oh, my God, I can see the end now. Like up until that point, my tocopophobia felt like I was lost in the forest and it was dark and I didn't know which way to go. And the minute I'd healed that phobia I was like oh, I can see light here.
Speaker 2:I just need to keep going in this direction and it will be okay. And it felt like I'd like hit a real turning point and the turning point was healing my phobia, my trauma. But I would say that I would think most women have got that as going to be their root trauma, but not always it could be. Some of the clients I've been working with it's been their puberty experience has been traumatic and again we wouldn't really think, oh, was your puberty experience traumatic? I wouldn't have said that my puberty experience is traumatic. But when my daughter's going through puberty and she recently asked me I say recently, about six months ago, which put me on to the idea of traumatic puberty experiences and she said, oh, how old were you when you had your first period, mom? And I was like, oh, that's a great question, I have no idea. And I literally had. I still have no idea. I could have been 11, I could have been 16. I just there's not, it's a big blank.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I remember mine very vividly the day when it happened, where I was, how old I was. I was 13, which is kind of late for the ages of nine. My sister was nine when she started hers, but I was 13.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've got, I've got no idea. And of course now with work on trauma, I do is like, okay, that's, I probably blank that out for a reason.
Speaker 1:Probably, so maybe.
Speaker 2:I've got maybe there's that going on too and then I've now worked with women where we hit upon the puberty trauma and that's been part of their type of puberty. So that is a thing that I'm now finding a lot in my work. So these are my colleagues.
Speaker 1:Go on. I was going to ask how old are your children now?
Speaker 2:So my eldest is 13 and my youngest is nine.
Speaker 1:So yeah.
Speaker 2:I've been helping women with tocopherobin for nine years.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. So when you had your second pregnancy, what was that experience like? When you first found out you were pregnant again the first one terminated, you get pregnant. How much time space? That was it from the first time you were first pregnant to the second time you were pregnant. What was the timeframe? And then what did you feel like when you found out?
Speaker 2:Do you mean from the miscarriage to the first full pregnancy? That one?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:That was a year, exactly a year, pretty much to the day.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I spent a year in the interim doing quite a bit of healing work to really address some of my anxiety and then, when I found out that time, I was happy that I was pregnant, but terrified that I was pregnant. So it was a very mixed experience. Whereas the first time was pure terror and shock and yeah, not even yeah, it was all negative and horrid. Whereas the second time was, yeah, I was like okay, this is great, but it is also really bad. Like take a deep breath, gotta find a way through this. As opposed to the first time was like I can't do this, I can't do this, I can't do this, I can't do this. Like the first time is just I can't do this, get me out Right Got me out of there.
Speaker 1:So yeah, when you started feeling your baby moving for the first time, what were your thoughts?
Speaker 2:Well, I've done a lot of my fear clearance at that point. So I was okay, yeah, because that would have been happening sort of late into my second trimester and by that point I was starting to feel much, much stronger. So I love that, whereas at the beginning and that's the crazy thing is, a couple of months before I would have been like revolted at that experience, repulsed by it, triggered by it, whereas when it happened, you know, I was starting to feel a connection to the baby. So I was really feeling much more positive about being pregnant. Yeah, I mean, it was definitely a pregnancy of two opposites that way, you know, I got the end.
Speaker 2:It was really thrilled. I was excited for the birth at the end. I couldn't wait. And when I my water's broke, I was like, oh my God, today I'm going to meet her today. Yes, you know, I was really going in like really excited about oh, this is the day, great, yeah. Whereas I can imagine that if I'd still been in fear, it would have been, oh my God, there would have been a dread coming over again. So I was actually welcoming that experience with open arms at that point.
Speaker 2:So I'm so grateful that I was able to do that healing work while I was pregnant to be able to be in that position so I could really appreciate and love and have two incredible birth experiences, because obviously not a lot of some women don't have that experience and every time they have their birthday I'm filled with joy because I'm reminded of my own experiences as I arrive on that list as precious.
Speaker 1:You reminded of your victories, and that's fantastic.
Speaker 2:That is so awesome.
Speaker 1:So when you that's such an amazing way to to cherish your children on their birthdays is just being excited about the victories you were able to overcome to bring them into this world when you held your baby for the first time. What were you feeling then? You just had this victory, you had this baby. You overcame something. You were excited of overcoming those fears, and now you've got this little baby in your hands.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just, it is just incredible If you can conquer your fears like that during your pregnancy. And then you know, I managed to have them both at home and to be able to kind of achieve that as well not have it change tack and be taken into hospital or for a tendency section with every. Actually get the birth that I wanted, as well as being able to be in this positive state throughout, was just. I mean, that's got to be one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life and I achieved it and after that it's like I can do anything, like anything you.
Speaker 2:This is an experience that really tried me to the depths of my being and I did it. I came out and I've done it, and what's great is I'm helping other women to have experiences like that too. There's one lady, there are people that doing this kind of work, using my book, buying my meditation tracks, my clearance tracks or using my online materials. There's a lots of women, clients, women I'm supporting I don't know about, because they're just buying stuff I've created and then they send me emails to tell me about their stories and I love getting those emails because I wouldn't know about them and vice, and I got a message on Facebook just last week from somebody going. You might remember me, you helped me six or seven years ago and I've just had another baby and I just want to remind me of everything that we did helped me with before and now. If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be a mother now and two kids.
Speaker 2:She had really bad topophobia and was able to. She used my method, my head trash clearance method, to get rid of her fears and she had two babies of her own. So that, and then, when I met a year after she had a second baby she was since she really her second birth was so amazing. She loved it so much. She loved her pregnancy, he loved her birth so much and she said to her husband she goes, I really wanna do that again, but I don't wanna pay the baby home, because two's enough. I wanna be a surrogate. And so she's now gone on to be a surrogate and she's almost through the baby with her two.
Speaker 1:She's fabulous, isn't that insane that is amazing actually, and to think like because you were able to overcome your fears and become victorious over them. Look at the lives that you're changing. Yeah, it's so amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because a lot of women have got a lot of fear over this and some of them need hand-holding and one-to-one support because it's difficult for them, but some of them they just need to be shown what to do and they can just crack on and do that work themselves. And so if that's what they wanna do, yeah, I think it should be within all our capacity to be able to heal ourselves Right, and it's not something that should be in the hands of professionals only. We have all this innate ability to heal, and so it's just about activating that, it's about just knowing what to do, and so I'm very clear in my work that I want to empower people to be able to own their mental health and their emotional well-being journey themselves. And if sometimes they just wanna know what to do, they just wanna be pointed in the right direction, and great. And that's what my books do, and all the products and all the things I have for my websites is to help people to self-heal. And if they want that one-to-one support to do the tricky, the heavy lifting, if you like, then yeah, they can get support. But essentially there's a lot of that you can do yourself. I've created a membership site called the Clearance Club, where I've created loads of resources in there for people to self-heal on lots of different aspects of life.
Speaker 2:And there's one lady that she got in touch with me and she said she had a really bad topography. She really wanted to work with me but she just couldn't afford it. She said I've got really bad depression. I can't leave the house, I go, I haven't even got out of bed most days and I've just got no money. And me and my partner, we really want a baby. And I was like, well, try my membership. And it was in Beecher at that point. And so it's $29 a month, right, so it's affordable for most people that need help, definitely a lot cheaper than therapists.
Speaker 2:And then two months later she canceled and I thought, oh, maybe my membership's not that great and I said I'd love some feedback. How did you get on? And she went oh, my God, you have saved me. My depression's gone, my topophobia is gone, we're now trying for a baby. And I was like, wow, I didn't, even though I'd created it for people to be able to do that. Having topophobia and depression, that's pretty meaty stuff to have to wrestle with on the road and I was like how on earth did you do that, if you could? I just did one clearance a day and two months later I'm free of it. Oh, I was like, wow, yeah, you can self heal from depression, and yeah. So obviously some people need support, they need help, they need somebody to kick their butt or whatever it is Cause it's not always easy to do this kind of work.
Speaker 2:But some people are okay to get on with it on the road, and so those are the people that I want to help.
Speaker 1:So tell me a story of somebody that you've helped that could use your techniques for something other than pregnancy.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so I've done a lot of work with business owners. So, because my background is business and marketing, before I became a coach I was 15 years in global working for global brands as a brand and product marketer, and so I was a business coach when I first fell pregnant, working with business owners, and when I think it was during the pandemic actually I had some friends on Facebook. They were like, all that fair clearance stuff you do with birth, does it work on business fears? And I was like yep, it does, cause I've been using it on my own business fears. They went, oh, can we work together? So I started working, not with business owners, and so I took everything I learned from applying head trough clearance to birth and pregnancy, because when you start incorporating wound healing, trauma healing, into business fears, the results are quite incredible. And I was like I discovered, because not a lot of people will support business owners by healing their traumas that are tied into their business, and so I was able to kind of see the wounds and the traumas that were contributing to what I call business head trash and understanding what the fears and the conflicts are that were contributing to the reasons why their businesses weren't growing, why they weren't able to be the CEO. Their business required them to be and so I started working.
Speaker 2:A lot of business owners and the revenue jumps that people are experiencing, or the visibility, the things that were dropping in their lap, suddenly they're getting a piece in four, suddenly. Their revenue was just jumping because they were now. They weren't discounted, they weren't bringing their people pleaser into their business, they were asking for the sale, they were putting their prices up, they were charging what they should be charging rather than keeping their prices there, because they felt more confident. It really transformed their business. And so you know, so that's so. I've gone back to a lot of work around business because that's my heartland, that's what I know, it's my background, I know it really well. And also I've had a lot of clients over the years who have been. They do sport, and so there's one lady you know she does rock climbing and she started. She decided to do some experiences around.
Speaker 2:She was preparing for a rock climbing competition and she was able to get further in the finals than she'd ever done in any other competition that she had. Oh, wow, because she's able to just completely still the mind and ignore the fact that there's a crowd behind her cheering and calling her name and just stay really focused on what she was doing and she got further than she never got.
Speaker 2:So you know, I know that this technique can be applied to pretty much any kind of situation, because we have fears and anxieties and stresses and triggers and traumas that show up in all aspects of our lives in parenting, in sport, in business. You know they're everywhere. And if you've got a fear of losing control, that's not just showing up in pregnancy, that's also as a manager at work. You don't delegate, you're micromanaging. That's the same pattern just showing up in a different place. You don't wanna lose control of the kids because they're making a mess everywhere and you wanna kind of control this pattern. It's the same pattern, it just shows up in different parts of your life. When you heal that one pattern, the ripple effect in the whole of your life is quite incredible.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, so I'm doing a lot of work taking this technique to different parts of people's lives because I'm intrigued and curious as to how, what else it can help people to achieve. So, even though birth and pregnancy was a huge part of my formative experience of this technique and it enabled me to test the technique, it is really to its max. There's nothing more brutal, in my opinion, than birth. It can be so beautiful, but it can also be so trying and difficult.
Speaker 1:And traumatizing.
Speaker 2:And traumatizing, and I don't think there's any other experience that when you think about women that wanna be moms. They've all got to go through that experience and they don't know whether it's gonna be traumatized they don't know what the experience is gonna be like.
Speaker 2:So to be able to prepare women to be able to handle that experience and to come out smiling and have a positive experience is nominal. But to be able to imagine taking that kind of capacity to be resilient and confident in all aspects of your life, then imagine what else we can achieve to help women to prepare for a birth in that way. They take that into the parts of their lives. I've had women that have been. They're babies two weeks old and I'm sort of having sessions with them post birth as sort of for the support as part of that that they've signed up for. And she's like you know, I think I'm gonna do one of them. She's Katie. She's like I'm gonna quit my job and start a business.
Speaker 2:I was like hold that whoa hold that, like I know, but I can do it. I can do it. Like I've got these ideas and I know I'm gonna do it. It's gonna work really well. And it's like hang on a minute. She's two weeks old, you're a baby, give yourself a little time. It can be difficult and hard work. Like give yourself a time. You need to be a mom right now. It's that confidence to just like I can do it. I can do anything Like to be able to help women in that way. Yeah, mothers that kids need today, when the world is so crazy. That was a brilliant thing. But taking that into other parts of life as well into sport, into business Also really excites me. So who knows what the future holds on this stage.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of aspects about birthing that can go wrong or challenges that can happen, and the techniques that you use helps those to prepare for that. For mine, for instance, I've had three babies. My first one, she was a week overdue, so she was 41 weeks when I went in and we went in and the doctors started to induce me. I think I went in at nine o'clock in the morning or something like that, and I went through labor for 13 hours with her. But during those 13 hours there was a couple of times when they, as they were putting the pitocin in me, her heart rate would drop a couple of times and the nurse would run in there, they'd throw me on my knees, they'd push on my stomach and try to get her heart rate back up, and they were really good at explaining what was going on and I was in such a state of a mind where I wasn't shocked or scared or anything. I just wanted to see like what is happening before.
Speaker 1:I didn't react is what I did. I just did not react to anything, got her heart rate back running, and this happened about three times. And then, the third time, they came in and said we're gonna have to do an emergency C-section. There's no ifs, ands or buts about it. We're gonna have to take her. And I said, okay, let's go do that. And so they took me in an emergency room and prepped me for C-section. They took her out. My mom was in the room with me because her dad had passed out in the hallway. I don't know what happened to him. He ended up passing out. So my mom went in with me and I asked my mom because I knew she was out, but I didn't hear her cry. And I said to my mom mom, why is she not crying?
Speaker 1:And my mom started to cry and she says well, baby, sometimes babies don't cry when they come out. They have to have C-section the mucus out. She's like explaining all this. What she did not tell me was that her cord was wrapped around her throat three times and when they had pulled her out she was not breathing, she was purple, and so they had to revive her. Is what they had to do and what they were doing at the time.
Speaker 1:I'm asking my mom why is she not crying? And it took about five minutes for them to get her to breathe and to cry. And when I first heard her cry is when I cried. That was the first time in those 13 hours, after all that trauma that I went through with her, that I actually cried and they told me, well, because she wasn't breathing for five minutes, there's a possibility she could have some brain damage or challenges. My daughter's now 27 years old and she's a brilliant young lady. She has a two year old of her own and she has done extremely well through life, never had a single issue with her because of the trauma of her birth. However, the more I talk to you, the more I realized that the trauma of her birth could be the underlining challenges of what she deals with anxiety and things today, and she had a difficult pregnancy as well because of that.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to tell her to read your book to your website. So I wanted you to share because we just got a few minutes left. Share with us where our listeners can find your website, what's the name of your website, where they can find your books and where they can find you.
Speaker 2:So for the birth stuff, you can find that at fearfreechildbirthcom. That's the podcast and the book on the birth stuff is Fearless Birthing. There's a website for that as well, fearlessbirthingcom. And then for my head trash stuff, that's clearyourheadtrashcom. If you're a professional and want to learn how to use my methods let's say you're a therapist or a coach or a doula or a midwife then you can find out more about my training at headtrashclearancecom. Yeah, so otherwise come and find me on Facebook. Alexia Leachman and I've got training. If professionals are interested in training, then I've got some training kicking off in January, so you can come and find out about that if that interests you. And of course, you just want to do health healing. There's lots of stuff that clearyourheadtrashcom Lots of digital products to help you self heal in child wounds or in my membership there as well. So if you want to start the healing journey, there's plenty of stuff for the head trash website. You can do that.
Speaker 1:And you are in the middle of writing another book right now. What is that book about? Give us a little bit of information. That's about tocopophobia.
Speaker 2:So I realized that the and I wrote my book Fearless Birthing because I'd healed of my tocopophobia. I didn't realize that some of the stuff in there actually women's tocopophobia find it hard to read, and that is not my intention at all. So I want to write a book specifically for women with tocopophobia to help them navigate that journey, so that they've got something there to help them, and also for professionals to better understand the condition, so that the healthcare providers can better support them when they're asking for the support that they need. So yeah, next book coming out probably in 2024 now is a book about tocopophobia.
Speaker 1:That is fabulous. Well, I thank you so so much for coming on and sharing and, for those of you that are listening all of her links and the information she was just speaking about, I am gonna share with you guys, like I always do at the bottom. Definitely go see her, go like her Facebook, her Telegram or Instagram, go find her all over social media and go read her books, Cause it seems like it's more than just pregnant women that need to read this, but it also seems like those of you that are in a field of helping others and want to have a little extra knowledge under your belt, this is where it's gonna begin. So, thank you so much, Alexia. I really love your story. Thank you for meeting with me and doing this podcast with me today, and I look forward to talking with you again.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me, Tanisha, it's been lovely. Thank you Absolutely.