Haemophobia

Literally, haemophobia is a fear of blood. I have this kind of phobia and it is no laughing stock. It all started when I was 11 years old when I accidently injured my left arm to a flower vase and the piece of porcelain got stucked in the flesh. I didn't realise that I was bleeding heavily at that time until when I saw clot of blood on my trousers. I got panicked and rushed downstairs. I could see the flesh of my arm and I shouted at the top of my voice. At that time, only my brothers aged 13 and 6 were at home. They weren't accustomed to that kind of incidents at all. I could still vividly remember that blood was oozing out from my arm. I shook violently, incapable of doing anything. My elder brother went out to buy some plasters since we never have had first aid kit in our house. When I think back, I guess I owed him one. He is such a kind brother and always protected me when the situation needed him to. 30 minutes or so later, my father came home from work with my mother. He tended to my injury and decided to go to the hospital the next day since I was reluctant of going there at that time. It was then my phobia broke out. I started to feel a little nausea and the situation around me is getting smaller and smaller.

The next day when my father and I went to the hospital, I was brought into the Emergency Room as my arm started bleeding again. It was such an embarrassing situation when others in the hospital saw me in that condition and they gave way as if I am an alien. I got stitches then. It really hurts I mind you. Really. Really hurts. I felt slightly anxious even when I was typing about this.

A year later, there's another incident but not a life-threatening incident. It is just that I sliced my finger while I was helping my Mom in the kitchen and I started to feel light-headed and dizzy. My vision is getting black and I can't hear my surrounding at all. Something was buzzing in my ear. I lay on the chair senseless for a few minutes. My Mom does help but later on my brothers kept mocking me for fainting over such a small drop of blood. Since that day, I was having quite a hard time with blood. Even when I was waiting for a vaccination, I started to feel nausea and my surrounding went all black. I tried to get a grip and luckily I did not pass out at that time. But people said I was looking so pale and their expression told me that I looked so damn bad.

Even when I was 19, when I see just a single drop of blood (even if it is not my own), I will faint. There's a time when I saw a video of an accident where the victims were all dead with their heads off. I almost vomited and blacked out later on. It took me about 15-20 minutes to calm down.

Now that I am 20, I guess the phobia is still inside me. It has been 10 years since that incident, but it never seem to walk away.
In fact, just now I made a test on the severity of my phobia in this website: http://www.changethatsrightnow.com/blood-phobia/online-test/



Hemaphobia is very seriously impacting your quality of life.
Whether or not you choose to work with us, it is critical that you take steps to overcome it now.
This is a major problem for you that is producing totally unnecessary anxiety, and it is taking a serious toll on your working and personal relationships as well as your career and your overall quality of life.Drugs are usually prescribed by doctors for serious cases of this kind, although this attempts to addresses the symptoms rather than the route cause of the problem: the conscious thoughts and unconscious associations to blood which trigger the fear response. (If you have been prescribed drugs you should work closely with the prescribing physician before stopping.)
The fear is in fact the correct response to the perceived danger. The root cause of the problem is the powerful automatic pattern of negative thinking which causes the nervous system to perceive extreme danger around blood.
A fear response of this magnitude seems ‘hard-wired’, so no amount of breathing and positive thinking will fully and permanently overcome the fear. It’s a powerful conditioned response, and must be approached accordingly.

And my result is SEVERE no matter how many times I answered the questions. I guess I need treatment from the psychologists to stop this phobia once and for all.