According to a recent article by BBC news, there are many people who are afraid to have the Covid vaccination because of their fear of needles. And a recent Oxford University survey of more than 15,000 adults in the UK suggests needle phobia accounts for about 10% of Covid vaccine hesitancy.
What is fear, how do we develop it, and how to remove it?
Newborn babies only fear loud noises, all other fears are learned, they are mostly a result of experiencing some sort of trauma or unpleasant incident, or by watching someone else experience fear, and quite often the incident is suppressed to protect us. But the unconscious mind remembers, records and stores the event, including all the sensory perceptions and feelings of that moment. It then limits our ability to face similar situations. What happens neurologically, is the brain senses danger, or pain and responds automatically, triggering adrenalin, which is essential for immediate physical survival (flight or fight response). This strong unpleasant feeling often causes us to tremble, panic, faint. feel hot, or even freeze on the spot. Some people never overcome their fear, because they are afraid to admit to it, feel embarrassed about it, or view it as a weakness.
The reality is, we all experience fear at some point in our lives. Fear can limit our ability to face many situations, such as visiting the dentist, speaking in public, or boarding an aeroplane etc. Clinical tests have shown emotions are much more powerful than thoughts. It's important to understand that strong emotions such as fear happen instantly before thoughts, not after them, followed very quickly by physical responses.
This basic neuroscience questions the efficacy of CBT or counselling helping with this type of emotional problem, and the chances of making significant progress are poor, to say the least. Neuroscience has shown that all emotional states including fear, are states of hypnosis, and because our mind instantly and naturally enters this state as we experience fear, hypnosis is the obvious and most effective way to remove the fear, not by reliving it, but by using certain techniques to de-sensitise the original event, then teaching the unconscious mind to feel safe, calm, and relaxed in similar situations, the emotional response and feelings change naturally, so the next time we face a similar situation we feel more calm and relaxed about it.
Over the last twenty years, I have helped adults and children remove their fear of needles and injections quickly and effectively in just a couple of weeks. One such client was an eleven-year-old boy, whose mother contacted me for help to remove her son’s fear of needles. She told me, "my son was kicked in the face by a horse when he was seven years old and was rushed to hospital with a severely smashed jaw which resulted in the surgeon having to give him eleven injections around the area to numb the pain. This left him traumatised and terrified of injections. it took a year of surgical procedures and many more injections to rebuild his face and jaw". Even with such a severe fear, three sessions of therapy completely removed his fear and he was able the following week to have various injections so the family were able to travel to Africa on vacation.
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