Splash wherever the eye can see. Whether on the Internet, on posters or on television – they are everywhere. This is a challenge for injection phobics. In addition, there is the fear of the corona vaccination. Brief therapy is intended to help those affected.
She is afraid, extremely afraid of injections. The 33-year-old has a phobia. She has been struggling with a so-called blood injection injury phobia since childhood. The puncture of a syringe needle causes her to faint. “I would definitely call the fear the fear of death,” says the woman, who does not want to be named. Then the corona vaccination came and the pressure rose.
What to do? The lawyer became aware of a short therapy program of the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Psychiatry in Munich, which is supposed to help people with an injection phobia to control their fears. In individual sessions, those affected are informed about the disease, look at pictures, take syringes in hand, as the senior physician of the MPI’s psychiatric outpatient clinic and project group leader of the program, Angelika Erhardt, explains. The interest is great.
More than “a sensitivity”
It was only through the program that the lawyer became aware that she was suffering from a serious illness. She always thought she would get in line. She classified her fear as a sensitivity “that I have to somehow get over myself, but actually don’t know how”. She can now deal with her fear better. Your corona vaccinations were accompanied by the program. With the second vaccination she already felt a clear improvement from the first vaccination. “You learn to endure this fear,” she says.
The chances of improvement are good with a syringe phobia, explains Erhardt. 90 percent of the participants left the program with a vaccination or a blood sample. You might still be afraid of syringes, but you would know how to handle them.
Anxiety and avoidance – a vicious circle
The psychotherapist Enno Maaß also treats people with an injection phobia in his practice in Wittmund, Lower Saxony. He sees those affected in his practice who sometimes have serious secondary diseases – for example poor dental condition or undetected diabetes diseases. Out of shame and fear, some of those affected no longer went to the doctor, says the deputy federal chairman of the German Association of Psychotherapists (DPtV). The decision and motivation to undergo therapy is the biggest step for those affected. “The rest can usually be treated well,” says Maaß.
According to Maaß, one problem is that anxiety disorders are aggravated by avoidance behavior. With every avoidance, there is a learning curve that confirms to the person concerned that the situation is really dangerous. “By avoiding something, I am giving myself the signal that it is probably better to avoid it,” he explains.
The lawyer concerned knows this vicious circle. “You put it all off a bit,” she says. She deliberately did not take the vaccination booklet with her to doctor’s appointments, and tried to bypass vaccinations and, above all, blood tests. As soon as an injection was announced or occurred in an examination, she thought to herself: “No, I definitely won’t do that”.
Direct Confrontation
The 33-year-old had to work against fainting at the corona vaccination appointments – with a technique that she learned in the MPI’s short program. For them, the needle puncture, the injury, is the worst. She is also afraid of the pain that arises from the puncture. The origins of such fears are long in the past, explains the anxiety disorder expert Borwin Bandelow, psychiatrist and psychologist at the psychiatric clinic of the University of Göttingen. Once you shouldn’t have been allowed to injure yourself as much as possible – even stabbing yourself on a thorn could have meant death in the course of an infection.
Bandelow advises those affected to confront the fear directly and get vaccinated. If you have a very strong phobia, you can have a sedative prescribed if necessary and take it with you to the vaccination. Relatives should be careful with those affected and accompany them to a vaccination appointment. “Doing and doing is more important than talking,” he explains.
