Fear - Tension - Pain
a lot of HypnoBirthing education is about avoiding ‘FTP’
I’m not talking about ‘failure to progress’, as is often talked about within the hospital setting but the ‘fear-tension-pain’ cycle.
Fear
Tension
Pain
What is FTP?
First coined by Dr. Grantly Dick-Read, an obstetrician in the 1920s and 30s, later a writer and lecturer throughout the 40s and 50s on natural childbirth, the fear-tension-pain cycle describes how fear impacts the body during birth.
If the mind is experiencing fear or negative anticipation, the nervous system sends a signal throughout the body that there is a threat, which activates the flight, fight, freeze response. The muscles tense and blood vessels constrict in the areas related to reproduction and digestion as the blood flow is redirected to the defense muscles.
How does this impact birth?
Well, the uterus is not a defense muscle and the baby's lifeblood is related to our digestive system. The result is reduced blood flow to the baby and to the muscles needed to birth. A baby who is trying to pass through taught, constricted tissues with less blood flow going to their heart is going to find it difficult, thus causing a lot more discomfort than necessary for the birthing person and more stress on the baby (and thus, everyone involved!) This increased pain sends the signal that something is wrong, which further activates the fear, which activates the tension, which activates the pain.
Thus, the fear - tension - pain, or FTP cycle.
So, what can we do about it?
In the HypnoBirthing program that I teach, we use the mind to let go of the fear that leads to tension that leads to pain. It all comes down to getting in touch with our autonomic nervous system (or ANS). If you take one of my courses, you’ll learn all about the autonomic nervous system and the different parts of that system, but the quick and dirty of it comes down to training our systems to stay in the “Calm zone” vs. being dominated by the “Emergency zone”.
The body in birth is naturally propelled by the Calm zone of our autonomic nervous system. In fact, most vital bodily functions are governed by this zone - digestion, rest, sleep, and waste removal. You may have heard of the ‘rest and digest’ system or the “breed and feed”. Well, this is the system that we are meant to be in 95% of the time. That other 5% is reserved for those emergency situations, hence the term “Emergency zone”’; enter the flight, fight, freeze response. The problem is, our fast paced society is fuelled by fear and chronic underlying stress and so the majority of the population’s nervous systems exist in a reversal of this pattern, 5% Calm, 95% Emergency. So even if you don’t identify with fear or stress around birth, the body might be primed by it.
That is why in the program, we have 5-weeks together where we work through a thorough and well-researched process to help bring the system back to a balance, better suited to birth easily, in the absence of special medical circumstances. And even despite those medical circumstances, being able to easily slip into the Calm zone can be super helpful for handling whatever birth happens to be. Get in touch with your body, through your brain and learn to work with your environment for a calm, instinctual birth.