What is Trypanophobia? The Fear of Needles or Injections.
You may be wondering what is trypanophobia? The fear of needles or injections. It’s a phobia that many people have developed over the years, but why?
Some people with this fear develop it because they experienced an injection that hurt or made them feel scared. They then associate the same feeling with any needle or injection that occurs later in their lives. Other people may have noticed an illness in themselves or someone else following an injection and began to associate this with the injection itself. If you’ve developed this fear, here are some ways to treat it.
What is Trypanophobia?
Trypanophobia is the fear of needles or injections. This phobia is more common in children but can happen at any point in adulthood. It’s more common for people with this fear to associate any needle or injection with the fear of the same one they had before.
Why does it happen?
Some people develop trypanophobia because they’ve had a bad experience with needles. They may have felt pain or discomfort following an injection, so they associate any future injections with that feeling. Other people may have developed this fear because of something related to the injection itself. If you’ve seen someone suffer after an injection, it can be difficult not to associate the two events together.
How to treat it?
There are a number of ways to treat trypanophobia. Cognitive behavioural therapy is one of the most popular treatments for this phobia. It’s typically used to help people change their thoughts and feelings about injections, needles, or other things that are connected with this fear. The goal is to improve your coping skills and reduce the sense of anxiety you may feel when you come into contact with these items.
The first step for adults could be as simple as a self-help treatment, but for children, even though this treatment can work, at a young age the emotional fear can be too strong for them to overcome immediately.
You can also use hypnotherapy to help manage this phobia. This type of treatment helps change the way you think about injections by refocusing on how it will feel instead of what could happen afterwards. You may be put in a relaxed state during hypnotherapy so all the fears related to needles or injections are less likely to occur while being treated.
Lastly, there are some medications that can help ease your symptoms of trypanophobia. These are typically only recommended if cognitive behavioural therapy or hypnotherapy doesn’t work for you, but it’s something that should be discussed with your doctor before making any decisions about your treatment options.
Fear of Oral Syringes?
For children, and some adult demographics, trypanophobia can even cause fear of oral syringes because they are unable to differentiate between the two types.. Luckily, this can generally be overcome by allowing the individual to see and hold the oral syringe. In most cases, once they see that there is no needle and are allowed to have visibility of the oral syringe for the first few doses then they will quickly learn to trust that it will not cause pain.
Needles and injections make a lot of people uncomfortable. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The causes of this fear can be diagnosed and then treated. However, because the cause of the fear can be so deep-rooted, even after behaviour treatment another negative encounter with a needle can trigger the fear again. Get the facts about trypanophobia and learn how to deal with it via the NHS website in the UK