Welcome to Episode 16 of the fertility rewire podcast, I’m really excited about today’s episode and I know you’re going to get a lot of information out of this and hopefully, just some ideas to prick your awareness if you like, all the emotions that you may be feeling that might be affecting your fertility. And actually not just fertility, but your life and your relationships.
So I’m chatting in this episode with Alexia Leachman, the founder of the head trash clearance method and fear free childbirth, which are two programmes that she runs and also has written a book about each and I’ll share those resources with you within the episode and in the notes also. I really hope you enjoy it.
We do also chat very specifically about something called tokophobia, and I will let Alexia explain to you what that is. As ever, Information is available in the show notes and I really hope you enjoy the episode.
I’m really excited today to be chatting with Alexia Leachman. Alexia is the author of Clear your Head Trash and Fear Free birthing. And she’s the host of two award winning podcast the head trash show and Fearless Childbirth, with over 650,000 individual downloads in a row. Hundred 90 countries. So incredible success there with the podcast. But what Alexia does is she helps people overcome their fears and achieve what’s on the other side. So this could be in a business perspective, or in order to achieve a calm fear free birth and her technique, the head trash method is a new emotional clearance technique and what it serves to do if I get this right Alexia is create headspace. And you can do it whenever and wherever you want. And I have personal experience of using this method. So maybe we’ll come on to that as well. We’ll chat a little bit later I think about how people can access this information, but you do have online courses and programmes as well as private work as well. . Okay. So welcome, Alexia.
Thank you, Kat for having me. I’m really excited about this conversation we’re going to have its absolute pleasure to be on your show.
Oh, brilliant. Well, I’m thrilled that you’re here and in your new home in France
So can you tell me first of all, because we said about fear free childbirth, and I know from from our chats previously that this came about as your interest in something called Tok phobia? Yes, something that you developed specifically for that so could you tell me Firstly, what chocolate baby it is and how this might affect fertility.
Okay, so tokophobia is the pathological fear of birth and or pregnancy. And so, it affects between 14 and 35% of women depending on the research or the data that you’re looking at. And it can manifest in various ways, it might be that a woman is experiencing, such a fear of birth, that she doesn’t want to get pregnant, doesn’t want to look at bumps the whole idea of looking at bump that they might move kind of freaks her out a bit. She doesn’t want to look at, talk about birth hear baby announcements, all of those things are really, really difficult to handle. But at the most extreme, and it might be that she avoids sex all together, she has difficult relations with the husband or partner.
Sometimes she can’t even have intimate relationships because they can’t go beyond the two three month mark because they know that that’s going to be maybe where conversations are going to start happening around about family and children and maybe there’s sex involved and so, so it can be very, very isolating and also some women who then go on to be pregnant with babies they dont want and end up terminating, because they simply can’t handle being pregnant because it sends them into such a panic. They’re so fearful they they simply cannot cope. And some women are terrified of the birth and some women are terrified of pregnancy, some are terrified of both.
And the difficulty with Tokophobia is that you can’t really escape it, when you’ve got a fear of heights or planes, you can kind of avoid mountains orr aeroplanes, but when you have a fear of birth and pregnancy, you can’t hide you can’t not go to the supermarket in case you bump into a pregnant person, you can’t not avoid your family days after your wedding when they’re all going, Oh, when’s the baby coming then and, and all the kind of pressure you might get from family members, you can’t avoid Facebook?
Well, you could but it’s difficult and all the baby announcements coming up. So there really is no way to hide with this, which makes it very isolating.
Also, there’s very little awareness of it so people don’t even know it exists, they might not realise they have it. And also, health care professionals don’t really understand it. A lot of them have never heard of it as well. So all of these things make it really hard to cope with which can mean that women that have it might have anxiety, they can be triggered and make those conditions spiral out of control.
So, so that’s kind of a little bit of an overview of Tokophobia. And the reason that I was interested in all I came to the work that I do is because when I accidentally found out that I was pregnant, I had it. I didn’t know that it was a thing. I didn’t know how to word it. And so I was very typical of a lot of women, I wouldn’t talk about it, because I thought t it was just me being completely crazy, and not being happy about being pregnant.
Because, you know, most people think that women are over the moon with the idea of being pregnant and all pregnant women are happy about being pregnant. And that’s not true. But when because you don’t hear that storey you don’t hear that side of it. When you are the person that is not happy about being pregnant, and you’re terrified of it, and you’re thinking I don’t even want to be pregnant and there’s all these women that desperately want to be pregnant. You’re terribly conflicted, and thinking what is wrong with me there must be something seriously wrong with me and so when I heard about it, you know, I was thinking I need some serious help because this can’t be right.
These aren’t normal maternal feelings, whatever they are, you know. So, it was my own journey with Tokophobia and I’d recently trained in therapeutic technique just before I got pregnant.
When I was pregnant, I lost my baby. And the reason that I realised that I had something wrong was that when I miscarried. I felt enormous relief. And that’s when I realised that I thought, hey, Lex, this is not right. You’re feeling relief at miscarriage when most women would just be bits and I was in bits but I was in bits of the last but I was in you know, it was just very very messy in my head as I’m sure you can appreciate. And so I when I was pregnant year later, I came across hypno birthing, and as part of that, I learned that fear creates pain of birth, one of my biggest fears in birth was pain. And I read this and I thought, Well, okay, if fear creates pain, if I get rid of My fears and it wont be painful. And that’s one of my big fears dealt with. So I decided to try and tackle my own fears. And so that’s what led me to create this technique because I needed to do this on myself because there was so much, there’s no way I could afford to go and see somebody, because I thought I’m going to be there all year and , just can’t afford a therapist, to go and clear this amount of stuff. I’m going to need to be there forever.
So I had to create a way of working to clear my own stuff. And so that is basically where the head trash clearance method came from. I basically tested it on myself during my first pregnancy to get rid of my own fears. So in my first trimester, I was going for the C section, I wanted to have all the drugs in the world and I wanted to be completely knocked out cold, I didn’t want to experience birth at all. I just thought I couldn’t handle it. And I worked 2 months on clearing my fears. And by month seven, I changed my C section plan to a home birth plan and had a home birth at home painfree, it was amazing. So yeah, so it’s as well result of that experience that I then started getting lots women emailing me I didn’t know how the hell do you do that, I’m fearful of birth too, please tell me how and so that that that journey is that will not let the fear free childbirth podcast and that’s what led to the book fitness but in my basically explain how I did that. And so now today I work mainly my one to one work mainly with women with a phobia helping them to overcome it. And as well as my business and mindset work that’s outside of the birth stuff that I do. So, um, I think I answered more than your question. Sorry.
With a lot of information there. and thank you I think it’s important to get that understanding because people listening to this show, you know, thinking that desperately wanting to get pregnant might be thinking well how you know how is that possible to think like that they’re not at that point yet. Could subconsciously this be happening within them? I mean, it’s something that I work with, as you know, with in Fertility Rewire is part of it is the safety aspect. thats so brought up in that subconscious firing of the fight or flight within us that might shut down or, you know, reduce fertility. Have you come across that in the work that you’ve done that that people it might be, as you said, you didn’t know you had it until you were pregnant? Yeah. In terms of it preventing pregnancy?
Well, it will, because we know that stress and anxiety has an effect on fertility we know that already. So when you’re incredibly anxious around sex or babies and and I know when I look back now with hindsight is such a brilliant thing. But when I look back at my own sex life through my, from when I started being sexually active to when I had the serious relationship that I’m in now, actually, it was the signs were all there. I think just didn’t know about tokophobia and recognise the signs. And so sex for me was very difficult emotionally. And I remember, you know, sort of having real panics with you know, early boyfriends going “don’t want the kids don’t want the kids must use condoms”, obsessing over birth control because it’s like, I must I cannot get pregnant. I cannot. But I didn’t I thought that was just because he wants to be pregnant at 21 you know, like, what is a sensible you get so many so much messaging as women that early pregnancies bad bad bad, you know, and to make that shift from my mustn’t get pregnant, mustn’t get pregnant, to Oh, I need to get pregnant really quick because my body clock is running out.
It’s really hard to discern within all that where your own feelings are at play, and where there’s conditioning and society stuff going on. And so I you know, I just couldn’t navigate all of that to be able to tell what was going on but now when I look back, I think oh my gosh, that was so obvious. You know, this kind of this need for” Oh put the career first I don’t want kids not important”, you know, these kind of ideas. Is that I knew I wanted to be a mother. That was really, really weird thing I knew I wanted to be a mum, I kind of felt I knew on some level. I was going to be mum one day and yeah, on the outside. I was like, No, no, no kids aren’t important. But that was just me rationalising and making it oka, for mr fear or my fear, making my fear acceptable for me at a very deep level. And so, yeah, your fears will mess with your head and make you believe things that aren’t true in terms of your heart’s desires. Because they’re just trying to make your fears acceptable to you. Because if they weren’t, you’d be sending yourself completely crazy. So it’s a way of it’s a coping mechanism really. And so, I mean, going back to a question about you know, the emotional so we Yes, we can, you can have this without realising it because it could be such a deep, deep level of fear that so deep within your subconscious and I find a lot of women with Tokophobia, their fear especially there’s a primary tokophobia, which is when there’s a woman who’s not had experience of birth or pregnancy. Most the time that will come from a trauma and that trauma may very well be their own birth trauma, which of course we’ve got no conscious memory of, you know, who can remember their own birth? not many people. And so if as a baby you experienced that as traumatic you know maybe youwere feeling trapped in the canal, maybe you control maybe, you know, maybe you got yanked out and give it an injection your foot and they’re bright lights and then you’ve sat in a cold weighing sales and it’s all very shocking. You’ve been in you’re in utero for nine months all cosy and warm and sunny. It’s all bright lights and craziness. You know, any one of those things can traumatise a baby and so that trauma is the trauma that then kind of is triggering this tokophobia today and that the woman can’t run she doesn’t can’t explain it doesn’t make any sense. So she’s know where it’s coming from. And I thought that my phobia came from being in biology class when I was 12. They’ll show me those awful birth videos and I thought, well, that’s what did it but no, that didn’t do that was just triggering it and awakening in me. So when you have such a deep level of fear, it is going acting on your body, it’s going to be affecting you because you’re going to be triggered without realising and not being able to explain it. And it could be feeding anxiety and stress within you that you just don’t have an awareness. That’s what’s going on. So, yes, I do believe that it could have an effect on fertility and I also think they’re very closely linked because a lot of the women that I have supported in overcoming tokophobia, then they hit fertility issues, you know, then they’re like, Oh, well, I am the carry on using the head trash clearance method, because then they’re like, oh, but we’re not getting pregnant where you know, now we’re, what’s going on? and the feelings that come with fertility, which is a whole new emotional ball game after the emotional journey that is tokophobia. So I think they are they do happen together very often, you know,
and it’s this subconscious element, isn’t it? And yeah, I just wants to pick up on something you said there. And this is something I see with a lot of my clients, is Suddenly, after years of trying not to get pregnant, you expect it to just work and my sex education at school, I went to an all girls Grammar School, and it was basically that if you had sex, you would get pregnant and that would be the worst thing in the world, and that because you are having periods, you can get pregnant now. And I remember my Mum said to me, I was 14, and she said, if you get pregnant, it will ruin your life.
I actually wasn’t even sure what sex was at 14. You know, my eight year old sister explained it to me when I was I think about Yeah, what hang on the was 5 years between us. So when I was about 14, she was nine. I think she explained to me what sex was I had no idea from this education. But she (my Mum) told me it would be the worst thing I could do. And you know and a lot of my clients we’ve done work where we we can find subconscious memories and they remember this desperately trying not to get pregnant you saying about your own birth which is fascinating that you know these beliefs these emotional reactions to that within the mammal basically isnt it? the mammal brain is reacting in that fear time and you then also go through life and your Mum probably told you about that yeah you know and I’m really careful my daughter’s 10 and I Know you have girls as well don’t you? I’m so careful around her you know about stuff mentioned on the TV the overhearing things about birth being terrible and because that all gets laid down?
Absolutely. Absolutely. Important thing to state as well is the mother might have, whatever the mother’s experience of birth was, even if mum had a great time and As far as she’s concerned, it was fine doesn’t mean the baby experienced it that way.
If the mother had a traumatic, but then you can pretty much guarantee the baby did too. But if the mother didn’t, that doesn’t mean that the baby had a great time, you know, the baby, the baby needs to feel that the they can trust the mother that the mother knows what she’s doing. Because you’re both in that experience together. And so you know, to feel safe and you mentioned safety earlier on and you know, when we don’t feel safe, there’s lots of mechanisms of thinking that people don’t feel safe don’t fall asleep very easily because they don’t feel safe enough to sleep because of you know, the threats that might happen when they’re not awake to be able to defend themselves whatever.
So the safety things really important and again, you know, if you know, if you want to go and caving through a dark hole, you know, the whole idea of going through something something like a field a trapped in an environment like that, and not really know the way out and so these feelings of trappedness that show up potentially as the baby goes through the birth canal show up a lot with women with tokophobia this idea of being trapped in the pregnancy trapped, you can’t escape it once you’re pregnant, you can’t get off it unless you decide to terminate or the baby miscarries. You know, you’re kind of, yeah, you’re trapped. And this can be very, very terrifying for women. And again, once labour kicks off, you’re trapped in that process until the baby’s out, you can’t kind of, unless you go to emergency c section. So yeah, you know, this sense of trapped, very much be seede as a result of your own birth experience. And so they’re very common themes that do show up this idea of losing control of being trapped. These are all very, very common.
I would say, every woman I work with on tokophobia, we always work on control and losing control, because they are very powerful. And to be honest, I think we, every single human being has got control issues. We all, it’s an important thing for all of us again, around safety. So I think if men were giving birth, I’d be working with them on control too, because it’s a human thing, right? We want we need to be in control. At least feel like we’re in control even though actually within a certain control of anything, it’s this feeling of in control, that’s the important piece to be working with. And and that just comes up so much around birth, but I think it also will play out in fertility because there’s again you’re not in control of that you don’t know whether or not the lines going to show up you don’t know when it’s going to happen. You don’t know what’s going on inside your body. And it’s this sense of powerlessness that you just saying, I just want to, you know, certain people that used to get in their own way maybe high achieving women that have got teams. responsible for budgets and things like that, and then the here’s something that they literally can’t control, it drives them insane.
You know, so, so in terms of that, that specific element of not being in control and this is a big thing, because and you know, that point about being high achieving, and, you know, for myself, you try lots of things in your life, don’t you and if it’s just not working and it doesn’t feel right for you, then Often you don’t continue with that anymore. I think you can’t do that when you really want a baby, though, you want a baby, but you don’t want to be in the fertility wheel because you do start to try and control it and you can drive yourself mad. And, you know, I spoke in the last episode about that overwhelm, of just, there’s too much information and this works for that person, and this works for that person. And it brings up so much emotion and you’re talking about emotional clearance, and the emotion that blocks is, is that lack of control, but it’s often you’re not aware of the emotion.
How do people you know that you work with? Because I’ll tell you one, one thing I do is I ask my clients to imagine themselves pregnant. And then I asked them to imagine themselves going to where they’re about to give birth and that often identifies to me If there’s a deep rooted fear , but perhaps they don’t have that perhaps they can imagine themselves pregnant and they can imagine themselves going to where they are about to give birth. They don’t think they’ve got an issue with getting pregnant. How can they be helped to clear the emotions associated with fertility?
Its not about the fear of giving birth? Or maybe it is subconsciously, but to them on a conscious level, it’s just these emotions, this anxiety, this upset, this anger, and jealousy of seeing other people who are pregnant and how can they work through that with your method?
Okay, so , yeah, now, so Ionly use my, I don’t only use one method, but I use that as the lead method. And then when I feel something else is required, I then go to something else. So I always use the head trash cans method and there’s a DIY version of that method that you can get through either my books so if anybody wants to use this then they can just read the clear head trash book called the fearless birthing, but I’m But then as a practitioner, there’s so much more to that technique. And I do train professionals in this as well.
So I will always use that technique to help people to clear and it’s so simple to clear this stuff when you identify the themes that need clearing, like control, like feeling trapped, like the emotions that you’re feeling incessantly, any of those things can be worked very, very quickly, and it will take you anything from 15 to 30 minutes to do a clearance like that. So, and the change is remarkable.
So I had two women I was working with at the same time, not on birth, life stuff. And they both felt trapped with their lives. One lived in a gorgeous European country with a pool. Husband very rich, she didn’t have to work. And he said if you want to start any business or anything, just tell me I’ll fund it. I’ll just whatever you need to do just you know she just had to walk the dogs that was her life, but she felt trapped in that life.
Another lady, high achieving executive, very active family. Her husband has accident broke his neck paralysed neck down. So she felt trapped in that life, both of them experience feeling trapped. They both worked on trapped and it’s suddenly gave them so much scope and feeling they weren’t really trapped, they could see lots of possibilities.
And so I think it’s really important to bear in mind that these are just feelings when your feelings are so strong, and there’s so much emotional energy tied up with that you are limiting your perspectives and views of what is possible. And when you clear the emotional stuff away, suddenly you see new perspectives that just weren’t there before. And you think differently, and therefore you feel differently about it, and you’re not triggered in the same way. So you’re not triggering that stress response. You’re not in conflict and therefore triggering anxiety. So your emotions are just much calmer.
And so , when I work with somebody, let’s say I’m work with somebody with anxiety. So that might, you know, we might need about a month or five weeks to work on something like anxiety, but we look at all the conflicts and values, we look at all the emotional stuff that’s in excess. And we clear all that individually. So that within that kind of timeframe, that person can put anxiety behind them. And so that means that then they’re not putting that kind of stress on their body, they’re not they’re not experiencing stress that’s going to affect their fertility in the way that might have done before. So, yeah, so the clearance method can be used to do you know, clear things like the phobias, but also anxiety by looking at doing these clearances, continuous clearances that mean that you know, you’re doing you might sit down to do clearance and evening, which might take you an hour and then you’ve done some really good work. So that’s how simple it is for people to do.
Yeah, and and I can say on a personal level, because I did this method with yourself. I worked with Alexia from a business point of view, and as a result of the work, I now have this podcast, the book is in progress, the course is in progress, and I didn’t know… I did remember thinking when we started working together thinking I haven’t got anything to clear I don’t you know I’m….
I do mindfulness I’m all
aware of what I’m doing. I’m very in tune with what I’m doing. I know what I’m focused on, I haven’t got anything to clear. But I had this end goal in mind that I wanted and I couldn’t get to it. And by doing your method, I identifed loads and you help me identify those in what I needed to clear and I was amazed at how quickly they do clear and how quickly you feel and and I think, you know, I, I advocate mindfulness and people recognising their thoughts and there not facts, they are thoughts and these are great methods. Bring that level of safety down, but it can be quite reactive. What I love about this method is you’re actually clearing it so we’re going upstream I talk a lot yeah. upstream. Yeah, React downstream and clear all the gubbins out of the stream, but we need to stop the gubbins coming down, Gubbins? have I just made that up?
Absolutely, No, No, I talked about that as well, you know, like, it’s all very well working on the….and for me, it’s like you have the emotion that gets triggered so so there’s a situation that will trigger the emotion. So when we’re talking about fear, or guilt or sadness, or anxiety, that’s all being triggered by something. So then you go and look at what the emotional triggers are. So somebody being rude to you, somebody’s not listening to you, and seeing a needle or an injection or you know, having a fertility appointment, all these things will be the thing that will trigger that emotion. But the reason that those triggers are in place because of your values. So the minute we start looking at values we can then start looking at… it takes us upstream because your values. Bectoause when they’re in conflict, they are causing all these situations to trigger you. So you could just work on all of these trigger moments, but there could be a common theme going on with these trigger moments.
So going to these women when I work with on pregnancy, they’re like, Oh, I can’t cope with a thing moving inside me the thought of a baby moving inside me, I don’t like the thought of that, I don’t like that my body changing throughout pregnancy…., but actually the thing that’s behind all that is losing control because there’s a thing inside them that they’re not in control of that’s moving, their body will be changing in a way that they’re not controlling. And so actually control is a theme. So then we work on control and those two things collapse. So we could have worked on them individually and we often do because I like to be thorough, but actually if you go upstream to the value, then you can do you can have a lot more bang for your buck basically, your clearance time can go more far reaching by working at the value level.
My backgrounds, business marketing, so I would like streamlining and being efficient and not wasting time faffing about, so I’m always looking to go upstream where possible and to do as much clearance in a shorter time frame as possible. Probably not great for business because I get the work done so quickly. But actually it means that people need to experience that change quickly and just crack on with the life they want. Like why spend so long you know, you know, I love meditation, I do a lot of it. But I don’t think meditation is the right thing if you want to reduce your anxiety and reduce your stress, it just takes too long. He’s got that kind of time on their hands. I’d rather just get it nailed in a few weeks. So going upstream is definitely the way to go as far as I’m concerned, but I think you’re absolutely right to recommend that people do.
And it’s safe, isn’t it? Because I know, I’m a hypnotherapist, and I don’t work with it a lot in terms of delving in and finding a cause. And can do but we don’t always need to know the cause. You know, in some cases, Yes, absolutely. But what I love about this method is that you don’t need to find the cause. You don’t need to dig in and find about your birth or what was said to you when you were a child and dig up all sorts of other things that you then have to face and deal with. It was about dealing with the emotion and sometimes actually not an emotion.
Yeah, ,
Thats what I loved about it. And you said about your triggers, my big trigger and I have worked on this, I didn’t realise how big a trigger it was. Im quite a calm driver. And you know, and I’m really annoying to my husband. So when we’re driving along and someone cuts him up and he’s all ready to go on the horn, and I go, you don’t need to, you know, they know they cut you up, and perhaps they’re late for something perhaps someone’s in hospital. Perhaps they’re just ignorant perhaps they’re in a race I don’t know. But why is that helping? and that my thing and I do go bonkers at this you know, when you let someone through and they don’t say thank you…. Oh, my goodness, I’m triggered massively and it was daughter pointing it out to me.”Are you going to swear at that my mummy because he didn’t wave?” ” I don’t swear “Well, you look cross”
But I seethe and I actually when I’m on my own, I shall Thank you. You’re welcome. You know, and it’s a massive thing and it’s about not being seen.
Oh, is it? Okay, that’s really interesting
Not being seen but also not being appreciated. Okay,
I realised that that was my. I reckon that’s a big part of why I became a nurse ,
Yeah,
but it’s kind of tied
up in that isn’t, these tiny little triggers of how you react unearth, a whole heap of other stuff
I love that example,. It’s something that I think a lot of people can relate to, you know, when you leave you leave the door open somebody and then they don’t thank you. And a lot of people when you ask them what’s going on there, they just think well, it’s just rude. And they hate rudeness. You know, for them politeness is really important. And they don’t, they would never deliberately be rude because they hate it. They think it’s an awful thing. And yet somebody just does something really simple , like not held the door or not say thank you, and immediately theres a barrage of rudeness that comes out, likehow dare they, and they say something really nasty. And it’s like, suddenly they become the thing they hate. And so when you have got this emotional energy that needs to clear, you end up, you end up reacting, and you end up becoming the thing that you hate, and you can’t help yourself because of the emotion is controlling you in that moment.
Where as when you clear the emotion, so let’s say rudeness was a thing for you, it wasn’t, it was about appreciation, let’s say for somebody else it is. When you clear rudeness, then you are able to be mindfully rude or mindfully angry or whatever it is a thing and and because you don’t want to ban rudeness from a life. Being rude is actually quite helpful. Some people deserve a bout of rudeness to wake them up from their whatever they’re in, they kind …. it’s warranted. It doesn’t mean you should never ever be rude. But when you’ve got this emotional energy behind it, you’re not able to choose an appropriate time you can’t be mindful about it. So you end up just lashing out rudeness in these triggered movements. But then if somebody does weren’t being spoken to rudely because they are being, you know, whatever the behaviour is, you couldnt possibly do it in that moment because you can’t possibly say that I must, I must apologise, you know, then the British thing comes in, I’m sorry, but I think you… did you mean to leave the door open? you know, and suddenly this silly behaviour comes out. Whereas, if you clear it, you’re able to just step up and be rude if the time requires it. And if it doesn’t, then you can hold back and actually just let it go. And that would be the much, you know, to be able to be that person that can let it go.
And the great thing when you work on that with anger, it becomes a really powerful thing because those with kids will kind of understand this, you know, the kids will push every single one of your buttons and to the point where you just want to like you, just look like a crazy woman, right? Whereas when you’re able to not get triggered by the kids, and you know,, I’m able to sort of really be very patient and just, and then at some point I hit a wall and I let them know, I said if this carries on , if I have to tell you about this anymore, you’re going to know about because you are now really pushing it. And then it carries on inevitably. And then that’s it, I unleash hell, but I’m doing it really calmly and they are terrified. They just stand there, looking up, you know, I’m not, I haven’t lost it emotionally. And again, if you think of programmes, like in the UK, we’ve got things like question time or news night where you get people in heated debates. And if you get somebody having a heated debate, and they’re losing it a bit, their point of view, so you don’t hear what they’re saying, you just see the emotional reaction. And what’s more powerful is if to have that point of view and to be able to put it across calmly. If you can put that across calmly. People will listen to what you’re saying. If you’re putting it across emotionally, they stopped listening. And so that happens in a work environment. You know, it could be in a meeting at work, you could be having conflict with your partner with your kids. Being able to remain calm while still deliver powerful messages is is so powerful. You know, people listen, in a way and I’m able to really get my kids in line because they suddenly realise That’s it, she means it now and they stop and they start
do you use a teacher voice, go a little bit lower?
I do a bit. Yeah, yeah.
My kids stop instantly to that.
Do they?
They just say, Oh, she’s off again, yeah, you know, we’ve got the desired reaction.
Yeah, exactly. And they don’t take it seriously because people don’t take that seriously. They don’t hear what you’re saying. They just see. And they dismiss it. So by clearing all that emotional stuff, you’re able to, yeah, improve the way that you’re heard, your effectiveness influencing others and getting your point across in a way that maybe you wouldn’t have done before, because it was just full of emotion before and bringing up stuff for you and all that, so I mean, you know, ever since I started using this technique, I use it all the time. So, you know, I’m using obviously my clients but also my kids like, couple of weeks ago, we moved to France. Massive spiders like spiders, the size of my fist that kind of like oh my god. My daughter was just terrified can go to bed one night, she’s like, I’m not going to sleep in the lab. I can’t, I can’t do it. So I was like, Okay, let’s go use a spider fear clearance. And so we came to the lounge to the spider fear clearnace. And then she’s like, I’m bored of thi now mummy. Can I just go back to bed, and it’s just classic. They just get really bored of the thing you’re working on. So that means it’s no longer thing. It disappeared. We couldn’t find the spider. And then the spider reappeared A couple of days later. And she’s like, I’m going to sort it. I’m going to sort it. She went actually got a glass. She’s like, everybody leave the room. I’m on it. Where’s the card need a mug, did, she was on it. And now she’s dealing with all the spiders, not a fear. And it took us like 10 minutes to just get rid of that for her. So she feels amazing around that. And so yeah, you can just use it on all sorts of little things. And so that’s why it’s becoming one of my essential tools and they say like to be honest.
So it’s not just about fertility. It’s not just about tokophobia. I mean that might be a presenting thing you need to deal with. But thinking about a fertility journey, specifically when we look at that element of safety and reducing the stress hormones so that the reproductive system isn’t on shutdown, because it’s not essential at that point, you know, if people might not think it’s fertility related but you know, a high achiever working or someone who already has children and is looking to have another pregnancy or perhaps somebody you know, we often talk about fertility from a female perspective, but you know, we know that it takes 2 and both sides are affected. But if you have a husband or partner in an emotionally charged situation or a stressful situation, or they might not even perceive it as stressful, but just trigger as you say, it sounds an incredible tool kit that you can, you can use on your fertility journey, but not specifically about fertility, if you don’t want to.
Yeah,
that will support your fertility, but to move forward into parenthood, and for life and you know, it becomes that juggle of career and children and negotiating who who’s doing what with your partner? It’s an incredible thing. And I imagine it really strengthens relationships as well if you both do it,
yeah, it would, it would absolutely and and also because you are able to let go of arguments or little niggle, you know, like you sometimes you can just like, as a couple, grate each other and then carry it around all day. And then you want to spit out later and, arrgghh, then you just wind each other up. Whereas if you work on all the things, if you write out all the things that your partner, does that really wind you up and work on on those and they do that, then, you know, imagine not getting triggered by what your partners, and just be able to shrug it off and go, Oh, that’s just them and, you know, then suddenly there’s less friction in the relationship. And what’s really interesting about working on certain aspects of yourself is, you know, really, you shouldn’t, you know, a lot of people they think I wish he wouldn’t do that. I just wish I wish I could change him and he wouldn’t do that and actually in It’s not about wanting to change others, they could be responding to you and that, it’s how you’re being that’s making them behave like that.
So always work on yourself first no matter what because you have to take responsibility for how you’re playing the role in their behaviour your that it takes two people to interrelate to each other. And so you you have a part to play in that ,your energy level, your energy, vibration will have a part to play. So work on yourself first. And it’s incredible how many times I’ve heard stories, clients come back to me and I work this really winds me up in somebody else but I’ve done the work on myself and suddenly they’re changing. They’re not being like that with me anymore. They their behaviours change because I’ve worked on myself because we’re fundamentally changing the energy at which we vibrate.
People will kind of come back come into your orbit or leave your orbit as well because suddenly you might attract for example, there are some people that just are always giving to others and they will always attract takers right? You can’t take if there’s nobody giving and equally, if you’re giving, you’re expecting somebody to take. So you’re going to attract sort of, you know, leeches in your life that are going to be there like leeching off the stuff that you know, whatever, it’s your time or whatever it is. So once you work on your thing of giving and taking internally, suddenly the takers are like, oh, there’s nothing to take you anymore because you stop doing it, then they drift off, go find another giver, and then you no longer have these kind of these annoying people in your life sucking your energy.
So always work on yourself first, but in a relationship you’re absolutely right. It can actually kind of transform and just make things yeah, less friction more enjoyable, less fights, less arguments, all of that stuff which is going to have a huge impact on fertility, you know
Absolutely, you’ve got to like the person you’re making a baby with havent you,
Yeah that helps
Makes sex that little bit easier and and ours because you’ve got the issue of baby sex as well and an all manner of emotions and feelings come up about that pressure to have sex at that time
Oh yeah, I’m and that massively affects the situation. And so this technique could be really useful, specifically as well,
And to help people to let go, you know that there’s that kind of need for it to work, it must work, it must work. So we can kind of let go of all expectations, and get back to what sex is really about, then, you know, can imagine like, if you’re really trying and it’s all becoming a bit functional, that, you know, the body’s not really going to be performing in the way that it was designed to perform fully, it’s going to be sort of operating maybe 60%, or whatever. So that’s why it’s not working. So but it’s been sometimes you just can’t let go of that kind of hold on to this thing is hold on to this desire. So once we let go, the desire that enables you to come and be more present, and therefore more mindful, and that is where true joy happens is being in the moment. You know, not when you’re trying to achieve x is when you’re just experiencing the moment and this technique does help you do that.
Brilliant
Well I think that moment is a perfect place to end although I could talk to you for hours. But what I wanted and I will put this in the notes. So in terms of where people can find you, you’re on Facebook, is that right?
I am Yes
Tell me where you’re at.
I’m on Facebook some I’ve got a fear free childbirth page. I’ve got a fear free childbirth group for those that are experiencing fear or are pregnant and want to have a fear free birth. I’ve got the fear free childbirth website, fearfreechildbirth.com there’s a fearless birthing site as well.
The book has lots of resources. I’ve got fear clearance meditations and everything there for people to find on the website. And then there’s a head trash site, which is also available and , which is currently being revamped ready for relaunch and I’m bringing the podcast back out as well. So that’s in the middle of being done. So depending on when this goes out when people vist and when they hear it. It may be at various stages of liveness and Okness to see and, and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, there’s also the clearyourheadtrash.com website to this. That’s going to be the new home for head trash. So yeah, those are depending on your needs. And what you interested in and of course, both books on Amazon if they want to get the book and the technique both the technique is in both of those books. So, you know if Fearless birthing model is great, obviously on that birthing journey, but if you just want the technique and when you use it to clear all your anxieties and stresses, then the clear yor head trash will be the good book to go to for that.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, it’s been an absolute pleasure, Alexia, it really has.
And thank you so much Thank you, Kat.
I’ve loved it. I loved it. Brilliant.
Thank you.
