Overcoming Medical Phobias: How to Conquer Fear of Blood, Needles, Doctors, And Dentists

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 164 pages
• Published by: New Harbinger Publications
• Edition: 1st Edition March 3, 2006
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1572243872
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1572243873
• Book Dimensions: 7.2 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
• Weighs: 7 ounces

Product Description
For an individual with a medical phobia, receiving the care that can relieve pain and cure illness can be a daunting task. Fear of receiving an injection, visiting a doctor, or seeing blood may put any of these some thirty million Americans at great risk—especially if they avoid receiving necessary medical care because of it.

Fortunately, specific phobias are among the most responsive of anxiety disorders to behavior therapy, the research-proven treatment adapted for self-help readers in this book. If you struggle with a medical phobia, this book will first explain the basics about your phobia: where it comes from, what factors influence it, and how best to prepare for treatment. Then you’ll learn to confront and overcome your medical phobia with safe and gradual exposure exercises. These techniques are effective and fast. The book includes information about avoiding relapse and helping someone else who suffers from a medical phobia.

Publisher Description
Written by anxiety expert Martin Antony and Mark Watling this easy-to-read and practical guide will teach readers who experience extreme fear in situations involving blood, injections, surgery, physicians, and dental procedures, how to understand and overcome their medical phobia.

Reader Reviews
To put the review in context, a bit of background might be helpful: I'm a 35 year old man who's been deathly afraid of having my blood drawn for as long as I can remember. My phobia had become so bad that for some years now, I'd been skipping the blood work portion of my yearly medical checkups (which is probably the most important part). Every time I needed to go to get my blood drawn, I'd come up with an excuse and not go. I also used to feel intense discomfort and anxiety whenever I saw a needle in someone's arm on TV or in a movie (whether it was real or a special effect); if I could (i.e. If I was at home), I'd curl up into the fetal position (and if I couldn't, I'd cover or close my eyes and want to curl up into the fetal position). Wanting to overcome my fear, I bought this book. At first I wasn't thrilled with the idea of exposure therapy (and thought "so you mean the way to get over my fear is to look at and otherwise expose myself to the thing/situation I'm afraid of?"). However, since the book states that despite the fact that you'll initially feel uncomfortable, little by little, the discomfort will go away, I decided to push myself and give it a try. I've been subjecting myself to as intense an exposure regimen as I could take for about a month and a half now (going from short, 5 minute exposures to diagrams and photographs on images.google.com 2 - 4 days per week to longer exposures to photographs and YouTube videos for 15 minutes 4 - 6 days per week)... And today, I graduated. My goal was to be able to go to the lab, sit down in "the chair" without any fuss, stick my arm out and get my blood drawn (without fainting or having to have my blood drawn lying down for fear of fainting). And that's exactly what I did. Having my blood drawn is still not my favorite thing and I didn't look at the needle in my arm today but if I had to do it again next week, I could. In short, if you have a medical phobia that you want to overcome, this approach works (and if you have a history of fainting, the skills you learn in the chapter about preventing fainting will do just that).