Aicmofobia: irrational fear of sharp or sharp objects
It is adaptive to feel fear towards pointed or sharp objects, after all few people like to feel pain or be injured with a sharp edge. But nevertheless, Sometimes this fear becomes excessive , becoming a problem for one who must enter into contact by obligation with objects such as needles for medical reasons.
The aicmofobia consists in the fear of these objects and the injury that can cause . It is closely related to the fear of damage and blood, overlapping many times. The good news is that it is an anxiety disorder that, if followed well, responds very well to treatment.
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What is aicmofobia?
As with all phobias, it is important to separate adaptive fear from phobia. Perhaps one is afraid or nervous before an analytical or before they introduce an intravenous line. This is very different from irrational fear and impenetrable rejection that the patient feels with aicpofobia.
The person with aicmofobia can become dizzy at the simple visual contact with sharp objects or sharp as needles, knives, scissors, saws, and so on. Naturally, approaching or making contact with these objects is unthinkable. Most times the phobia is circumscribed to the fear of being punctured with a needle, for example, in an analytic. On other occasions the phobia is generalizing to fear situations such as receiving other invasive medical interventions, seeing or talking about surgical interventions, hospitals, medical and dental environments, medical instruments or medicines odors.
What people with mycophobia fear to happen if they come in contact with needles or sharp objects it is not limited to feeling hurt , many go further and believe that they will faint, lose control and suffer a panic attack, think that the needle can split and stay inside or that they can feel all kinds of unpleasant physical sensations.
In this type of phobias related to blood, damage or injections, patients tend to show a unique physiological pattern when they come into contact with phobic stimuli. In the aicmofobia, when the feared stimulus is perceived, there is an initial increase in blood pressure and heart rate, followed by a rapid decrease in these parameters that, eventually, leads to the patient's fainting if the patient remains in the situation. This is called a diphasic pattern and is unique to this class of phobias.
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Causes of fear of sharp objects
Naturally, the cause of phobias is always very variable. Each person has a life story that explains their own fear, but it is possible to distinguish different factors that usually appear together with aicmofobia .
Occasionally, it develops after a traumatic event. For example, after having a bad experience with needles or suffering a very painful cut. The observation of other people suffering damage with sharp objects in real or fictitious situations, a crisis of unexpected panic in a situation related to needles or the simple transmission of information by another person. Many people with phobia, however, are unable to remember the concrete reason by the appearance of his disorder.
People who are more neurotic or tend to feel fear in new or unknown situations are predisposing factors to develop a phobia. Having overprotective parents, loss of parents, separation, physical abuse and sexual abuse also tend to predict other anxiety disorders.
There may also be genetic susceptibilities to suffer from myophobia . People with these disorders show a singular tendency to faint in the presence of the phobic stimulus that other people do not have.
Consequences and effects
Specific phobias, including mycophobia, are the group of anxiety disorders with a less severe impact on functioning. By definition, a phobia is subject to clinical attention if it interferes with normal functioning. In the aicmofobia, for the specific of the dreaded situations, there will only be interference if the patient must undergo periodic blood tests. That is why Most people with aiclophobia come for multiple phobias , not because of a pure phobia.
In the most severe cases, it is impossible to perform a blood draw or an intravenous treatment, threatening the patient's health. Even the mere presence of health personnel or the The smell of a medical consultation can be an aversive stimulus to avoid, so that the individual ends up never going to the doctor for fear of receiving a puncture.
Treatment of aicmofobia
The best established treatment for mycophobia is the live exposure with applied voltage . It is a combination of two techniques that is specific for phobias in which there is a diphasic response pattern.
Live exhibition
The queen of the techniques to eliminate phobias, is still the best established treatment to end the aicmofobia. It consists of the gradual approach to stimuli that produce phobic reactions . A first stimulus to overcome could be to see the image of a needle until it just generates anxiety. As stimuli are overcome, the patient will advance to more anxious situations until reaching the goal of the therapy, which could be to undergo a blood draw.
Sometimes a live exhibition may be too intense and it is better to start with an exhibition in imagination, that is, that the patient imagines the stimuli guided by the therapist and get used to them first.
Applied voltage
This technique will accompany the exhibition. It will serve the patient with aikophobia as a crutch to overcome a very important obstacle: the diphasic pattern of response. As we have said before, phobias to blood and damage are accompanied by a voltage drop that can end in fainting. To avoid this during the exhibition, the patient must tighten the muscles at the same time that he is exposed to needles or knives . This progressively breaks the association between needles and fainting.
Fortunately, aicmophobia is a disorder with a high response rate to treatment. The vast majority of patients who consult for being unable to cope with a needle end up overcoming their fears in very few sessions.
