You more or less have a family member or friend who faints during vaccination or any similar events.

Perhaps you might be wondering why he or she faints when in fact, it’s just a plain or simple event or happening.

Well, you might not be aware, but your family member or friend might already be having a blood-injection-injury phobia.

Blood-injection-injury phobias are actually fears relating to blood, fear from having an injury, or fear of shots or another medical procedure. These usually begin in early childhood but at times during adolescents’ years already.

Common Symptoms

Specific phobias like blood-injection-injury phobias may or at times may not include symptoms like:

• Fainting
• Pounding heart
• Increased heart rate and blood pressure
• Chest pain or discomfort
• Shaking or trembling
• Feeling of choking
• Sweating
• Shortness of breath or smothering feeling
• Numbness or tingling sensations

Emotional Fainting and Blood-Injection-Injury Phobias

Among all of the symptoms aforementioned, fainting is actually the most common. More or less, you might be thinking of a normal fainting, but it’s not actually. It is indeed a rare kind of loss of consciousness and is called as “emotional fainting” and happens as a reflex in the parasympathetic nervous system and a response to the sight of blood or a needle.

CBT: For Blood-Injection-Injury Phobias

Cognitive behaviour therapy or CBT is used to treat all kinds of phobias, including of course blood-injection-injury phobias. Basically, the therapy focuses on slowly and safely exposing you to your feared situation or object like having a vaccination or undergoing an injury. Normally, this exposure is repeated a number of times until your feared situation no longer provokes any feelings of anxiety or fear.

However, the said exposure when applied to blood-injection-injury phobias is quite different. Usually, to avoid fainting, person on therapy will start his or her exposure while he or she is lying down and then gradually will be exposed to more realistic situations including watching blood being taken or the like.