Alexia Leachman helps women overcome reproductive anxiety, tokophobia, and maternal mental health struggles through emotional healing and empowerment using the Head Trash Clearance method.
576: From Fear to Freedom: Understanding Reproductive Anxiety
Alexia Leachman
In this conversation, Hunter Clarke-Fields and Alexia delve into the topic of tocophobia, a fear of pregnancy and childbirth, exploring its roots in trauma and anxiety. Alexia shares her personal journey with tocophobia, detailing her experiences and the emotional turmoil that accompanied her pregnancy. They discuss the spectrum of reproductive anxiety, the impact of trauma on women's mental health, and the importance of understanding and addressing these fears. Alexia introduces her method of 'Head Trash Clearance' as a way to process and heal from these anxieties, emphasizing the role of compassion and community in the healing journey.
Ep 576- Leachman
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*This is an auto-generated transcript*
Hunter (00:00)
You are listening to the Mindful Mama Podcast episode #576. Today we're talking about going from fear to freedom, understanding reproductive anxiety with Alexia Leachman.
Welcome to the Mindful Mama podcast. Here it's about becoming a less irritable, more joyful parent. At Mindful Mama, we know that you cannot give what you do not have. And when you have calm and peace within, then you can give it to your children. I'm your host, Hunter Clarke-Fields. I help smart, thoughtful parents stay calm so they can have strong, connected relationships with their children. I've been practicing mindfulness for over 25 years. I'm the creator of the Mindful Parenting Course and Teacher Training. I'm the author of the international bestseller, ‘Raising Good Humans”, “Raising Good Humans Every Day”, and the “Raising Good Humans Guided Journal”.
Hello, welcome back to the Mindful Mama podcast. I'm glad you're here. Happy 2026, woo! I know, I'm a little late, but that's okay. Hey, in just a moment, we are going to be sitting down and talking to Alexia Leachman, who has been helping women overcome reproductive anxiety, tocophobia, and maternal mental health struggles through emotional healing and empowerment using the head trash clearance method. This is a pretty cool conversation we're gonna talk about deep rooted fears around birth and motherhood and how to work through emotional wounds that can show up for us. So yeah, really, really interesting, really powerful. So join me at the table as I talk to Alexia Leachman.
Alexia, thank you so much for coming on the Mindful Momma podcast.
Alexia Leachman:
Thank so much for inviting me to call it to this conversation.
Hunter:
Yeah, well, this is such a fascinating subject and I'm sure, I'm absolutely sure it has to do with your own story and I'm wondering what drew you to help women with reproductive anxiety and you'll need to define it, tocophobia.
Alexia Leachman:
Well, tocophobia is the fear of pregnancy and birth, of pregnancy or birth. And I didn't know I had it until I fell pregnant. And even then I didn't know I had it. It really hit me like a truck. And this is something that a lot of women who have talkophobia, when they only realize they have it when they're pregnant. I saw those two lines and I knew in that moment that I was not okay with being pregnant, but I didn't know why. And that was really, really intense because it was so confusing what I was experiencing. And I wasn't happy with the situation yet. The main narrative is that when women get pregnant, they're really happy about that. And I was not happy with the situation. And so I was resting with that. They're either really happy or really unhappy. It's like kind of nothing in the middle.
But generally, there's a, whereas I was, it wasn't just not unhappy, it was total, this is not okay, the world now needs to swallow me whole because I cannot cope with this situation. And it took me, I don't know, like a few weeks to kind of grapple and get to like accept it a little bit. But I had to go into the neonatal unit quite a lot because I didn't know my last period date and they needed that for my due date. And so I kept going in and out and then it was there that I lost the baby. I found I lost the baby and I had relief. That was a huge relief. And in that moment I was like, that is not okay. What is wrong with you Lex? That you are now relieved at a miscarriage. And that is what propelled me onto my healing journey because I was like, I've got to know what is that about? Why did I feel that way? Am I feeling that way? And I just thought I was-
Hunter: I'm so sorry.
Alexia Leachman (04:00)
-crazy, like weird, like there was something wrong with me and I'd not long lost my mum. So I was resting a grief, really bad depression, really bad anxiety. It was a hot mess anyway. So in my mind, I was just a total hot mess and it was that. I didn't know that there was this thing called tocophobia and actually it was that that was going on. And it was only like many years later, after I'd had a baby that I discovered the term. So I was resting with all of that without knowing what I was resting with.
Hunter:
Did you want the child in the first, like you want, was it a surprise and oops, or was this?
Alexia Leachman:
It was a total surprise. It was unplanned. But now picture this, right? I was 36 in a long-term relationship and one of the biggest stresses I had at that moment was: I don't know if he wants to be a dad. I don't know. I'm like, “I'm going to be a single mom”. So we hadn't had the baby conversation, right? That's classic tocohobia right there because they can't even handle the conversation. They can't talk about it. Women with tocophobia struggle to plan for it. And so I was in this situation where I didn't even know if he wanted kids. And then we had the conversation, obviously, because then I was forced. And yes, then he said he did. So then once we lost the baby, it was like, “okay, we want a baby now”. So then I did a lot of healing around trying to figure out what was wrong with me and heal that. And so I'd moved the needle enough so that when I got pregnant a year later and I saw the two lines, I was like,” okay, this is good, kind of? I'm still terrified, but I'm going to find a way through it”. Whereas before that courage was lacking, it was not there. And so I reached out to all the things that are available to you as a woman that's scared of birth. And typically that's hypnobirthing and I devoured everything I could find and nothing, nothing worked. I was still, it just didn't hit the sides. And it's like, well, this is, I'm now reaching the end of my first trimester and again, I've got to sort this out because that due date is not moving anywhere. Like I've got to sort this out. And in my mind, I had a therapy list as long as there was no way I was going to get time to do that in the time I had left. And I didn't have the budget for that anyway, because I felt I needed it, do daily work. And so that's what forced me to have to figure this out myself. And so I'd done a lot of training and lots of other healing and mindsets of mine as a business coach at the time. And so I was like, I'm going to figure this out.
And so I developed a way that I started testing on myself to clear my fears. And I tested it at my first midwife appointment. And so when would that have been? don't know, it was about the of the first trimester, I guess. And I remember like saying to the method that I was playing with, I pointed it in the sky as like, right, if you're any good, show me what you've got, you know. And so I'm sitting in this appointment because she was telling me about all the needles, like the injection she was going to give me and I was terrified of needles. I'd never left the needle or injection appointment. Oh, conscious, I've always fainted, really bad vasovagal response, like always really bad response. Any blood draws, anything like that, I couldn't handle them at all. And then she tells me she's going to give me all these injections and at that point I stopped listening and I was just thinking, oh my God, and she's going to, I wasn't listening to a word she was saying. And she's like, she clocked it. You know, she saw how I was: “just don't worry. You can wait outside while I get all the needles ready." And it's like, not helping, not helping. So, I'm outside, you know, waiting for her to get all the needles ready pointing at the sky like, okay, show me what you've got. And I did what I now call a clearance in the hospital corridor. And within a few minutes, she called me back in because there were only three injections at the end of the day. Wasn't that that bad? And she said, “are you scared of needles?” And I was like, “well, who said that?” because that was an instant response. as far as I was concerned, absolutely was scared of needles. Excuse me. And so then I went on, I gave my hand over and I had three injections and I was absolutely fine. I was like, wow, I've never been able to do that. That's insane. And so I was processing and trying to get my head around what I'd just experienced. I thought, okay, well, if it works on that, I'm going to do all my fears, all my pregnancy fears, all my everything. I'm going to work through all that. So I got home and I wrote down every single fear I had about birth, about pregnancy, about motherhood, like everything, all the things that were really preying on my mind. And I just worked through them like a to-do list. And that's I swear I said I try much to doing. And so by month seven, you know, my initial birth plan was C-section with all the drugs. I did not want to be conscious for that experience at all. And then in month seven, I was like, I'm going to have a home birth. So I ended up having a home birth.
And that's what ended up being an incredible experience for me. And yeah, it was only when my first daughter was about six months old that I discovered tokophobia and what that was. And I was like, holy moly, that is what I had. That's what I had. And I didn't even know about it. I'd never heard of it. You I was a university educated 36 year old woman in a senior position in corporate and I read up on health and wellness, I used to work in the health and beauty industry, and yet, tocophobia did not hit my radar at all. Didn't know about it. And it affects more than 50 % of women, and I did not know about this.
Hunter (09:37)
Stay tuned for more Mindful Mama podcasts right after this break.
I think a lot of people don't know that. I mean, I can relate to a lot of what you're saying. When I was a kid, they had to have nurses come and sit on me to draw blood, because I would be so upset. They would have the biggest nurses come and sit down on me to hold me down. I'm curious though- tocophobia, right? The sort of labeling this, like tocophobia,: I feel like I have arachnophobia- I'm very scared of spiders- but how is this different from just, you know, how is this different from the general spectrum of reproductive anxiety? Cause it makes sense that we should have fear of childbirth. It's something that has killed women throughout history, right? That's a very legitimate fear. I guess. along that, where do most people fall along that spectrum? how is this, how is this distinguished as this most extreme version of it?
Alexia Leachman: It's a really good question because the spectrum of fear and anxiety is very blurred. often we use the word fear and anxiety interchangeably and that they shouldn't really be, but fear is something that's facing you right there and then. So if your life is in danger in that moment, then that's fear. If it's not, and you're imagining a future situation, that's anxiety, but we use the word fear anyway. So it's important to understand that extinction already. But when it comes to tocophobia, the response is a visceral, full body response, and it's total panic. don't often know why they feel that way. So I could not explain what I was feeling and why I was feeling. I couldn't point to anyone experience apart from in biology class when they showed us that video of a woman giving birth. I was like, well, I was traumatized because of that video. But no, that is not the case. That video simply awoke that within me. I was already carrying that trauma- the trauma was not of watching a video of somebody giving birth. so the talkophobia really is this visceral full response that doesn't really make sense, that isn't coming, it's not coming from the conscious rational mind where go, well, I'm scared because of da-da-da-da-da-da-da. It's non-explainable. It comes from somewhere much deeper and that's because it is rooted in trauma.
And it's likely to be rooted in the trauma that you have no recollection of because that's why you can't explain it because you don't know why you, you know, if a woman's never given birth, how can she possibly be scared of birth? Like, well, what's that about? I've never done it before. How could I be scared? And so we look through our life experiences for, well, maybe it's because I saw that video at school. Maybe it's because I heard about my mum talking about- but it could be like arachnophobia or fear of snakes, like where these are things that are inherited and passed down in humanity. Because there are legitimate reasons that the people who did not have that fear may not have passed down their genes because they died. the people who did accept, yeah, mean, yeah, childbirth, you know, someone passed down their genes to all of us. I mean, it could be like that, I suppose.
Hunter:
Absolutely. Ancestral trauma,
Alexia Leachman:
Well, the likely trauma- at least the trauma that comes up for me with the clients that I work with, is birth trauma, and that is your own birth. So your own arrival in the world was traumatic, and it's that that is now planned. That's the reproductive trauma at play. It might not always be that in the work that I do with women. I'd say about 80 % of the women, it's their own birth, but it can also be puberty trauma. Or if you've got secondary tocophobia where you have given birth and that was traumatic, then that could also be that. So reproductive anxiety disorder, as I'm calling it, is where the root trauma is reproductive in nature and it affects you and your reproductive life. So what I've observed with the women I work with, especially let's say if you've got that root birth trauma, then it will start being awakened, if you like, at the beginning when your reproductive cycle comes online during puberty, which may then contribute to puberty trauma. Now, puberty trauma could also be, the other contributing factors there could be where your mother maybe didn't talk you through about what to expect with puberty, maybe there was shame, there was, you know, like when I was, I remember I had a client and I said to her, I said, I think you've got puberty trauma. And then I reflected on myself and I was telling my daughter about this, who's also going through puberty and she said, “How old were you, mom, when you went through puberty? When you your first period?” And I was like, “I have no idea”. And I thought, “wow, I don't know how old I was”. I cannot remember whether there was pads, like if I was at home, at school, I've got nothing, nothing there. I don't remember any of it either. I tried to remember and I don't. I've got nothing. And as somebody that heals trauma and others, I'm like, well, that's a telling sign. Maybe that was traumatic for me. There's always been a bit of shame around my period for me. I look at my daughter and I talk to her through. She's like waiting pads around the house and talking about it. I'm like, wow, I've actually got a lot of shame around menstrual cycles. I was like, oh, and I don't remember it. Then I've started seeing and working with clients and healing their own puberty trauma. So if you then have your birth trauma in your pocket, you stack a puberty trauma on top of that. Now you're looking at things like body image issues, know, sort of discover the weight, the changes that you go through puberty are now going to start layering on. And so as women, we start accumulating this if we're not actively healing it. Now, if we don't realize what's going on, why would we start healing it?
I've not really heard of a lot of people talking about puberty trauma and also there's not really a lot of people talking about the trauma of our own birth if it's something we can't remember. Again, that's not an easy one to go and find somebody to help to work on that if you don't remember it. You don't realize it's there until it shows up in something like tocophobia. And so what I've observed is this the continuation was like the stacking of trauma if you like. And then if it's still not addressed, then maybe this explains why during perimenopause women ramp up again with more anxiety because now it's the signaling of the end of the reproductive cycle. the nature of our reproduction system is just bringing all of this and churning it through as our body is changing, we're not in control of our body changing, we don't know, hormones are throwing in, mean, hormones are the great amplifier, so if you're not comfortable, if you're anxious, they're just going to really ramp it up. And so we've got all of these changes that are happening to our body and we're not in control of that. And that is the biggest most common theme I find with women who have fear about birth and whether it's tocophobia or even just mild or moderate fear is the loss of control. They don't like the idea of not being in control. And especially when you've got A type women, high achieving, high performing women that may be corporate, and they really struggle with birth and pregnancy because they're not in control. And again, when we think about how our body changes throughout the whole of our reproductive cycle,
We're not in control of any of that when you get pregnant. You don't know if you're going to be big, if you're going to carry it around the front. When you're birth, don't know any of it. You've just got to go in blind. And that is very unsettling. But also when you're born and you go down the birth canal, you're being born, you don't know anything there either. You don't know whether these contractions are going to be too much. You don't know. So a lot of that is seeded at these very, very early experiences. And the reason why tocophobia is so visceral is because, especially I find that in those that have got that trauma of their own birth, is because it literally is in the fabric of your body and your fascia. It's just so embedded within, it's an emotional blueprint, which is why it's it's pre-verbal. You can't, you don't know it's there, you don't realize it, but you feel it, which is why you can't hold a baby, you can't even talk about it. Huge avoidance around all of that, because it's not even entering your conscious mind. How could I have not spoken about babies to my long-term partner at 36? Like how did we not even have that conversation? Well, that's because I was a massive avoidance. Like I was doing a very good job, but I didn't even realize I'd done it.
And so this is why there are so many women out there that have it and they don't know they have it because they, when they don't know it exists because it's got such poor awareness. They just think, “Well, I'm just not maternal. I don't think I'm going to have kids”. And that might be true. Maybe they want to be childless. Maybe they don't want kids. Maybe they also say, “well, I'll probably foster or I'll maybe surrogate, but no, not my own”. And that's a big clue right there, right? Because, you want to be a mother, but you don't want to, you don't want a biological child. But you know, so these are, there's lots of clues around women that have tocophobia and girls, know, teenagers and young women too, let's be clear, it's not just, you know, as a mother with daughters, you know, it's really interesting for me with my two daughters where my eldest, I had tocophobia for her. So in her first trimester, I was full on fear. And even though I healed all of that in my second trimester, while she was being created, I was a fearful mess.
Hunter:
You had all those, cortisol, all of that, all of that goes through the barrier, you know, it's not like there's-
Alexia Leachman (21:24)
Exactly. So she's got that. She's got a little bit. And when we talk about babies and she's like, I don't know if I'm gonna have kids, know, she's frugally off right. Baby number two, where I was all healed and I'd done all the work and you know, I was, you know, very different place for her. She's like, I'm gonna have eight babies, mom, I want all the baby. She's always talking about that. And you know, she's really into that. was like, oh, isn't that interesting? The difference between them and how they're responding to this idea of kids. And so I think we just need to be aware of that as mothers if we have daughters and open up conversations, you know, but also as women to start conversations with our sisters, with our friends. If you spot somebody that you see is maybe avoiding the conversation, doesn't want to talk about babies, is maybe, you know, having those, you know, just avoiding it, then maybe there's a conversation to be had there to sort of clue her in because the difficult thing, the tragic thing, and I've worked with a lot of women like this too, is that they come to me when they're 40, 41, and they're like, I've missed the boat. And now I realize I did want kids. And now can you help me just make peace with that please? And if they'd known about that sooner, you know, because the healing journey is not a linear straightforward one for everyone. It can take time and then you've got fertility to deal with. the sooner women can understand that this is a condition that exists and the sooner they can start their healing journey to at least give them the opportunity to go, you know what, actually I don't want kids. And I know that with my heart. And I've helped women like that too. And they're like, I don't know if I want kids or not. My partner wants them. I don't know. I think it's my fear talking. Can you just help me figure this out? Because I want to make a decision that I can trust, that I won't regret later. And so we do the work and then they're like, yeah, I do. And then they get pregnant and now they're moms and all the rest of it. And others are like, “now I know for sure I don't want kids thanking you. Now I can just move on with my life rather than this thing just weighing over me. So it really is about us women just helping other women to realize, daughters, sisters, friends, about this so that we can clue them in and help them get on the path that's going to really help make them happy.
Hunter (23:33)
This is something I certainly never thought about. You know, as you're speaking, I can relate my first pregnancy. I really wanted to get pregnant. I had a friend come over and was pregnant with twins and she was huge. And I remember touching her belly and then feeling this feeling like, “Ooh, I want this!” And that was fun. That was great. That was so fun to just, “okay, let's do it”. And I had a real biological body urge to do that. But then when I was pregnant, I, you know, I had anxiety about it, but I never would have labeled it that because I wouldn't even think the word anxiety, because it's too scary to even think the word anxiety. But I remember thinking that, and I had my, you know, I had a, we have a freestanding birth center and it was all good and I'm doing the classes. But then people had asked me about it. I'd say, I'm not gonna think about it too much. If you're about to like, you're gonna just, my statement was, if you're gonna go jump off a cliff, why are you gonna think about it ahead of time, right? Like, I'm just kind of trying to stay present, which in retrospect was a clue that I was kind of scared and it was very intense. But yeah, with baby number two, and then she does, that daughter does have a lot more anxiety, actually. She doesn't want to have kids. But with baby number two, I did hypnobirthing and wow, hypnobirthing, you know, and then I had been through this experience once. knew I could, I was going to be okay. You know, I knew at least my body gave birth to babies fast. So that was like a relief that it wasn't going to be like some 30 hour thing. And, and they got also got a birth time at the birth time. And then I did hypnobirthing and that made all the difference in the world for me, know, for the levels that I had. And that child is actually more inclined to have kids, I think. It's so interesting. We're kind of lining up with your-
Alexia Leachman (25:41)
It's fascinating. I want to also, you know, there could be some people listening thinking, oh no, I was really worried. I was anxious or I am pregnant and I don't want the mom guilt can kick in. You know, when you're pregnant thinking, oh my goodness, but I'm not, you know, I'm resting with this at work. I've got family, whatever, there's stuff going on and how's that going to affect the baby I'm carrying? what's really important for the baby is that you experience a full range of human emotion. And so, yeah, if you have difficult days, good days, and it's up and down, that's what being human is all about, right? It's when there's something that's a significant, let's say you lose a love, a parent during your pregnancy, then that's obviously going to take you somewhere that's outside of the realm of normal human experience. So when there's marked emotional, heightened emotional experiences, then that is going to have an impact. And it's not, I'm not saying that to guilt people into that, but it's important to be aware because there are things you can do about that. And this is why when I was pregnant, really, once I started learning and I was getting all into my fear clearance work and I learned about the impact of a stressful mom on the baby, and I had allergies and eczema and asthma and I read some research that said that women with high levels of maternal stress are more likely to have kids with that trio of allergies. And I was like, right, I'm going do everything I can. You know, yes, I've done my fear clearance work, but I'm also going to do whatever I can to not be stressed, to really manage my stresses, the triggers and all of those things in day to day life so that my daughter doesn't have that stuff that I had because ex-mom was a nightmare. yeah, and so understanding that, knowing that enables you as a mom to go, “I'm going to do things differently”. Just like we know not to drink or smoke during pregnancy because we know that. But in the 60s, they didn't know that, right? And they did.
Hunter (27:40)
Exactly. With that second birth, I was like, “this wasn't helpful to just like not think about for birth ahead of time”. Like I have to practice, you know, getting my baseline stress and anxiety down, practice relaxation in these moments, et cetera. You've mentioned your practice of clearing your fears, how you went through it like a checklist and you cleared your fears. And it sounds like to me a way of digesting, right? Digesting and becoming conscious of these things rather than, and you know, healing them. So I'd love to hear more about that. know the listeners got to be curious, especially if we all have some, right? So tell us a little bit more about this.
Alexia Leachman:
Yeah. So the methods that are called head trash clearance, and it's basically because it enables you to clear your head trash.
Hunter:
It sounds like a punk band, by the way.
Alexia Leachman:
That’s the book, it's not even like this, that shows properly. And it's all in the book and it's also in my birth book, the “Fearless Birthing” book. So if you want to learn how to do this, it's in Fearless Birthing and Clear Your Head Trash. The Clear Your Head Trash is probably the dad edition or general life if you're not in the pregnancy birth part of your life. But it's really simple. It's a five-step process and step one is you identify your fear. So when I was pregnant, pain was up there, right? Fear of pain. identifying with what that is and what you want to get rid of. And that would have been what I wrote on my list.
And then the second step is like really tuning into that, like what is, how is this affecting me? And when I was pregnant, I used to think about birth and pain. I'd want to, like, my legs would cross really tightly and I'd kind of like crouch over, I'd be really tense. There'd be probably some frowning and some tightness in my jaw. Like the whole idea of it would just make me want to shut down and contract. So that's like, that's quite telling, right? Because if I was kind of really relaxed on my sofa and just like, oh yeah, pain, no problem. Then that's, that's also very telling. So understanding how this thing is affecting your body but also your mind is part of that process. really tune into it. And then there's the clearance process, which requires putting your hands on acupressure points on your face and also reciting, like repeating mantras to yourself. So there's 10 mantras you repeat and you just hold the acupressure position on your face, which looks like this. It's called the TAT position, T-A-T. And then you repeat what I call the head trash clearance mantras. And so they are, it's just a template really with a blank in it.
Hunter:
What are some of the mantras?
Alexia Leachman:
Well, you take the thing and there's a blank in it the book and you just fill in the blank with what you've picked. So it's very easy, just plug in the thing that you're working and stick it in the blank and away you go. So on pain, the mantras will, the first one will be, I love pain. Now, obviously, if you hate pain, that's going to be a real issue for you when you're sitting there going, I love pain, like the inside of you is going, no, no, no, no, no. And that's the resistance. Exactly. So what we're not doing is planting. With hypnosis, we're planting suggestions in moments of head truss clearance we're removing. And so what we're removing is that resistance. you sit with it and you repeat it to yourself and you wear down that inner voice in doing that process. And then the next mantra is, hate pain. And at that point, you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, I definitely hate pain. And so by going back and forth with these I love and I hate mantras across these different aspects of the issue that you're working on, then by the end of it, you're like, “well, yeah, okay, pain, I'm not a big fan, but I can handle it. I'll deal with it”. Which is a very different response to full body shut down, don't get me near it, I can't handle it, blah, blah, blah, avoidance. So you slowly, by working through everything on your list, and one clearance might take you at the beginning of your clearance journey, when you've not done any energy clearing work before, it might take you about half an hour, 40 minutes to do that process, because you also have to do the opposite. Because it's important for everything to be balanced because we're creating neutrality where there's no emotional reaction to the thing. You can consider it and go, well, I'm not really bothered. Yeah, I don't care. Not bothered. And the same thing can apply with losing control. Yeah, okay, well, actually losing control, can handle it. I don't like it, but I'll do it. As opposed to no way, I'm never going to lose control. I'm going to hold onto everything until there's a very different response going on there. So you're able to be a lot more fluid, a lot more nimble emotionally to able to handle and roll the punches, which in pregnancy and birth, that's really important, especially birth, where it could go anyway. To be able to just pivot emotionally, not get stressed, not get triggered, enables you to maintain a really positive, like good hormone balance throughout the whole of that birth so that you are getting your endorphins, you are getting your oxytocin so things keep moving. That is kept in play because you're not allowing these things to trigger you and get adrenaline. Excuse me. So that's the five-step process: identify it, tune into it, do the clearance, check in with it again, see what's changed, and then the fifth step, which is do the opposite, to do the balancing work. So all of that might take you 45 minutes, and then you work through, you just work through everything on your list. And sometimes it brings up lots of emotions, sometimes it brings up lots of memories, lots of insights, like, aha moments, you realize that actually this thing you don't like, you know, you do it all the time, it's really weird and you love it and you hate it at the same time. know, like a lot of women I work with, they really want to be pregnant, but they can't bear the thought being pregnant at the same time. And it's very conflicting, these feelings. We can't make sense of them, but you're able to kind of express them all through this process and realize that actually that is how I feel. And it's got a voice, so giving that part of you a voice and then you reach peace with it. So once you do that on all these key fears around anything, let's be clear, I did all this with my pregnancy and birth journey, but then I did it on all of my motherhood stuff. Kids, push all your buttons. That's what they're trained to do. I think doing that has really helped me to be a better mother because I wasn't getting triggered. could handle them and I wasn't losing my rag and shatting and all that. But I used it on them too. So we've done fear of dinosaurs, fear of monsters under the bed, fear of spiders, all those things that kids have. so they're able to be, so I use it with them all the time.
And so it's a method that I now use all the time in day-to-day life. My background is a business coach, so I've worked with business owners and CEOs, so I don't just work around birth anymore. It's very much expanded since then, but it was my experience of doing that with my own birth experience, specifically tocophobia, that really, really showed me what it could do and how fast it could work. Because at the end of the day, tocophobia is a severe anxiety disorder- it's not a fear. It's way more than that. Once you unpack it, I had to do about 45 to 50 clearances during my second trimester. So that's a lot of work that I had to put in. But the result of that is that I had no fear and I was able to have my baby in and it all went wonderfully. So yeah, it might feel like a lot of time effort in the moment, but once you've done that, you don't have to do it It's done- can move on and continue on your human growth, on your personal growth journey and do what's next. So yeah, so that's the clearance process now and I train doulas midwives but also therapists and coaches in that today because it's so effective and versatile in its use.
Hunter (35:19)
Stay tuned for more Mindful Mama podcasts right after this break.
Alexia Leachman (35:26.294)
It’s very much about this process of digesting the feelings. You one of the things that I talk about sometimes when I do, if I do a keynote on how to not yell at your kids is that I talk about our emotions, whatever we're feeling, generally most of us were taught to either block them or drown in them or we drown in them or we explode in them and we aren't really taught to digest them.
Hunter:
You know, the mindful middle path is to feel things and then not get swept away by them. And it's almost like, and I think of that as the emotional and digestive system that most of us were not really, it wasn't modeled for us. In fact, actually, as an aside, I have a funny story about this. I went not that long ago to an art opening that my dad was having. He's about to turn 80. This is his first one in maybe 10 years, a long time. We’re having a late lunch before the opening. I'm like, “hey, dad, how are you feeling about this? Are you excited slash nervous about this”? And he says to me, “Hunter, I don't feel a single thing”. Like, can we say repression? Anyway, it was just so funny to me because it was such a clear example of this is what we were taught. We are taught to, if we have something that feels uncomfortable, scary, we're nervous about, then we push it down. And what you're describing is a way of deliberately in a safe place in your own time and space, bringing it up and bringing it up with a process of feeling the physical sensations without turning away, which is really important, working with the mind, with the extremes of the mind and then digesting this big emotional hamburger.
Alexia Leachman:
It is that, yeah. No, I love the way that you're describing that. Another way that I describe that is like, you when you think about if you go swimming or you're at the beach and somebody's dropped your big beach towel into the sea, now you've got a soppy, massive wet towel. How are you going to deal with that towel if you need to get back at home? How would you deal with that towel hunter? Exactly. And what does wringing it out look like? Show me with your hands. Wring it up.
Hunter (38:47)
You twist it up and you stretch it out.
Alexia Leachman:
Exactly. Exactly. So you push it one way, you twist it one way, and then you turn it and you twist it the other way. Now that's what we're doing with the emotions. We're taking the strongest emotions of love and hate and we're wringing the emotion out of this thing that you're currently carrying. So at the moment, if you carry a lot of emotion around something, there might be tears. You're a big, soppy mess like this big beach towel. So we were wringing the emotion out. So now you can talk about this thing, experience this thing without the emotion, which enables you to be calmer.
And this is really powerful, especially, let's say, in work settings, for example, where you might get, you know, some people get very triggered or they find it hard to get their point across because they get angry about things going on. And so now they're having a bit of a rant and it starts getting quite heated or maybe family arguments at home, discussions, it can get very heated very quickly. Whereas if you're not getting heated, but you can still put across your anger that's calm. I mean, kids will tell you that calm anger is way more terrifying than shouty anger, right? So when you can be calm with your anger, one, your message will get across, but you can think clearly through that situation. You don't suddenly start saying all sorts of stuff that later you regret because actually you can think clearly. You're not in the cloudy mists of emotion. So ringing out our emotions like that in terms of all the things that are affecting your anxiety or fear, you're triggered with means that you're much calmer in day-to-day life. that, like, one thing I see a lot in my clients is that within a couple of weeks of starting work together, already they start sleeping better. So their nervous system, and that tells you that a nervous system is not getting fired as much, like, activated because it doesn't need the same level of recovery. Because by addressing all their triggers, all the things that make them anxious and fearful, now that's not being triggered left right and center. All their buttons that they were getting triggered on before, they're being pushed by everybody, aren't. So their nervous system is getting a massive break. They're sleeping better. They don't need as much sleep. So typically, my clients are getting, within a couple of weeks, they say, oh, I need one hour less sleep now. That's fairly significant in your work, in your week, right? And when a one hour more of your life every day. So, and that's because your nervous system is now in better shape.
Calming yourself down not only enables you to have much better relationships, not react as much, especially to children because they're the ones that are going to really do it to you as we all know. Yeah. But also in other settings like work as well. it really, benefits of doing this kind of work, like digesting your emotions as you put it, it's just, it's so far reaching because you really do have a calmer life in that sense. You're not, you know, it doesn't feel like you're being battered about from everything in the day.
Hunter:
So the one thing I was, as you were describing it, I was comparing this process to what I teach in mindful parenting and a mindfulness practice that's taught by psychologists involved in mindfulness is called RAIN, which stands, it's an acronym, which stands for, to, to, recognize a recognize what you're, you're a is accept or allow. And, know, and that reminds me of what you said, like, you know, sometimes an exception allow your you're saying like, yes, yes, yes, right? Like removing your resistance. I investigate and then N is nurture with self-compassion. And I wondered about your process. is there, what role does self-compassion play in the head trash clearance method?
Alexia Leachman:
Huge. Compassion is a massive, massive part of it. And it's not because we're deliberately putting it in there. It's because once you've been through all the mantras, which look at things from a lot of different perspectives, especially other people and their role or not in the thing that you're wrestling with, let's say if we take something like feeling trapped, for example, which again is a huge theme that I have with women that I work with because they feel like they're going to be trapped by pregnancy, trapped by motherhood, trapped in the birth. The feeling of feeling trapped or stuck is huge. No matter where you are in that pregnancy, motherhood, birth journey. so when you are working through a mantra, there's the idea that you hate feeling trapped. Yeah, I love feeling trapped. No, hate it. Yes, hate it. But I love the idea of other people making me feel trapped or life making me feel trapped or motherhood making me feel trapped. So you start to kind of engage with the idea of you experiencing this thing because of these situations or other people. And then you flip it. I love making other people feel trapped, which is you just like, well, no, I wouldn't do that. That's awful. But then you think, “actually, maybe I have done that”. Maybe I did that to this ex-boyfriend once, or maybe I was like with the kids, I'm like forcing them to stay in their room and do their homework. Like, you start to see flavors of this thing in the way that you live your life. And then you start to realize that actually maybe you do this thing sometimes, maybe you have done it, or maybe you like doing it, and you're like, oh, that's interesting. And with that comes this huge compassion. Because you realize that, let's say you're working on anger or feeling, or whatever you might be working on, you realize that actually you might do this, even if you don't intend to do it. You might also start to come to the realization that when other people are reacting and you're getting people around you reacting emotionally, that you then go, that's not me, they're just resting with something. You get this insight, think they're just resting with something there and you are now in compassion for them rather than getting reacted and drawn in to the drama. You're able to just stand back and not get brought in emotionally and actually be there to be there for them because you realize it's not about you. It was never about you. It's just they're just dealing with something and maybe you could just hold them in that space. so doing all these clearances enable you to be that more compassionate because you now have insight and perspective that you just didn't have before. And that's what enables you to be compassionate. Does that make sense?
Hunter (44:47)
Yeah, yeah, I think so. I mean, this is fascinating. I hope that, you know, dear listener, this is helping you wrap your head around another way to kind of deal with your anxieties, your birth, and maybe understand yourself if you have experienced this tocophobia. Alexia Leachman's books are “Clear Your Head Trash” and “Fearless Birthing”. Alexia, for anybody who is kind of starting this healing journey, any final words for what maybe first steps they might want to take?
Alexia Leachman:
Well, I've got a free healing community if people want to come and give it a go, know, try out Head Trash Clearance, see if it works for them because there's a lot of modalities out there and a lot of ways of working and it's useful to kind of have a go, see if this is something you get on with. So maybe the first thing is to come and check out the free community which you can find out on the Head Trash website and just give it a go and see if it works for you and if it does, then there's lots of resources I've got available to you to help you to do the work if that's something that does work for you.
Hunter:
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on and I really appreciate your time and your sharing your story and your innovativeness in creating this thing that has helped you and so many people. So thank you for coming on the Mindful Mama podcast.
Alexia Leachman (46:15)
Well, thank you, Hunter, for having me. It's been brilliant.
Hunter (46:24)
Hey, very interesting conversation, right? Did you find this helpful? Are you gonna be kinda taking some of those steps? I would love to know. You can hit me up at the socials. I'm @MindfulMamaMentor. If you're on the mailing list, just respond to one of the emails about this episode maybe that I sent. And yeah, I'd love to know your feedback. Yeah, I'm wishing you a great week. I hope this episode is helpful for you. I will be back again talking next week about some very, very interesting topic. We're gonna talk about getting intimate with our honeys. Kinda like how do we go from touched out to turned on? Love that. So yeah, from fierce to thriving maybe. Yeah, you know, let's something and let's make 2026 good. Yeah, are you with me? So anyway, I hope this has been helpful and I hope you have a good weekend. I'm so glad you're listening and supporting podcasts. a friend and yeah, I'll be back and I'll talk to you again next week. Take care. Namaste.
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