Getting my vaccinations as a child was a nightmare for everyone involved. It was violent and terrifying since I suffer from Blood-Injection-Injury (BII) phobia. The practitionerTM and his staff grabbed me, I was crying trying to fight them of, until my mother would offer me refuge in her arms. Too late I would realize I had fallen into her trap and she had used my trust in her to hold me down for good. All the adults in the room shaming me – everybody is looking, you are overreacting, what an example for you little sister.
As I have mentioned before in When I see BLOOD – I can’t keep FEAR at bay, BII phobia is the only specific phobia in which sufferers actually faint at times. First the heart rate goes up like in all phobias in a response to fear. But next and that is the interesting part the heart rate and bold pressure drop and people faint. The fainting is a response to disgust (1). In other phobias sufferers are also disgusted but in BII phobia disgust is the dominating emotion. Arguably, it should be a disgust disorder rather than an anxiety disorder.
Either way, also I was struggling no practitionerTM wanted to diagnose me. I understand that physicians don’t often have BII phobia and are very much desensitized to anything BII related. Plus, people with BII phobia don’t often talk about it because it is scary and disgusting for them. But the reason why I was never diagnosed is that they always warned me about the stigma I would have to live with for the rest of my life if I insisted on a diagnosis.
One thing I have noticed, the more dismissive practitionersTM are the more likely it is that I will faint. Frankly, stigmatizing people and the abuse of parental trust is disgusting behavior in my opinion. I explain how I found out I find my parents behavior disgusting in this article Figure out how you FEEL – using SCIENCE. Disgust evoked by other people’s behavior is not considered in scientific studies. Instead, participants are shown picture of slugs and such. But when a BII stimulus and disgusting behavior come together in my life I suffer the most.
Adjustments I made after this realization: holding on to those practitioners that do treat me with respect.
(1) Autonomic Nervous System Differences among Emotions (1992) Robert W. Levenson
