In-utero trauma is not usually one of the first places to look when we want to track down the roots of our anxiety. But as I discovered, this was exactly where I needed to look.
I stumbled on a past trauma from my in-utero experience (also known as in-utero trauma) that proved to be the key to a lot of the things I’ve wrestled with as an adult.
As someone who hunts down head trash – especially my own – this is a HUGE win for me. When something isn’t shifting, I dig and dig until I can figure it out and get rid of it. I had some personal stuff that just wasn’t shifting and I needed to figure out why.
Trauma feeds fear and anxiety
I figured there must be a traumatic experience feeding it. Trauma does that, it’s feeder of fear and anxiety. In my experience, if fear or anxiety isn’t shifting easily then there’s a trauma keeping it in place or making it worse.
Sometimes, we don’t even have a conscious recollection of the experience. This was the case for me. I had no conscious memory of the trauma I was about to clear.
READ: Why Anxiety Doesn’t Go Away – What It Really Is and How It Resolves
Clearing traumas of things we can’t even remember
To get around this, before clearing the trauma, I placed my intention on clearing whatever it was that was feeding the anxiety I wanted to address.
What followed was a brutal hour of clearance work. Tears, snot and more tears. It just kept coming. By the end of it I was spent. Spent, but alive and vibrant! And light… god how I felt light!
It proved to be one of the most significant clearances I have ever done.
The traumatic event I worked on proved to be The Key to a huge number of the patterns that were running me. Emotional patterns that were sabotaging me and holding me back. It was also the the root event of my eczema, which had recently come back with a vengeance like I have never known.
Once I was done, I wanted to know what the event was. I was curious.
READ: Childhood Wounds: How Early Experiences Shape Adult Patterns
So, what WAS this event??
What the hell was it that had embedded so much crap for me?
So I asked how old I was to try and figure it out. Childhood trauma is usually the culprit, so I started there.
Was I under 5? Yes.
Was I under 4? Yes.
I got a hunch.
Was I in utero? Yes.
I was in utero!
And then I knew EXACTLY what it was.
When my mother was pregnant with me she was worried about losing her job if they found out. So she tried to keep me a secret from her employers in case they found out and fired her. Talk about stressful!
Apparently her bump was really small and you could hardly tell she was pregnant.
I arrived early.
I can only imagine the thoughts she would have been having;
I’ve got to hide this.
I must keep this a secret.
I want my bump to be small.
My baby can’t be visible.
If I get found out, I’ll lose my job.
She was the breadwinner, so this would have been a big deal. Being found out meant loss of security.
Oh hello Lex’s head trash! (and clearly in-utero trauma!)
The root of my problem patterns!
This is all the shit I’ve been wrestling with FOR AGES that wasn’t budging. Some of it is only obvious to me now that I understand and can see where it came from. I had lightbulbs going off all over the place!
I’m totally fine being visible, thinking big and doing things that make me stand out. That bit is ME: Lex.
And yet, I’ve not been able to sustain it or go ALL IN with it. I was getting pulled back into hiding and playing small. That bit was HER.
I was running my mother’s pregnancy fears and making them my own. This is classic in-utero trauma.
No wonder I was struggling with this stuff.
Your time in the womb matters
As part of my work in birth and pregnancy, I know that the in-utero experience is a precious one, and one to be protected and nurtured. When I interviewed the father of prenatal psychology, Thomas Verny, on my podcast he talked about in-utero trauma. It’s a fascinating chat and worth listening to if this stuff interests you.
There’s a lot of evidence that supports this so I’m not being all woo here. The in-utero experience and the birth create emotional imprints in the baby that they will carry though into adulthood. Anna Verwal also talks a lot about this.
This is why I’m so vocal about wanting expectant mothers to clear their fear, stress and anxiety while they’re pregnant.
It matters.
Not only does it help them to have a better birth experience – which is a bloody good reason on its own – but it’s also good for the baby and its future adult self. I expand on all this in my book, Fearless Birthing.
If they’re not positive emotional patterns, then these imprints can be the root cause of anxiety and phobias as adults. I see this time and time again in my work helping women overcome tokophobia (extreme fear of birth).
Some people have accused me of fear-mongering or making women feel guilty for their thoughts and feelings during pregnancy. Pregnancy is already such a challenging time for some, physically, mentally and emotionally. The last thing they want is the guilt that comes from thinking that their negative thoughts are damaging in some way.
I’m afraid I can’t do anything about that. That we know already. It’s already happening. Surely, it’s best for women to know this so that they can do something about it. I’m simply the messenger.
Being well-informed is crucial
People can choose whether they do anything about it or not. But being informed is crucial in making that decision.
We know that eating meat, fatty foods, drinking alcohol and smoking is bad. And yet people still do it. That’s their choice. Perhaps they feel guilty with every cigarette or burger. Perhaps they don’t. It doesn’t mean we’re going to keep quiet about it just in case some people feel guilty.
The same goes for this. Women NEED to know about this.
Whether we like it or not, our bodies and minds are potent creators of future generations. Perhaps the mental health crisis we’re seeing today has its roots in crappy pregnancies and births of the past. It would make sense.
Intellectually I knew the importance of the in-utero experience from my work in pregnancy and birth. But now I truly KNOW.
I would urge all pregnant women to keep diaries of how they’re feeling throughout their pregnancy. It could be the best gift to your child on their 18th birthday as they wrestle with figuring out who they are. It would probably save a ton of time in therapy too. A lot of our focus as parents is in providing for our children – schooling, opportunity etc – but perhaps we ned to shift the focus to mental health.
As expectant parents, what can we do, to support the future mental health of our children. Because isn’t that what will help them to survive best?
Emotionally resilient and happy people usually do pretty well, no matter what.
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Podcast Transcript
Alexia Leachman [00:00:10]:
You’re listening to the Head Trash show with me, Alexia Leachman, author of Clear your head trash. Head Trash is the home to the head trash clearance method, which you can use to get rid of the fears, stresses and anxieties in your life. Every week I’ll be sharing insights, storeys and interviews to inspire you to clear your head trash so that you can find calmness, confidence and clarity in your life and work. To find out more about clearing Head trash and creating a headspace, head over to clearyourheadtrash.com and now for today’s show. Hello and welcome back to the Head Trash show.
Alexia Leachman [00:00:42]:
My name is Alexa Leachman. Thank you so much for joining me today. Now, in today’s podcast, I want to talk about anxiety and whether or not it comes from your time in the womb, your in utero experience, and in-utero trauma. So this might seem like an odd link to make, right, but actually your time in the womb, the time that you’re, that you spend being carried by your mother for those nine months is really, really crucial part of your, of the building blocks that make up you. I mean, at the end of day, she’s building a new human being and during that time you are connected to her as one. And so what she feels you, you feel what she thinks you hear and connect to. So when you think about it in that way, it’s kind of pretty obvious that whatever she’s going through is going to have an impact on your emotional system, on your emotional blueprint, like the patterns that you are set up with as you are prepared to live in the world that she is living in. Because at the end of the day, in order to survive as a living being, you, you need to be well prepared to live in the world that she is in.
Alexia Leachman [00:01:55]:
So whatever she is going through, you will be experiencing on some level and preparing yourself to be able to survive in that environment. Now, there’s lots of evidence around whether babies are sentient beings and at what time in the womb they begin to hear and feel and sense. So this is backed by lots of evidence. And if you’re curious about this, then go and seek out the work of Dr. Thomas Verney, who I’ve interviewed recently on the podcast, but also Dr. David Chamberlain. But I don’t want to get into all that now. What I really want to get into is whether or not what you’re wrestling with today has got a link or a root in your time in the womb, in your utero experience.
Alexia Leachman [00:02:39]:
And I want to share a personal journey on how I realised that some of the biggest head trash stuff that I’m wrestling with as an adult came from my time, time in the womb and in-utero trauma. Now the thing about, well, I’m going to talk about trauma and yes, I’m on a bit of a trauma thing right now because trauma is the root of a lot of our anxiety, of our fears, of our phobias, of the mental health stuff that we’re wrestling with and how that shows up in our lives. Whether we end up being a bully or an addict or whatever is going on for us, the chances are it’s rooted in trauma. And so looking toward trauma, like deciding to kind of deal with your trauma, overcome it, heal it, this is really going to help you to kind of let go of this stuff because it’s trauma that kind of keeps all that stuff locked in, right? So this is why I’ve been hunting down my traumas and really kind of relentlessly looking under every rock, in every dark corner, because I’m really kind of obsessed with clearing my head trash, right. And, and I hope to inspire you to do the same because it’s not depressing and hard work. It’s actually really invigorating because the more you clear, the better you feel. And so even though I’ve got to sit and cry my ass off for 45 minutes and create a mountain of snotty tissues and then need to go to bed, I much prefer to go through that 45 minutes of crying to then know that I’ve kicked this trauma to the kerb and it’s not affecting me anymore anyway. So I want to get back to this in utero experience because as I’ve said, I’ve been hunting down my traumas and my wrestling with my head trash and like, like really just trying to sort it out.
Alexia Leachman [00:04:21]:
So when I’m wrestling with something and I’m doing all my head trash clearance and it’s not really shifting in the way that I’d expect, then I just carry on digging and digging until I can kind of figure it out. So with this particular thing I was wrestling with, I was like, right, okay, this, this really isn’t shifting. I’ve done loads of clearances and, and it’s not eradicating itself in the way that I expect. So just sort of talk about that for a bit. So when I clear fears and anxieties and conflicts, normally if there’s no trauma rooting it in, it just gets cleared out the way super quick. So let’s say a spider phobia, that kind of thing, then you can clear a spider Phobia, if you’ve got. If you’re scared of spiders, as I had a fear of spiders and I was able to just knock that one out the park in, like, 10 minutes. And.
Alexia Leachman [00:05:06]:
And that was it. It was done. You know, I’m totally fine with spiders. Whereas if there’s a trauma there, then you kind of. Maybe you can do 80% of the work. So you feel much more comfortable around spiders, but there’s still, like this lurking thing that you like. Oh, well, still not super happy with them. And so that.
Alexia Leachman [00:05:24]:
That’s a clue that there potentially could be a trauma involved in. In keeping this in. And, like, it’s almost like the roots are still there. You can cut the branches, you can trim it all up. You can. Like, when you’re doing your gardening, you can do all it. You can’t see anything in the soil, but the bloody roots are still there. So you’ve got to go for the roots, right? Because as long as the roots are there, some of that stuff can sprout back.
Alexia Leachman [00:05:46]:
Okay, so this was what I was wrestling with, where I was clearing stuff, and it just wasn’t shifting in the way that I was used to seeing. So I was like, right, okay, there’s got to be a trauma here. But the thing is, I didn’t have. I couldn’t think of anything. Like, I was like, well, there might be, but I can’t remember if there’s anything related to this stuff. Right. I don’t know. So I decided that I would instead place my intention on clearing any trauma that might be there to.
Alexia Leachman [00:06:17]:
That was related to this head trash I was wrestling with. And so I decided to proceed on that basis. And so I did. That’s what I did. And then what followed was like a pretty brutal hour of clearance work. Yes, there was snot. Yes, there were tears, and then there was more tears, and. And it just kind of kept coming.
Alexia Leachman [00:06:35]:
And by the end of that hour, I was pretty spent, I have to say. But I was feeling good, right? I was feeling good like you do after a really good gym workout. You kind of feel completely knackered, completely out of it. But you’re like, yes, I’ve just done loads of exercise, and yes, I’m going to ache tomorrow, but, oh, my God, I feel good for it. That’s how I felt. Okay? And as I sort of, you know, because I’m quite curious about all this stuff, so I carried on digging afterwards, and as it happened, it proved to be one of the most significant clearances I’d done to Date for myself, because this traumatic event that I had uncovered and cleared proved to be the key to lots and lots of patterns that were running in me. These were, like, emotional patterns that were sabotaging me and holding me back in a massive way. And interestingly, it was also one of the key events that was at the root of my eczema, which is something that I’ve been really struggling with my whole life.
Alexia Leachman [00:07:28]:
And that had come back with a vengeance around this time as well. So once I’d done all this clearance work and I, you know, built my mountain of tissues, I was like, okay, well, what the hell was this event? Like, what was it that made me cry for an hour and create so much snot? You know, I was kind of curious because I’m a curious person. So, yeah. So I decided to carry on with my digging and my curiousness and basically see what I could find. Now, we always hear that childhood trauma is usually the culprit. So I was like, well, I’ll start there. So I tuned into myself, and I used the way that I work to try to get answers, which I’m not going to go into now. So I’m just going to tell you that I’m just tuning in.
Alexia Leachman [00:08:12]:
So I asked the question, was I under five? Yes, I was under five. Okay. Was I under four? I was under four. And then I got a hunch. Was I a new to row? Yes. Oh, my God. And then it just came to me, like, all of a sudden, I just knew exactly what. What it was, what this event was.
Alexia Leachman [00:08:31]:
And it was all about my mother. Now, when my mother was pregnant with me, she was really worried about losing her job if they found out that she was pregnant. This was the 70s. So, you know, women’s equality was not where it is today. Not that today it’s in a very good place. But it was nowhere near that in the 70s. And so, yeah, she may have lost her job if they found out that she was pregnant. She was also the main breadwinner because my father was doing a PhD, so she tried to keep me a secret from her employers in case they found out and fired her.
Alexia Leachman [00:09:06]:
That would be mega stressful in anybody’s book, right? I mean, pregnancy can be stressful enough anyway without worrying about possibly losing the family income and being fired. So, you know, when I think about the kind of thoughts that she was probably having, she was probably thinking things like, I’ve got to hide this. I must keep this a secret. I want my bump to be small. I’ve got to keep small. I’ve got to be small. My baby can’t be visible. If I get found out, I’ll lose my job (in-utero trauma)
Alexia Leachman [00:09:37]:
So, you know, there’s probably many, many more thoughts that were accompanying her journey of pregnancy. But those are, there’s some obvious ones that I can think of. And then as I, when I was writing this down before I prepared to record this, I was like, oh my God, like all of this stuff, this is all of my head trash. Because a lot of the stuff that I’ve been wrestling with around this time that I did this clearance was stuff that I had been wrestling with for ages. And there’s around visibility. Like I’m not shy to getting to talk on stage. I’ve spoken in front of hundreds, I’ve performed on stage as a dancer in front of thousands. So being on stage, being visible is not a problem for me.
Alexia Leachman [00:10:16]:
I’ve also had a podcast for many, many years. My podcast has been downloaded over a million and a half times. I’ve interviewed lots of incredible guests. So again, speaking out, having large audiences is not something that, that worries me. But I’ve noticed that I was flip flopping with this. You know, sometimes I could be super visible and super out there, and other times I’m like, no, no, no, no, I don’t want to, I want to hide. I don’t want people to know. It just doesn’t make any sense at all.
Alexia Leachman [00:10:44]:
And I do this flip flopping, right? And so, yeah, so this, when I looked at this, I was like, oh my goodness, I’m basically wrestling with my mum’s stuff and, and flip flopping with me and mine, who I am. So me, Lex, is okay with being visible and out there, but my mum wasn’t being okay with being visible and being seen because of all these reasons I’ve just stated. And so this is probably why I wasn’t able to really go all in with what I was doing because I kept getting pulled back because of the trauma, into hiding and playing small. But they were her traumas, not mine. But they were imprinted because I was sharing body and system and everything with her during all of this time. So, you know, looking at it like that, it’s really obvious what the hell was going on. But until I got the hunch to go and sort of hunt this one down, I was blind to it. Absolutely blind to it.
Alexia Leachman [00:11:46]:
And this is why being curious about your head trash, hunting down the traumas is so essential. You know, traumas have got a bit of a bad reputation. You know, they can be scary and People talk about, oh, well, you’ve got to tread carefully with trauma. It’s very complex and blah, blah, blah. Yes. But actually it’s simple. The trauma is a memory. It’s a emotional energy that’s trapped that you’re still carrying because of an event, because of the way that you perceived an event happening to you.
Alexia Leachman [00:12:16]:
But you can let that emotional energy go, right? You can let it go. And when you let it go, you might have an hour of crying, but at the end of it, you’ll feel so much better for it. And so I really want to encourage you to kind of be curious around why you’re wrestling with some of the head trash that you’re wrestling with today, because you might get some really amazing aha moments. And by doing that, you get to let this stuff go for good and really make quantum leaps in your own personal development. But I just want to talk a little bit about why your time in the womb matters, because I don’t think a lot of people really realise how much it does. Now, I’ve done a lot of work around birth and pregnancy as well. Part of my fearless birthing book, the podcast Fear Free Childbirth. So if you want to kind of listen and look into all of that, then I would encourage you to take a look at the book Fearless.
Alexia Leachman [00:13:11]:
Take a look at the book Fearless Birthing, where I share the fear clearance method and everything in the context of pregnancy and birth and tokophobia. But also my podcast, Fear Free Childbirth Podcast. But there’s a lot, a lot of evidence, like I said earlier, about why your time in the room matters, how it can create these emotional imprints for you. There’s an incredible woman called Anna Virwell. She talks a lot about this, about how your. The arrival of your. The way that you arrive into the world, whether it’s C section, whether it’s with ventus, whether it’s a natural birth down the birth canal, all of that can really play out into how you behave in your life today. So, for example, something I remember that she said to me that people that had to be pulled out with the Von Tooth, they tend to need.
Alexia Leachman [00:13:56]:
And also C sections, they tend to. People who are born like that need help getting out of sticky situations. They. They don’t have that capacity within them to push through because they need to be pulled out, which is exactly what’s going on with how they arrive in the world. That’s their very first lesson that they learn, is that, I don’t need to do this. Someone is going to pull me out Whereas a baby resting down the birth canal knows they’ve got to push on through and make it happen, otherwise they’re going to get stuck. So, you know, it’s really interesting when you kind of look into this, how much that your time in the womb impacts you today, but also the way that you arrive in the world. So if you’re curious about all this, then maybe head over to my Fear Free Childbirth podcast and start with the episode with Dr.
Alexia Leachman [00:14:39]:
Thomas Verney. That’s a really good place to start to understand in-utero trauma. So I hope that this, this episode has been useful for you and I would encourage you to think about maybe some of the patterns that you’re wrestling with today and have a conversation with your mother to find out what the pregnancy was like when she was carrying you. What was she struggling with? What was she stressed about? What were the things that were taking up her headspace? Because it could be that some of those things are things that you’re wrestling with. They just don’t make any sense to you, that there’s you that’s trying to do one thing, but because your mother was experiencing something very different, you’re being pulled in that direction too. And you’re flip flopping. You’re kind of, you can’t go all in with something because you’ve got this tension, this pull, this invisible force that’s pulling you back, holding you back in some way. Of course, there could be many other reasons why you’ve got this invisible force happening, but a really good place to start, I think is looking at the time that you spent in the womb.
Alexia Leachman [00:15:40]:
Okay, so I hope that was a useful episode for you. Do let me know what your thoughts are, if any aha moments came to you as a result of listening to this or maybe asking your mother about the pregnancy where she was carrying you. Because I’m super nosy, as I’m sure you can appreciate and you’ve guessed by now, because I want to know. I love hearing storeys about this stuff (in-utero trauma). So until next time, bye for now.
Alexia Leachman [00:16:06]:
Thanks for tuning in.
Alexia Leachman [00:16:07]:
You’ve just been listening to me, Alexi.
Alexia Leachman [00:16:09]:
Legion here on the Head Trash show. If you enjoyed the show or the book, clear your head trash, I’d really appreciate you leaving a review on itunes or Amazon.
Alexia Leachman [00:16:17]:
Stay tuned for upcoming episodes for more.
Alexia Leachman [00:16:19]:
Insights, interviews and inspiration for clearing your head trash and reclaiming your headspace. Until next time, bye for now.