What is blood phobia?

It is an irrational fear or phobia of blood and it can cause physical reactions, for instance, fainting. It can be a result of a single significant emotional or traumatic experience connected with blood, e.g. from an accident or medical procedure, an injection, blood test or the like. It can also happen indirectly through someone else’s negative experience or maybe modelled on someone else’s fear and anxiety and so a learned behaviour. As with other phobias, it is part of the ‘fight or flight’ response to things or situations that the brain perceives as a danger. The fear can become generalised from the initial trigger into a series of similar situations.

Some people who experience this phobic reaction mention starting to sweat, feeling hot, hearing and eyesight being affected and then fainting. Simply hearing other people talk about giving blood, childbirth, seeing related images on television or even in school science lessons can bring on the phobic reactions.

Using hypnotherapy there are a number of ways, we can work with the client to help them, one example might be timeline reframing which is a technique for reframing negative experiences that have happened in the past. However, long ago the initial event took place, a client knows more now than then so there is always something the client can help the younger self to understand and this enables the client to explore other more helpful reactions to the original trigger event.

Julie Adams