Not sure if this fits better in GQ, IMHO, or MPSIMS – mods, feel free to move as appropriate.
I can’t explain this feeling I get, but it’s unpleasant and very occasionally I’ve come close to fainting (or at least felt like I was getting close to fainting). I get it when hearing someone talk about, or reading about, medical/health incidents regarding blood and piercing the skin. One of the most notable incidents happened about 15 years ago when a shipmate was telling us a detailed and gory story about a body piercing in a sensitive area. It was bothering me so much I had to ask him to stop, and then get a brief watch relief so I could walk around and clear my head.
This is not a big deal in my life and has only had a significant affect a handful of times, but I get a mild tingly and unpleasant feeling occasionally when reading/hearing about such episodes. Somehow seeing it on TV usually doesn’t bother me nearly as much (though I almost always turn away).
Does this phenomenon have a name? Has anyone else experienced it?
EDIT: adding some other details that seem appropriate – I believe my father has some variation of this, and has occasionally fainted when getting injections. Injections don’t really bother me, and I’ve never fainted nor do I recall an unpleasant reaction from them, but I always make a point to turn my head and avoid watching the actual injection.
Hemophobia (fear of blood) seems to be the name of this type of anxiety. You are not the only person I have met who couldn’t even talk about blood without becoming uncomfortable, even faint. (cough, cough my husband cough, cough)
Oh, sure - it’s extremely common.
I have a terrible needle phobia. Once had a nurse say “A big, muscular guy like you, afraid of a little needle?”
But, it’s not a rational fear - it’s like being afraid of snakes or spiders (neither of which I have any problems with).
Feeling faint when thinking about needles or blood is caused by a“vasovagal” response.
I had a moderate, not severe, problem for much of my long-lost younger days. One tech (either giving me a shot or drawing blood) told me that, in her experience, most people outgrow this as they get a little older. I did, mostly.
I have a theory how it got started: When I was very young, my parents took me to a doctor every year for a physical exam. That included a blood draw, done in a laboratory across the street. Those were the days when they actually looked at your blood under a microscope and hand-counted all the little red and white cells.
They would sit me down in a chair in the lab room, full of drawers and shelves full of scary-looking lab and medical equipment, like bottles of alcohol and boxes of syringes and gauze pads and bandages and what-not.
I always wanted to watch them draw the blood. But the nurse (or technician) doing it always said OHHHH!!! DON’T WATCH! TURN YOUR HEAD! LOOK THE OTHER WAAAAAY!
I think that taught me that there was something really scary about getting blood drawn. For the next 30-or-so years I was always queasy about getting blood drawn, and also getting the occasional shots. Seems like I’ve somehow outgrown that though, as predicted.
ETA: Forget to mention: The lab tech always put a drop of blood on a slide and smeared it out with edge of another slide and put it under the microscope, all while I was there, and they always let me look through the microscope at the red and white blood cells.
I have a some sort of similar reflex presyncope. No actual syncope ever. And strangely, no actual phobia. I am not emotionally bothered in the least by blood, needles, surgery. But some autonomous bits in my brain respond strangely.
It took a while to connect the dots between literally every single school field trip to a medical facility, because I’d also sometimes experience the symptoms other times, like when standing to play my violin for a long time.
My son is a corpsman in a Navy hospital. Part of his job involves drawing blood and giving shots to America’s finest and bravest submarine crewmen. It’s got to the point that he can tell soon as he start to swab the injection area if a patient is going to either become slightly panicked or outright faint. I think the technical term for them is, “big sissy on deck”. Medical procedure is to revive patient and apply band aid to the owwie. Sometimes they give them some juice and a cookie.
No problem with talking about it or seeing it (people who have livestock tend to see a fair bit), have no needle phobia, but I do know what you mean. To me it only happens if I see my husband bleeding. Since he works with his hands doing multiple kinds of jobs from felling trees to fixing the plumbing, this happens fairly regularly. The backs of my knees tingle and go weak. Briefly, then I regroup. Doesn’t happen with anyone else’s blood, including my own.
I think the next thing in severity would be actual dizziness. Since I get dizzy for many other reasons including low blood pressure you’d think I would progress to fainting but I don’t.
It’s funny, because I don’t recall ever having the feeling when I’ve cut myself while cooking or working with my hands. It’s only when hearing or reading someone describe some bloody incident that they experienced. I don’t like bloody scenes in movies, but they don’t cause this feeling, just a mild revulsion.
I get the feeling the OP describes as well when people talk of surgical procedures or describe painful incidents (i.e. “ I closed the car door on my finger”.)
I have it reliably when hearing about needles and injections DESPITE the fact that I myself inject insulin 5 or more times each day.
[I believe there’s a proper name for the phenomenon ]
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I too get the feelings the OP describes when people talk of surgical procedures or describe painful incidents (i.e. “ I closed the car door on my finger”.)
I have it reliably when hearing about needles and injections DESPITE the fact that I myself inject insulin 5 or more times each day.
[I believe there’s a proper name for the phenomenon ]
You may be a candidate for Vaso Vagal Syncopy, although if you aren’t fainting you either have a very mild case or something different. I have suffered from VVS my entire life and have taught myself how to avoid it, but it’s always there and always something I have to watch for.
Different, but a coworker of mine had a phobia with things touching the eye. I was telling him about my Lasik surgery and he said “Stop, I can’t talk about this.”
I used to get a reaction like this if I saw my own blood in any quantity - it was a completely involuntary fainting reaction - not fear as such; I know that because the first time it happened was when I had blood taken for a test, and I felt curiosity, not fear - I watched the process happening and suddenly my extremities were buzziing/tingling, I felt terrible nausea and started to black out.
I didn’t understand it to be related until the second time it happened.
I overcame it in stages by self-serve exposure therapy - A work colleague persuaded me to start giving blood, which turned out to be the perfect safe environment (surrounded by professionals to whom the problem is commonplace) to gradually expose to the phenomenon
You’re not my friend Jose, are you? Whenever I donated blood he’d tell me to stay away because just seeing the little bandage on my elbow freaked him out. He described his reaction almost exactly the same way you did. Once I came back from doing an apheresis donation with bandages on both elbows, and he nearly passed out.
I’ve known several other people other than him with either a worse or less bad version of this phobia, and they were all guys. I used to tell Jose he was really lucky he was a guy, because he’d have a real issue at “that time of the month.”
Edited to add: The Doc Martin TV show is about a surgeon who develops this phobia, and hilarity ensues.
I’m just a girl but blood never bothered me. When I go for phlebotomy I calmly watch the needle go in, watch the little tubes filling up, and always complement the phlebotomist on her deft skill.
On the other hand, I get freaked out by violence and can’t stand to read about murders & atrocities, let alone see any pictures. Ugh.
There must be a range of responses to blood. I’m reminded of a street kid (in The Cross and the Switchblade, IIRC) whose response to blood was uncontrollable laughter; he described grabbing a knife by the blade and squeezing it, watching the blood pour out of his hand and laughing hysterically. Takes all kinds.
