Fear of injections (trypanophobia): causes, symptoms and consequences

The extreme and irrational fear of injections is one of the most common and feared phobias.

One of the most frequent extreme fears, which is not only present in children, is injection phobia or trypanophobia.. Surely we all know someone who feels this great fear of getting vaccinated or having a simple Blood test.

Trypanophobic people have a really hard time when they have to have an injection and go to the health center. And, in many cases, they can even avoid these situations without worrying about putting their lives at risk (by not getting vaccinated against diseases such as tetanus) or reducing pain or inflammation with corticoids.

What is injection phobia

A phobia is an intense, irrational and persistent fear. towards some situations, objects, activities or people. The main symptom of this disorder is the excessive desire to avoid the stimulus that causes great anxiety, and in the case of trypanophobia, this phobic stimulus is syringes and the possibility of receiving injections. This phobia is one of the most common, and it is estimated that about 10% of the population suffers from it to some degree.

Trypanophobia can sometimes be confused with fear of blood (hematophobia) or fear of sharp objects (aicmophobia); however, fear of injections may only be a great fear of these objects, and people with trypanophobia do not necessarily experience fear of blood or other sharp objects.

There are different types of phobias, which usually fall into three groups. Trypanophobia would be included within the specific phobias which are generally fears of certain objects or situations. Some specific phobic stimuli are spiders, snakes, elevators or flying.

Other types of phobias

In addition to this group of phobias, which are also known as simple phobias, they exist two more that are the social phobiaswhich involve other people or social situations such as performance anxiety, fear of embarrassment or humiliation or valuation by others; and agoraphobia is a fear of experiencing a panic attack in a place or situation in which the person feels unprotected. These last two phobias are usually considered complex phobias.

Causes of trypanophobia

The fear of injections usually develops during childhood and in many cases often lasts into adulthood. It is often caused by a traumatic experience in childhood or adolescence, and although the injections do not actually cause much pain, these people interpret it as a serious threat to their physical integrity. It is not that they believe they will die from the injection, but that the pain will be so severe that they will not even be able to bear it.

The learning of this fear usually occurs through what is known as classical conditioning, a type of associative learning initially investigated by Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, but made famous by the behaviorist John B. Watson, who believed that human beings could learn strong emotions through conditioning and then generalize them to similar situations.

To this end, he devised a series of experiments with children, and in one of them he succeeded in making a small boy, named Albert, learn to be afraid of a white rat that he initially adored. This experiment could not be conducted today because it is considered unethical. You can see it in the video below:

Other causes of this phobia

This phobia can often can develop by vicarious conditioningthat is, by observation. For example, in the case of a child seeing an adult panicking at the time of an injection, or by watching a movie in which injections or syringes appear.

Some theorists also think that the causes may be genetic; and others that we are predisposed to certain phobias. In fact, the latter theory states that it is easy to associate certain stimuli with fear, because fear is an adaptive emotion that has helped the human species to survive. In this sense, phobic disorders are formed by primitive and non-cognitive associationswhich are not easily modified by logical arguments.

Symptoms of fear of injections

The fear of injections presents the same symptomatology as any phobia, where there is a predominance of anxiety and discomfort and an exaggerated attempt to avoid situations in which the phobic stimulus may appear.

The symptoms of trypanophobia are:

• Cognitive symptomsCognitive symptoms: fear and anxiety in front of syringes and the possibility of receiving an injection, anguish, confusion, lack of concentration, irrational thoughts...
• Behavioral symptomsAvoidance of any situation in which the person may receive an injection.
• Physical symptomsrapid pulse, hyperventilation, stomach pain and nausea, choking sensation, dry mouth, etc.

Treatment

The treatment of phobias is similar in most cases, and psychological therapyAccording to research, it has a high degree of effectiveness. There are different currents that can be useful to treat trypanophobia; however, cognitive behavioral therapy seems to be the one that provides the best results. This type of therapy aims to modify the internal events (thoughts, emotions, beliefs, etc.) and behaviors that are considered to be the cause of the discomfort.

For this reason, different techniques are used, among which relaxation techniques (especially indicated for specific moments in which the person experiences great anxiety) and systematic desensitizationwhich is a type of exposure technique in which, as its name indicates, the patient is exposed to the phobic stimulus gradually. The patient also learns different coping strategies that allow him/her to see with his/her own eyes that his/her fears are irrational.

To treat this phobia it is also possible to use cognitive therapy based on Mindfulness or acceptance and commitment therapy, both of which belong to the third generation of therapies. or acceptance and commitment therapy, both of which belong to the third generation therapies, and do not seek to modify behaviors but to accept the experience, which automatically reduces the symptomatology because there is no resistance to the events. This is what the latest scientific studies conclude, which seem to indicate that this methodology is especially useful for treating anxiety disorders, because if we try to modify our internal events or behaviors, a rebound effect is produced and the anxious symptoms increase.

In specific and extreme cases anxiolytics can be administered; however, always together with psychotherapy.