ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we explore ways of communicating that encourage pregnant women to believe in their abilities in the face of uncertainty - literally: ‘the promotion of courage’. This encouragement is important for all pregnant women: those who sail though childbirth on the wings of prosperity and good health as well as those who face challenges and need the help of medical interventions. All of us receive messages from multiple sources at both a conscious and subconscious level that can have either ‘placebo’ (positive) or ‘nocebo’ (negative) effects on how we approach labour and birth. We discuss how our verbal and non-verbal communication might be received, drawing on an emerging body of research from the disciplines of neuroscience and social psychology.
We also explore some of the theory about the psychophysiology of emotion, cognition, perception, semantics and metaphor, which can play an important part in increasing our awareness of how we can support women in a way that promotes positive experiences of birth. We shall touch on some of this theory in this chapter and also direct you to other resources that you can turn to in order to study this area more closely.
