It is adaptive to feel fear of sharp objects, after all few people like to feel pain or be hurt with a sharp edge. However, sometimes this fear becomes excessive , becoming a problem for those who must come into forced contact with objects such as needles for medical reasons.

Aichmophobia consists of the fear of these objects and the injury they can cause . It is closely related to the fear of harm and blood, overlapping many times. The good news is that it is an anxiety disorder that, if followed well, responds very well to treatment.

What is aichmophobia

As with all phobias, it is important to separate the adaptive fear from the phobia. You may be afraid or nervous before a blood test or before an IV is started. This is very different from the irrational fear and impenetrable rejection felt by the patient with aichmophobia.

The person with aichmophobia may become dizzy from simple eye contact with sharp objects such as needles, knives, scissors, saws, etc. Naturally, approaching or making contact with these objects is unthinkable. Most of the time the phobia is limited to the fear of being pricked by a needle, for example, in a blood test. On other occasions the phobia becomes more generalised until one fears situations such as receiving other invasive medical interventions, seeing or talking about surgical interventions, hospitals, medical and dental environments, medical instruments or smells of medicines.

What people with aicmophobia fear will happen if they come into contact with needles or sharp objects is not just the feeling of being hurt , many go further and believe that they will faint, lose control and have a panic attack, think that the needle may break and stay inside or that they may feel all kinds of unpleasant physical sensations.

In this type of phobia related to blood, damage or injections, patients tend to show a unique physiological pattern when they come into contact with phobic stimuli. In aichmophobia, when the dreaded 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 fainting if he or she remains in the situation. This is called a diphasic pattern and is unique to this class of phobias.

Causes of fear of sharp objects

Naturally, the cause of phobias is always very variable. Each person has a life history that explains his or her own fear, but it is possible to distinguish different factors that often appear together with aichmophobia .

Sometimes it develops after a traumatic event. For example, after having a bad experience with needles or suffering a very painful cut. The observation of others being harmed by sharp objects in real or fictitious situations, an unexpected panic attack in a needle-related situation, or the simple transmission of information by another person. Many people with phobia, however, are unable to remember the specific reason for the appearance of their disorder.

People who are more neurotic or who tend to feel fear in new or unfamiliar situations are predisposed to develop a phobia. Overprotective parents, loss of parents, separation, physical abuse, and sexual abuse tend to predict other anxiety disorders as well.

There may also be genetic susceptibilities to suffer from aichmophobia . People with these disorders show a unique tendency to faint in the presence of the phobic stimulus that other people do not have.

Consequences and effects

Specific phobias, including aichmophobia, are the group of anxiety disorders with the least severe impact on functioning. By definition, a phobia is the subject of clinical attention if it interferes with normal functioning. In aichmophobia, because of the specificity of the situations feared, there will only be interference if the patient must undergo regular blood tests. This is why most people with aichmophobia come for multiple phobias , not for a pure phobia.

In the most severe cases, it is impossible to perform a blood draw or intravenous treatment, threatening the patient’s health. Even the mere presence of healthcare personnel or 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 getting a puncture.

Treatment of aichmophobia

The best established treatment for aichmophobia is live exposure with applied stress . This is a combination of two techniques that is specific to phobias in which there is a diphasic pattern of response.

Live exhibition

The queen of techniques to eliminate phobias, it remains the best established treatment to end aichmophobia. It consists of the gradual approach to the stimuli that produce phobic reactions . A first stimulus to overcome could be seeing the image of a needle until it hardly generates anxiety. As the stimuli are overcome, the patient will move on to more anxious situations until the goal of therapy is reached, which could be to have blood drawn.

Sometimes a live exposure can be too intense and it is better to start with an exposure in imagination, i.e. that the patient imagines the stimuli guided by the therapist and gets used to them first.

Applied voltage

This technique will accompany the exhibition. It will serve the patient with aichmophobia as a crutch to overcome a very important obstacle: the diphasic response pattern. As we have said before, phobias of blood and damage are accompanied by a drop in blood pressure that can end in fainting. To avoid this during exposure, the patient must tense the muscles at the same time as he or she is exposed to needles or knives . This progressively breaks the association between needles and fainting.

Fortunately, aichmophobia 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.