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January 17, 2025
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Needle phobias are surprisingly common, with 1 in 10 of us in the UK suffering from them, referred to as trypanophobia. Due to the COVID19 vaccination programme now is a great time to overcome your phobia.
To be honest, most people don’t like having injections particularly, but a phobia is an overwhelming and uncontrollable reaction to needles eliciting the flight, flight, flee, or flop response.
There are different types of needle phobia, with different therapeutic ways of overcoming them. Our bodies are designed to respond to any breaks in the surface of the skin, and when this happens our minds and bodies can’t help but to respond. Even People who are absolutely fine with having injections, or blood tests etc. will experience a change in their physiology to some extent, usually an increase in heart rate and blood pressure even if it is only slight.
The vasovagal response is common amongst needle phobias. This causes a drop in blood pressure and heart rate when punctured with a needle, which in turn causes a fall in blood supply to the brain. So, what does the body do to overcome this? It forces us to re-address the balance by getting our head to the floor by fainting. This can be managed by us as individuals by ensuring that the medical professional using the needle is aware of this, and that we can start from a perhaps lay on a couch, or finding ways that are safe for us to have this momentary lapse in consciousness. Usually this is completely harmless and the only thing that is a problem is if we fall and hit ourselves on something on the way down, which is easily avoided. Most people with this response will have other family members who react in this way. This can then lead on to an associative response whereby a needle phobia is created in the mind.
Some phobic’s can’t even talk about, or see needles as this response is so strong, even watching someone getting an injection on TV can cause a heightened state of arousal.
Many people however can feel faint, but don’t actually faint. Time to allow the body to return to a state of homeostasis is needed here, so sitting for a while after the procedure is extremely helpful, rather than jumping up and scooting out of the door.
Other types of needle phobia are acquired through your experiences. As babies we don’t come into the world with a fear of needles. It is believed that only the startle response (fear of loud noises) and the fear of falling are the ones we are born with. Many needle phobias are learned. This can be through previous traumatic experiences. Up to 20% of needle phobias are Resistive responses, which means that the individual has a previous experience of being restrained in some way to have a procedure (or fear of), for example if a child is held down to get a vaccination. The anxiety that this causes (even if it was well intentioned) can result in a phobia being formed.
We can even pic up a phobia vicariously – so just by seeing someone have a negative reaction to a needle can establish a phobia.
The most obvious cause of a needle phobia, is if we ourselves have had a negative experience which then goes onto to create a negative association in minds with needles (associated response).
The great new is that hypnotherapy is a great support to individuals whatever the type of phobia.
A consultation will be conducted with you, so that I fully understand the possible cause of the phobia, or phobic response, and a therapy plan can be put into place. With many phobias a rewind technique can be used, which helps the brain to reprocess the traumatic events of the past. This can then be replaced with a re-frame of how you would like to be able to respond in the future, giving your mind a positive template to work from in the future.
There is a really useful NHS resource below which gives some tips on managing needle phobias also. https://www.guysandstthomas.nhs.uk/resources/patient-information/all-patients/overcoming-your-fear-of-needles.pdf
