How Is This Diagnosed
If you suspect you may have hemophobia, make an appointment with your doctor. Diagnosis doesnt involve needles or medical equipment. Instead, youll just chat with your doctor about your symptoms and how long youve experienced them. You may also give your personal health and family health history to help your doctor make a diagnosis.
Since hemophobia is officially recognized under the BII category of phobias in the DSM-5, your doctor may use the criteria from the manual to make a formal diagnosis. Be sure to write down any thoughts or symptoms youve had, as well as any questions or concerns youd like to address during your appointment.
How To Get Over The Fear Of Blood
Most phobias often do not require treatment. However, a phobia such as hemophobia can have serious limiting effects on your life. Therefore, it is important that you treat the condition so that it does not interfere with your everyday life. Fortunately, hemophobia is treatable however the most appropriate treatment depends upon your specific symptoms.
If you experience a severe panic attack or vasovagal response at the sight of blood or the condition is affecting the overall quality of your life for more than six months, then your doctor may recommend one or more of the following treatment options.
How To Overcome A Blood Injury And Injection Phobia With Applied Tension
If your fear of blood, an injury, or injection is so intense that you find yourself avoiding doctor appointments, routine tests, or vaccines, talk to your doctor or seek treatment by a certified mental health care provider. A common treatment for BII phobia is Applied Tension , a technique to help BII phobic individuals prevent fainting or recover more quickly if they faint. AT involves tensing your muscles, which raises your blood pressure, making you less likely to faint.
If you would like to learn about AT as a viable method for coping with your BII phobia, talk to your doctor or a mental health care provider to determine if AT is right for you and for assistance in learning how to apply the methodology to the situations in which you find yourself fearful.
In general, to apply AT, you may be directed to follow steps such as those outlined below:
- Sit comfortably and tense your arms, legs, and core muscles for 10 15 seconds or until you feel a warm sensation in your head
- Relax your body for 20 to 30 seconds and return to a normal state; avoid allowing yourself to be overcome with feelings of relaxation, which may cause your blood pressure to drop
- Repeat the cycle five times
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Panic Attacks And Treatment
Many cancer patients experience situational anxiety related to treatment. This includes anxiety related to blood and needle phobias and claustrophobia associated with medical machinery that requires immobilization of the patient. Benzodiazepines are considered first-line anxiolytics to be used in short-term treatment of situational anxiety.130 They may be used on an acute basis to interrupt panic attacks, or as a single dose simply carried with the patient at all times to be used to prevent the onset of a panic attack. Having the knowledge that a panic attack can be aborted with medication, if breathing and cognitive strategies fail, may in itself prevent panic attacks and diminish the risk of associated agoraphobia. Benzodiazepines should be used cautiously to treat anxiety in palliative patients, or in those with compromised hepatic or pulmonary function, because these agents may affect mental status, amplifying confusion and impaired memory and concentration, and may suppress central respiratory mechanisms. If panic attacks are severe and frequent enough to interfere with daily functioning, SSRIs and/or CBT is the treatment of choice.
Martin M. Antony, David H. Barlow, in, 1998
How To Eliminate Blood Phobia
Caution : You must consult your doctor for your health. This page presents only a personal and alternative point of view which should not be considered as an attempt to prescribe medicine.
The fear of blood is hematophobia.
The phobia is as much about losing your own blood as it is about seeing another person’s blood.
The slightest injury, such as a small cut, can make you feel very unwell, as can seeing blood, real or imitated, on TV.
Having a blood test is difficult to overcome for a hematophobe, especially as this phobia can be accompanied by fear of bites, which is also very widespread.
The sight of blood spilling out of the body can inconvenience some people because it refers to a vital risk.
With some exceptions, blood phobia also refers to a traumatic experience or emotional shock that hematophagus experienced in its past.
Indeed, a trauma can have an intense repercussion on the psyche.
The reptilian brain records the negative emotions felt during this shock.
When the hematophobe is faced with a similar situation, then the reptilian brain sends out warning signals, which are the symptoms experienced when facing the sight of blood.
However, it is possible to make him change his perception of things, to reduce his judgment, and therefore to free himself from the fear of blood.
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How To Get Rid Of Fear Of Blood
There are a lot of people out there who cannot stand the sight of blood and they get sad, fearful or feel nausea. There is also a phobia for the blood which is known as hemophobia. This phobia can lead the patient to act in most abnormal way or to faint. Since blood can be associated to violence, killings or even death so this phobia has been created in the mind of a lot of people.
The Symptoms of Fear of Blood/Hemophobia
If you find some of these following symptoms in yourself then you need to know that are suffering from this phobia:
- Nausea
- Inability to think or to speak properly
- Heart palpitations
- Losing control or becoming mad
- Sensations like detachment from reality
All of these above conditions determine that you are suffering from homophobia. But you need not to worry as this problem is curable.
Treatments
There are plenty of treatment programs for this phobia. These would be discussed as under:
Some of the benefits of this treatment are as follows:
- You do not lose control
- You quickly change your behavior
- You get more active to recover
- You do not get panic in front of blood scenes
- You develop the skills to control your phobia
- And finally you get relieved of this phobia forever within a short span of time
Psychotherapy this is related to the psychology of the patient and the doctors use this treatment to cure various phobias as well as other psychological problems. Some of the tips used in this method are as follows:
- Stiff your Muscles
Combining Other Strategies With Exposure
Finally, certain phobia types may benefit from specialized treatment strategies. The best example is the treatment of blood phobia by applied tension . Because such a high percentage of individuals with blood phobias faint in the phobic situation, strategies for preventing fainting have been developed and tested in people with blood phobias. Fainting tends to occur when an individual experiences a sudden drop in blood pressure upon exposure to a situation involving blood. Therefore, investigators have studied the use of applied tension for the treatment of blood phobia. Applied tension has repeatedly been shown to be an effective treatment for blood phobia . In fact, applied tension may be a more effective treatment than exposure alone .
In addition, other strategies have been used alone and in conjunction with in vivo exposure, including cognitive restructuring, interoceptive exposure , applied relaxation. Very little is known about whether these strategies add anything to in vivo exposure for the treatment of specific phobias, although there is some evidence that they may have at least a limited impact on fear reduction .
John H. Herman, Stephen H. Sheldon, in, 2005
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How Does The Program Work
Re-wiring your unconscious mind is the key to this program and its safe and surprisingly easy to do. You know that Blood Phobia isnt working for you. But it affects you because your unconscious mind has associated blood with fear and perhaps a bunch of other negative emotions and they get triggered automatically like clockwork every time.
You have not been able to prevent your feelings of fear because you have not been given the methodology to change your feelings and associations. We are here to teach you on how to use the right techniques to vanquish the fear forever. Success is on the way all you need to do is get started:
Blood And Needle Phobia Treatment
Many people experience a fear of blood, needles, and doctors. As many as 15% of people experience a dramatic decrease in blood pressure at the mere sight of blood, even if it is not their own blood. This is thought to be an evolutionary response, as a drop in blood pressure decreases the likelihood of loss of blood in the event of a serious injury. However, a rapid drop in blood pressure can result in fainting, which is one of the factors responsible for the development of a blood phobia. Because people can become frightened when they faint, they may learn to fear fainting in a doctors office, and by extension learn to fear blood, needles, or the doctors office itself.
Unlike with other phobias, the possibility of fainting is a factor which must be targeted as part of treatment. There is a simple solution to avoiding fainting at the sight of blood. During CBT treatment for blood phobia, the client is trained in a technique called applied tension, which temporarily increases blood pressure, thus significantly reducing the likelihood of fainting. With increased control over whether or not they will faint, people feel more comfortable and more willing to engage in exposure exercises later in treatment.
Make a change today.;Call 813-9613 for more information or to schedule an appointment. Click the button to the right to send us a message.;
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The Nature Of Fainting
People often think of fainting as a physical catastrophe, in the same category as heart attacks. But fainting is actually a self protective response, not a sign of disease or disaster.
What causes a person to faint? Fainting is caused by a sudden and significant drop in your blood pressure. If your blood pressure drops for whatever reason, the part of your body most likely to get an inadequate supply of blood is your brain, because it’s on the top. The brain, more than any other organ, needs a steady supply of freshly oxygenated blood, and it can be damaged if blood flow is impaired. That’s a problem if your blood pressure drops a lot, and fainting is the body’s response to this problem. If we can’t get enough blood to the brain, fainting brings the brain down to the blood.
If we had our brains in our feet, there wouldn’t be any such thing as fainting, but kickboxing matches would be really hard to score.
The Treatmentof Blood Phobia
Fortunately, this is a treatable problem. The treatment involves learning how to raise your blood pressure, typically by tensing and squeezing your large muscle groups, to make it harder to faint when you’re about to have an injection, or to read some illustrated medical textbooks.
This treatment, systematic tensing of your muscles, is the opposite of relaxation. Relaxation can be helpful for most phobias and anxiety problems, and may be useful to you in managing other anxiety symptoms. It’s not part of the treatment for blood phobia!
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Using The Desensitizing Technique
What Is White Coat Syndrome Aka White Coat Hypertension
The nurse tightens the blood pressure cuff around your arm and slaps the velcro into place. She pumps air into the cuff and it squeezes around your arm, slowly suffocating it. You silently question why they havent invented a better contraption to measure blood pressure. Soon the discomfort passesuntil the nurse tells you the reading. Your blood pressure is reading at 140/90, clinically considered high systolic blood pressure.
If your reading registers high at the doctor’s officebut blood pressure monitoring in any other setting it is normalyou may be suffering from white coat syndrome, sometimes referred to as white coat hypertension or blood pressure phobia. So, what is white coat syndrome? It is an elevated blood pressure reading without the diagnosis of hypertension. The ICD 10 code for this condition is R03.0. It is also closely related to iatrophobia, the fear of doctors.
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Challenging Negative Thoughts And Feelings
What About If You Go To Donate Blood
If shots or blood tests are overwhelming, then donating blood may feel like an insurmountable feat but it doesnt have to be.;
At BloodWorks Northwest, a donation only takes seven to 15 minutes, and the entire process is over in about an hour.;
Upon arrival, youll provide contact info and answer some health questions. Youll then be given some educational materials on the donation process and will go through a mini physical where staff check your blood pressure, pulse and temperature.
They will also check for hemoglobin in your blood by pricking your finger with a small needle, called a lancet, that is similar to the devices that people with diabetes use to check their blood sugar. The phlebotomist may need to pinch your finger hard to draw a couple drops of blood, but luckily the test is over quickly.;
Once the screening is completed and your eligibility has been confirmed, the donation process is fairly similar to a blood test.;
A phlebotomist will put a blood pressure cuff on your arm and have you squeeze a small ball to help them find a viable vein in the crook of your elbow. They will sanitize the draw site, set up a collection bag on a scale that will weigh the donation and then insert the needle. Once youve donated one pint of blood, the phlebotomist will remove the needle, put pressure on the draw site and then wrap it or put on a bandage.;
Post donation, you will stay on-site to grab some snacks and to make sure you are feeling well.;
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Medications & Prescribed Drugs
We feel drugs and medication for Blood Phobia arent the best approach, but make sure you always follow a doctors advice when taking or stopping any prescription. The root cause of being Hemaphobic is an unconscious mental association that links blood to powerful feelings of fear. Meds can mask the awful feelings for a while, but never break the mental patterns at the core of the problem
There hasnt been a medication created specifically for treatment of Blood Phobia, just general broad-application meds so its hard to justify popping a pill as a healthy solution with all the uncertainty that surrounds potential side effects.
The good news is with CTRN you will overcome Blood Phobia, without prescription pills..