I am in the Uk, asexual, and I have tokophobia, I am scared of being pregnant and I would hate childbirth. One of my relatives was killed in childbirth leaving 2 kids and a husband. She was very young. She never wanted kids too but the husband kept pressurising her. Mt mother had several medical students watching her give birth as I was breech. Childbirth is not just disgusting, it can kill, Thanks for talking about this topic. I think giving birth is very undignified
I hope that you are getting the support you need, and I am so sorry to hear about your loss. As a society, we are slowly getting around to the idea of women choosing not to have children, but tokophobia still has so much stigma around it which makes it even hard to live with. It makes me so sad to hear of people getting pressured by their partners/husbands to have kids - it is so disrespectful to completely ignore your partners wishes, especially if it only affects their life and their body. I hope that by talking about it, others will learn more about the fear and also be more understanding of those who are suffering with it. Thank you so much for watching and I hope that my video helps! ❤️
@Nice Try if you do not want children but a partner, what about sterilisation? So your partner can't mess with birthcontrol and you do not become a parent against your will.
Hi, I knew when I was a young child that I didn't want children because I was terrified of the pain of childbirth. I am now 63 and even though I am well past pregnancy age, I still am scared at the thought. No amount of therapy would help this. That is one of the reasons I never married either. Med I would date often wanted children and I didn't, so relationship didn't go any further. The worst part was they would tell me "but lots of women go through with it". The was very insulting to someone who suffers from tokophobia. Are you married? if so, what does your husband think of this? If not, do you plan to marry? What if he wants a child? would you go ahead with it despite the tokophobia? Good luck with all you decide to do. and remember to stand your ground.
Hi! I’ve know some people to experience tokophobia in different ways and severity. I am so sorry to hear you have suffered with it so greatly and that people have diminished your fears to the experience of womanhood 😢 i have been told the same thing and it fills me with rage, but more than anything, it fills me with sadness. I have a long term partner who doesn’t want children, and he knows that I have toko. We may or may not get married but we both have no interest in having children of our own, either through pregnancy or adoption. I will be a wonderful aunt to my sister and my friends’ kids some day. 😊
Who in their right mind would want to be in excruciating pain , vomit , and bleed for 25 hours ???!!! And then you get a pile full of bills from th hospital . It sounds like a nightmare !!!
I think I have been tokophobic since i was 7 or so, years later, I'm 22 still very afraid, anxious and it is making me miserable and it has steadily been getting worse with time to the point is making me suicidal. To add context, I have never had sex, and I don't ever really plan to because I just don't want to accept any risks, , what is deathly terrifying to me is constant risk of being randomly raped, and how easily that can happen through no fault of my own. I am 100% sure I would try to do something gruesome and violent to myself it it happened to me because I'd rather be dead than pregnant and generally this fear has a great scope on many aspects of my life.
If it helps, I find as you grow more confident in yourself the fears ease a little. I had ocd as a teen and this made the tokophobia more extreme. Maybe you're going through that too? Honestly, for a while I couldn't even share a toilet with a man I was so paranoid lol. Awful at the time but I look back on it now like 'wtf was I thinking lol'. I mean I'm still scared of what could happen. But I trust myself to be able to take care of it. Going on the pill helped me back then. That and overcoming the ocd which was largely stressed based for me so I removed the stressor (I quit school, I moved to a household with no men etc...) so once that was gone I just stopped being so on edge. I think tokophobia is a sane fear. But it shouldn't govern your whole life.
I feel my tokophobia was influenced mostly by sex education at school, the teachers made it out to be like the worst thing ever to happen if you got pregnant, they made it scary. Luckily iv never wanted to have children but the thought of a mistake ever to happen puts me into a mental state. Iv asked doctors for sterilisation but sadly because of my age and I dont have children already they won't even entertain the idea, so I asked for my partner to get the snip, the doctor actually shouted at him saying he doesn't want to do that hes too young, do this instead, try that. Its a whole mess with little support from anywhere, hopefully the more people speak up about this we can get choices on how we want to manage it.
I completely agree with you on the fear mongering in school - I didn’t mention it on the video but I remember sex ed in school being very disturbing 🥲 I’m so sorry you had such an awful experience with the doctor - I can’t believe they yelled at your partner!!! That is so unprofessional. It’s just ridiculous that we can’t have control over our own personal reproductive systems because “we might change our minds”!!! not to mention not all of us have access to affordable BC. It really sets a lot of us up for failure… I hope you are taking care and doing better. Change will come someday 😊😊
Please you are such a safe person, I have really bad tokophobia and hate these fb support groups bcs they remind me theres something wrong with me and it makes me think about it more even though i think about it every day every few weeks, i would love if you made some more videos or something about it, about your journy. You are so brave😭
3.38 yasss! Me too. I do not want to have children even though I work with children from 7-11 years on a daily basis but I cannot imagine taking one of it home and care about it 24/7 for 18 YEARS 😥😭🤢 Often I get so much disgust and fear thinking something grows inside of me.
I know what you mean. When people don’t understand what I mean, I tell them to watch alien. The chest busters 🥴 we aren’t all meant to be parents and that is 100% fine ❤️
@@katlima4797 absolutely! I sometimes think parents won't take me seriously as a (future) teacher because of being child free but I can't change my thoughts about having my own and that's fine. Hopefully this 'being-single forever'- culture in our society stays for a longer time 😂🤗😌
How? I want to be sterilized but literally ever doctor I‘ve asked denied me because I’m young, have a functional breeding organ and of course they want us women to breed because they make money from every birth.
I’m single and child free by choice and I may also have this fear too. I’ve been doing my own research about pregnancy and parenthood in general. I’ve been hearing about the pains and complications that come with pregnancy. Idk why but African Americans are more likely to have complications or die during childbirth which is why I find it so scary. I’d hate to put myself through that only to have to raise my potential kids in a broken home. People love to sugarcoat pregnancy and motherhood but they complain about it on a daily basis. What makes you think that I want that?!
Same here! Thank you so much for sharing! 💗 I want to be child-free as well. I just can’t see my everyday life and free time being taken up by a child especially after working all day. It just sounds miserable, I yearn for a relationship though. I just want a life partner that wants to experience life with me. It makes me scared thinking about a guy pressuring you into having kids because he wants them. I had an ex who insisted he wanted kids, and I’m glad I didn’t stay with him. I just don’t see the appeal in being a parent. It also sucks because I am a very sexual person but I can’t use birth control due to health reasons so I have to be super careful with any partner I have. I definitely consider getting sterilized in the future.
I feel like I am the oddball on this subject. When I was younger, I had extremely vivid nightmares where I gave birth (and usually went deaf as soon as nightmare baby entered the world). I wasn't sleeping with anyone, but we (all the female in class) watched a video in my final year of elementary school. It not only talked about the "joys" of simply physically maturing, but showed a woman giving birth from the worst possible angle you can imagine. There was not a person narrating what was going on, but no visual details were spared. As I got older, I realized that the video was likely sped up to make it so brief but can still remember the sound of her moaning throughout the experience. I studied biology in college, so most visual things don't bother me anymore and the nightmares stopped somewhere in high school. Yet, I still want to be sterilized really badly. I want to be under for the procedure, but see the tubes (after removal) as reassurance that there will be no "surprise" babies in my future. The DINK life looks/sounds so good.
Had a boyfriend of 5 years and he knew I didn't want to have a child with my own body. He'd talk about how we'd raise our kids and I would talk about adoption and things like that and he'd always say he didn't want to raise a kid if it wasn't carried by me, but he also REALLY wanted to raise a kid. I told him how the idea terrifies me and all the negative affects it would have on me, including the possibility of death. He'd say shit like "it's fine that you don't want to carry, I'm fine just NEVER having kids..." I told him he was pressuring me by making me feel guilty and he'd be like "IN WHAT way am I pressuring you?" I asked him what it would be like if he had to do it with his body and he said he'd be perfectly fine with it because it's no big deal. It filled me with rage. There's no point to this story.... I just want to be angry right now. sorry
Hey there! It seems like a silly answer, but I would start with Facebook, just to dip your toes in. That’s what I did, and it really helped, as I got to talk to people who were going through the same thing as me. They helped me feel like I wasn’t crazy or radical for having this fear. Due to COVID, I assume all the groups would be operating online. I urge you to be cautious, as different groups have different intentions. Some aim to help women “get over” women of their tokophobia where others are a place you you to just share experiences, fears, and vent. Both types are valid, it just depends on the kind of help you are looking for. Traditional therapy is also a great option, and if you are part of a faith, your leader could be a good person to talk to too. Really depends on who they are/what they are like. Best of luck 😊💕
I am in US for a research for my PHD, and I am under Depo-Provera and condom. But since in Brazil (where I live) abortion is illegal and is close for me to return, I got under a lot of paranóia and even with 2 very effective methods I ran to have a Plan B pill (and no, it doesn't interfere with the effectiveness of Depo, it is just unecessary). But even after all that I remained into a lot of anxiety. I don't tell my therapist cause I fear her not giving me the authorizaton for tub al ligation. It is horrible.
I hear it affects trans men badly. If it affects me a biological female so scary id rather off myself then even go thru it say abortion isnt available well if they take safe way away it still wouldnt stop which is why ive tried and worked so hard 18-34 no kids at all ever
Edit: Thank you for mentioning how it effects people other than cishet women too! Didn't expect. 🙂 I'm a trans man, never been pregnant and never plan to be, but I have such awful tokophobia that encountering fictional scenes of implied or explicit pregnancy (especially without being forewarned) can put me on edge and leave me very upset... Even the idea of parenting biological children can make my mind react like I'm being tangibly threatened. Utterly terrifying; a permanent lifelong commitment to a human you don't even know yet? There's a sort of consent gap that unnerves me. There's also something about the erasure of privacy when someone becomes pregnant-- I would rather die than.. that. My tokophobia hurts my relationships too.. I all but left/deleted a groupchat with some close friends after they added a person who was currently pregnant, because I was painfully anxious I would encounter mentions unexpectedly and become distressed/unable to work. My friend did not want to bring this up and offend the added person. Pregnant people go through so much stigma already so I hate to think I add to it-- but phobias are real mental conditions too. I grow weary of defending myself and feeling like a monster whenever it comes up... Fortunately for me, my generation is less interested in having children, and apps like Hinge allow you to display your stance on kids on your profile. I think there are plenty of fish in the sea and I will not even start with a guy (I'm gay) who is leaning towards kids. I envy species whose parenting phases last only a year or two, or who raise young communally. I would love having an uncle-like relationship with some young humans. I also enjoy nurturing animals and other adults. The way I think of it, the people who want kids should be the ones having them! Not me. I hope that having my fallopians removed and cauterized will help my fear a little-- I'd get a hysterectomy but I'm afraid of vaginal prolapse?-- but my midsection may forever remain a site of anxiety and anti-touch.
Tokophobia and Feminism are not the same thing. One is a true FEAR of pregnancy/being around pregnant women...not by choice. The other is a political idealogy. I'd rather get info from a certified MD✋😑
Bestie what 🤠 this video is about my personal experience and how I’ve lived with it, how it’s changed my life, and yes - how it has affected my journey with feminism. You obviously didn’t watch the whole video lol, never said they were the same thing - I never said that I chose to have tokophobia. I am allowed to talk about my journey and experience and I think it could be helpful to someone out there because let’s face it - tokophobia is a very lonely and isolating thing to live with. I don’t have to have a medical degree to talk about my experience with a phobia...
I’m so terrified of being pregnant I had anorexia when I was a teen I’m so scared that I don’t be able to deal with the body changes. I wouldn’t want to put a child’s life in danger. If my body gets ruined I’ll hate my kids for doing that to me. I can’t. I love myself too much to do that do myself for the sake of bringing in someone who didn’t have a choice to be here. I’d rather have my partner have 10 wives and 10 concubines go bear him kids than do it myself no thank you…
I am in the Uk, asexual, and I have tokophobia, I am scared of being pregnant and I would hate childbirth. One of my relatives was killed in childbirth leaving 2 kids and a husband. She was very young. She never wanted kids too but the husband kept pressurising her. Mt mother had several medical students watching her give birth as I was breech. Childbirth is not just disgusting, it can kill, Thanks for talking about this topic. I think giving birth is very undignified
I hope that you are getting the support you need, and I am so sorry to hear about your loss. As a society, we are slowly getting around to the idea of women choosing not to have children, but tokophobia still has so much stigma around it which makes it even hard to live with. It makes me so sad to hear of people getting pressured by their partners/husbands to have kids - it is so disrespectful to completely ignore your partners wishes, especially if it only affects their life and their body. I hope that by talking about it, others will learn more about the fear and also be more understanding of those who are suffering with it. Thank you so much for watching and I hope that my video helps! ❤️
@Nice Try if you do not want children but a partner, what about sterilisation? So your partner can't mess with birthcontrol and you do not become a parent against your will.
@Nice Try stay strong my friend, I really respect your celibacy and congratulate you on this choice 🙏🙏 I wish I had the encourage to be this brave too
Hello much love UK🇬🇧. Im from US and also asexual. Im childfree and tokophobic.
Hi, I knew when I was a young child that I didn't want children because I was terrified of the pain of childbirth. I am now 63 and even though I am well past pregnancy age, I still am scared at the thought. No amount of therapy would help this. That is one of the reasons I never married either. Med I would date often wanted children and I didn't, so relationship didn't go any further. The worst part was they would tell me "but lots of women go through with it". The was very insulting to someone who suffers from tokophobia. Are you married? if so, what does your husband think of this? If not, do you plan to marry? What if he wants a child? would you go ahead with it despite the tokophobia? Good luck with all you decide to do. and remember to stand your ground.
Hi! I’ve know some people to experience tokophobia in different ways and severity. I am so sorry to hear you have suffered with it so greatly and that people have diminished your fears to the experience of womanhood 😢 i have been told the same thing and it fills me with rage, but more than anything, it fills me with sadness.
I have a long term partner who doesn’t want children, and he knows that I have toko. We may or may not get married but we both have no interest in having children of our own, either through pregnancy or adoption. I will be a wonderful aunt to my sister and my friends’ kids some day. 😊
Who in their right mind would want to be in excruciating pain , vomit , and bleed for 25 hours ???!!! And then you get a pile full of bills from th hospital . It sounds like a nightmare !!!
Hallelujah!!!! I could not agreed more🎉🎉🎉🎉
i struggle because i feel like i don’t have anyone to talk to about this, i feel like it would really help me, thank you❤️
I think I have been tokophobic since i was 7 or so, years later, I'm 22 still very afraid, anxious and it is making me miserable and it has steadily been getting worse with time to the point is making me suicidal. To add context, I have never had sex, and I don't ever really plan to because I just don't want to accept any risks, , what is deathly terrifying to me is constant risk of being randomly raped, and how easily that can happen through no fault of my own. I am 100% sure I would try to do something gruesome and violent to myself it it happened to me because I'd rather be dead than pregnant and generally this fear has a great scope on many aspects of my life.
If it helps, I find as you grow more confident in yourself the fears ease a little. I had ocd as a teen and this made the tokophobia more extreme. Maybe you're going through that too? Honestly, for a while I couldn't even share a toilet with a man I was so paranoid lol. Awful at the time but I look back on it now like 'wtf was I thinking lol'.
I mean I'm still scared of what could happen. But I trust myself to be able to take care of it.
Going on the pill helped me back then. That and overcoming the ocd which was largely stressed based for me so I removed the stressor (I quit school, I moved to a household with no men etc...) so once that was gone I just stopped being so on edge.
I think tokophobia is a sane fear. But it shouldn't govern your whole life.
I feel my tokophobia was influenced mostly by sex education at school, the teachers made it out to be like the worst thing ever to happen if you got pregnant, they made it scary. Luckily iv never wanted to have children but the thought of a mistake ever to happen puts me into a mental state. Iv asked doctors for sterilisation but sadly because of my age and I dont have children already they won't even entertain the idea, so I asked for my partner to get the snip, the doctor actually shouted at him saying he doesn't want to do that hes too young, do this instead, try that. Its a whole mess with little support from anywhere, hopefully the more people speak up about this we can get choices on how we want to manage it.
I completely agree with you on the fear mongering in school - I didn’t mention it on the video but I remember sex ed in school being very disturbing 🥲 I’m so sorry you had such an awful experience with the doctor - I can’t believe they yelled at your partner!!! That is so unprofessional. It’s just ridiculous that we can’t have control over our own personal reproductive systems because “we might change our minds”!!! not to mention not all of us have access to affordable BC. It really sets a lot of us up for failure… I hope you are taking care and doing better. Change will come someday 😊😊
Please you are such a safe person, I have really bad tokophobia and hate these fb support groups bcs they remind me theres something wrong with me and it makes me think about it more even though i think about it every day every few weeks, i would love if you made some more videos or something about it, about your journy. You are so brave😭
these groups literally do not support, they actually trigger my fear
3.38 yasss! Me too. I do not want to have children even though I work with children from 7-11 years on a daily basis but I cannot imagine taking one of it home and care about it 24/7 for 18 YEARS 😥😭🤢
Often I get so much disgust and fear thinking something grows inside of me.
I know what you mean. When people don’t understand what I mean, I tell them to watch alien. The chest busters 🥴 we aren’t all meant to be parents and that is 100% fine ❤️
@@katlima4797 absolutely! I sometimes think parents won't take me seriously as a (future) teacher because of being child free but I can't change my thoughts about having my own and that's fine. Hopefully this 'being-single forever'- culture in our society stays for a longer time 😂🤗😌
At age 9 I saw A Baby story and was traumatized. I got sterilized and am asexual.
How? I want to be sterilized but literally ever doctor I‘ve asked denied me because I’m young, have a functional breeding organ and of course they want us women to breed because they make money from every birth.
@@Gnostic_Way_of_Life I kept asking different drs for years. I was told no 50x
It's so disturbing how upset and invested people are in other people's reproductive choices..
Videos like this are so important!! Glad that you’re giving people a safe place to learn and understand tokophobia 💕💕💕
I’m single and child free by choice and I may also have this fear too. I’ve been doing my own research about pregnancy and parenthood in general. I’ve been hearing about the pains and complications that come with pregnancy. Idk why but African Americans are more likely to have complications or die during childbirth which is why I find it so scary. I’d hate to put myself through that only to have to raise my potential kids in a broken home. People love to sugarcoat pregnancy and motherhood but they complain about it on a daily basis. What makes you think that I want that?!
I have tokophobia so I decided not to have babies. If we could be like seahorses (where the male gives birth) I'd have 10 kids by now.
Thank for this video! I feel so comforted by knowing I'm so not alone.
Same here! Thank you so much for sharing! 💗 I want to be child-free as well. I just can’t see my everyday life and free time being taken up by a child especially after working all day. It just sounds miserable, I yearn for a relationship though. I just want a life partner that wants to experience life with me. It makes me scared thinking about a guy pressuring you into having kids because he wants them. I had an ex who insisted he wanted kids, and I’m glad I didn’t stay with him. I just don’t see the appeal in being a parent. It also sucks because I am a very sexual person but I can’t use birth control due to health reasons so I have to be super careful with any partner I have. I definitely consider getting sterilized in the future.
I feel like I am the oddball on this subject. When I was younger, I had extremely vivid nightmares where I gave birth (and usually went deaf as soon as nightmare baby entered the world). I wasn't sleeping with anyone, but we (all the female in class) watched a video in my final year of elementary school. It not only talked about the "joys" of simply physically maturing, but showed a woman giving birth from the worst possible angle you can imagine. There was not a person narrating what was going on, but no visual details were spared. As I got older, I realized that the video was likely sped up to make it so brief but can still remember the sound of her moaning throughout the experience. I studied biology in college, so most visual things don't bother me anymore and the nightmares stopped somewhere in high school. Yet, I still want to be sterilized really badly. I want to be under for the procedure, but see the tubes (after removal) as reassurance that there will be no "surprise" babies in my future. The DINK life looks/sounds so good.
Had a boyfriend of 5 years and he knew I didn't want to have a child with my own body. He'd talk about how we'd raise our kids and I would talk about adoption and things like that and he'd always say he didn't want to raise a kid if it wasn't carried by me, but he also REALLY wanted to raise a kid. I told him how the idea terrifies me and all the negative affects it would have on me, including the possibility of death. He'd say shit like "it's fine that you don't want to carry, I'm fine just NEVER having kids..." I told him he was pressuring me by making me feel guilty and he'd be like "IN WHAT way am I pressuring you?" I asked him what it would be like if he had to do it with his body and he said he'd be perfectly fine with it because it's no big deal. It filled me with rage. There's no point to this story.... I just want to be angry right now. sorry
Instant subscriber, thank you so much for keeping it real…love this ❤
How did u know u have tokophobia actually I do fear a lot deadly fear from pregnancy so pls tell me how do I know I am suffering from it pls reply
Shes back!
I'm a trans man who deals with tokophobia. THANK YOU for recognizing that this is an Anybody thing.
where can you find support groups?
Hey there! It seems like a silly answer, but I would start with Facebook, just to dip your toes in. That’s what I did, and it really helped, as I got to talk to people who were going through the same thing as me. They helped me feel like I wasn’t crazy or radical for having this fear. Due to COVID, I assume all the groups would be operating online. I urge you to be cautious, as different groups have different intentions. Some aim to help women “get over” women of their tokophobia where others are a place you you to just share experiences, fears, and vent. Both types are valid, it just depends on the kind of help you are looking for. Traditional therapy is also a great option, and if you are part of a faith, your leader could be a good person to talk to too. Really depends on who they are/what they are like. Best of luck 😊💕
@@katlima4797 thank you so much
I am in US for a research for my PHD, and I am under Depo-Provera and condom. But since in Brazil (where I live) abortion is illegal and is close for me to return, I got under a lot of paranóia and even with 2 very effective methods I ran to have a Plan B pill (and no, it doesn't interfere with the effectiveness of Depo, it is just unecessary). But even after all that I remained into a lot of anxiety. I don't tell my therapist cause I fear her not giving me the authorizaton for tub al ligation. It is horrible.
I hear it affects trans men badly. If it affects me a biological female so scary id rather off myself then even go thru it say abortion isnt available well if they take safe way away it still wouldnt stop which is why ive tried and worked so hard 18-34 no kids at all ever
Edit: Thank you for mentioning how it effects people other than cishet women too! Didn't expect. 🙂
I'm a trans man, never been pregnant and never plan to be, but I have such awful tokophobia that encountering fictional scenes of implied or explicit pregnancy (especially without being forewarned) can put me on edge and leave me very upset... Even the idea of parenting biological children can make my mind react like I'm being tangibly threatened. Utterly terrifying; a permanent lifelong commitment to a human you don't even know yet? There's a sort of consent gap that unnerves me. There's also something about the erasure of privacy when someone becomes pregnant-- I would rather die than.. that.
My tokophobia hurts my relationships too.. I all but left/deleted a groupchat with some close friends after they added a person who was currently pregnant, because I was painfully anxious I would encounter mentions unexpectedly and become distressed/unable to work. My friend did not want to bring this up and offend the added person. Pregnant people go through so much stigma already so I hate to think I add to it-- but phobias are real mental conditions too. I grow weary of defending myself and feeling like a monster whenever it comes up...
Fortunately for me, my generation is less interested in having children, and apps like Hinge allow you to display your stance on kids on your profile. I think there are plenty of fish in the sea and I will not even start with a guy (I'm gay) who is leaning towards kids. I envy species whose parenting phases last only a year or two, or who raise young communally. I would love having an uncle-like relationship with some young humans. I also enjoy nurturing animals and other adults. The way I think of it, the people who want kids should be the ones having them! Not me.
I hope that having my fallopians removed and cauterized will help my fear a little-- I'd get a hysterectomy but I'm afraid of vaginal prolapse?-- but my midsection may forever remain a site of anxiety and anti-touch.
Tokophobia and Feminism are not the same thing.
One is a true FEAR of pregnancy/being around pregnant women...not by choice.
The other is a political idealogy. I'd rather get info from a certified MD✋😑
Bestie what 🤠 this video is about my personal experience and how I’ve lived with it, how it’s changed my life, and yes - how it has affected my journey with feminism. You obviously didn’t watch the whole video lol, never said they were the same thing - I never said that I chose to have tokophobia. I am allowed to talk about my journey and experience and I think it could be helpful to someone out there because let’s face it - tokophobia is a very lonely and isolating thing to live with. I don’t have to have a medical degree to talk about my experience with a phobia...
I’m so terrified of being pregnant I had anorexia when I was a teen I’m so scared that I don’t be able to deal with the body changes. I wouldn’t want to put a child’s life in danger. If my body gets ruined I’ll hate my kids for doing that to me. I can’t. I love myself too much to do that do myself for the sake of bringing in someone who didn’t have a choice to be here. I’d rather have my partner have 10 wives and 10 concubines go bear him kids than do it myself no thank you…