Lately I’ve been hearing from so many women who are stepping into the next chapter of their lives – engagement, marriage, “maybe baby” conversations – and instead of feeling excitement, they’re hit with a tidal wave of fear, shutdown, or numbness.
And here’s the part no one warns you about:
When you stack identity shifts + biological pressure + family expectations + cultural conditioning, your nervous system can go straight into lockdown.
Not because you don’t want motherhood.
But because your body doesn’t feel safe enough for it.
There are names for this, and we need to start saying them out loud:
Tokophobia: the intense fear of pregnancy or birth.
Reproductive Anxiety: the wider pattern where fear around reproduction, fertility, and motherhood gets stored in the body and quietly shapes our choices.
Most women have never been told these exist.
So they blame themselves for:
• losing their libido
• feeling dread instead of joy
• panicking about timelines
• feeling bad or guilty for not being instantly thrilled about babies
• carrying fears that don’t even feel like theirs
This isn’t personal failure. Or being ‘broken’.
This is conditioning + biology + unhealed stories colliding with major life transitions.
I’ve spent years specialising in this – clinically, creatively, and personally. I’ve just written about it, podcasted about it, and talked to loads of women about it. I’ve mapped the patterns and the same themes show up again and again:
“I want this… but the fear feels bigger than me.”
“I feel guilty for not being excited.”
“There’s pressure coming from everywhere.”
“My body is shutting down.”
“I feel like something is wrong with me.”
For the record: nothing is wrong with you.
Your system is signalling that old fear, inherited fear, cultural fear, or trauma-linked fear is sitting in the driver’s seat. And when that happens, the body goes into protection mode.
The truth is:
You can want motherhood and still feel terrified of what it means for your identity, your body, your freedom, your relationship, or your life.
Those two things can coexist.
It doesn’t make you conflicted.
It makes you human.
And once you name what’s really going on – tokophobia, reproductive anxiety, fear conditioning – everything starts to make sense.
If this resonates, you’re not alone.
And you’re not stuck. There is a way through it.
This whole area of women’s experience has been ignored, minimised, or medicalised for far too long. Women deserve better language, better understanding, and better support. That’s why I do what I do.
That’s why I wrote Betrayed By Your Biology
If this speaks to you, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Whether you’re navigating this now or carrying old echoes of it – let’s talk about it, without shame and without silence.
This one’s been hiding in a dusty corner for far too long.