Needle & Medical Related Phobias
This book deals with fear of needles, blood, doctors and dentists:
https://martinantony.com/wp-content/uploads/Overcoming-Medical-Phobias1.pdf
This one is for dealing with a fear of doing self-injections:
https://www.preventivemedicine.northwestern.edu/research/pdf/InjectionManual012114.pdf
I'd love to hear some feedback from anyone working through something like this!
@AffyAvo I have struggled with needle phobia my entire life!! These links were really interesting. I suffer from a kidney disorder and have gone through phases where I constantly needed to have blood drawn to check their function. Everytime I went I would panic and sometimes cry (even at age 18-19) and the nurses would have to calm me down like a 5 year old, which is pretty embarrassing when it's all over and done with and I realize how dramatic I've been, but in the moment you don't realize how crazy and irrational you're being!!
@Peyton17 Luckily I never experienced anything like that. I don't know how I would have gotten through my IV training if I did. It's just so different when I have to do it on myself.
Thanks for the resources! My phobia is so bad that I don't even like looking at the words. I avoid doctors at all costs, which is going to become a problem if/when my husband and I decide to have children.
Almost every experience I've ever had with a doctor has been intensely negative. I was hospitalized as a toddler for a severe case of rotavirus. They continuously stabbed me with IVs, and I would continuously rip them out, which is probably where the initial phobia came from.
When I was a child, I remember being pinned down for vaccinations. Whenever I had to have blood drawn, they would strap me into this awful desk thing, all while I was having a panic attack. (I didn't have the words or the wherewithal to formulate the experience at the time, though.)
My sophomore year of high school, I had appendicitis. I was hospitalized for three days after they admitted me for an emergency appendectomy. As they were writing my discharge paperwork, they handed me my ID bracelet that they had forgotten to put on upon admission.
When I tried to go for my first gynecological exam (as a 21-year-old virgin), they wouldn't let my fiancée be in the room with me, and they were so rough and callous that I had a panic attack and fled the office. I haven't been back to a doctor since, and that was 8 years ago. I just can't trust doctors.
@Samwise78521 I'm sorry you've had such horrible experiences! I hope you can get to the point of having a positive relationship with a doctor.
I do hate going to the doctor and can't stand needles . I was the other day to the dentist and it was awfull. Closing my eyes helps , but going to the doctors is something I don't want to contemplate unless something big happens to me.Thanks for the links through
Just wanted to share that this really has helped! I am so much more calm with doing both IVs and subcutaneous injections. My physical symptoms are also much better.
@AffyAvo
thank you for posting this! i actually have to get an injection next week and i've been freaking out about it