According to another comment reply that info is out of date

You bring up a good point. I ultimately oversimplified my post to illustrate the point which upon reflection was probably not the best idea

Your presentation is not uncommon at all. It is totally a thing to fear the needle and not fear the pain. Ultimately the strategies remain the same (which is why I kind of glossed over this but it was still a bad idea to do so, my bad)

In addition to desensitization you can also try diversion in the short term. Create sensations in other areas of your body to divert your focus away from the needle. Put an ice pack on your thigh or something similar that’s not harmful but mildly uncomfortable to pull focus. Similarly you can just go with good old distractions if possible like watching a video while looking away. This isn’t the best strategy, especially long term because in some cases it can worsen the stimulus you’re anxious about, but in a pinch it can be helpful. And of course if your phobia is trauma related processing said trauma is helpful (although that in and of itself is often a desensitization process fyi)

A clone of 12ft.io but the old version before they got into beef with the New York Times and kneecapped it. It doesn’t work on every single article with a paywall but it works on the overwhelming majority (including New York Times articles)

And it doesn’t really count because I knew I’d use it but komga+komf+fmd2. I list it though because I didn’t realize I’d use this stack so much. I can now read with my phone, my laptop, my ereader, etc. tachiyomi/mihon works, reading progress is synced, and I never have to visit one of those garbage manga aggregation sites ever again

This isn’t wrong, per say, but it’s an oversimplification of a complicated relationship

Cortisol can influence how sensitive the body is to oxytocin, for one. Similarly chronic stress can inhibit oxytocin release. Most people can recognize this effect: high stress scenarios lower the effect of all the stress remedies you’ve suggested. Doesn’t mean to not try them of course

The timing and context of cortisol release play an important role in whether it supports or hinders oxytocin's effects. Short-term stress responses might be adaptive, while long-term chronic stress can be harmful to the body's oxytocin system. As a result cortisol isn’t inherently “bad”. (This is aside from its role in metabolism, insulin response, circadian rhythms, etc)

Hey if you own it that’s totally cool and fairly noble. And frankly even if you don’t it’s cool too. Not my job to decide who to take on as long as you’re within my practice scope and not actively suicidal, murdering people, or diddling kids, which are like three main dealbreakers for getting your therapist to snitch (varies by state and there are other exceptions check the fine print)

One of the things I explain to people when I’m doing needle desensitization is that the phobia does make sense to a degree. At its core there is a threat. We know that it will hurt. It’s why I fucking hate it when people use bullshit lies to get people to get shots, “oh it won’t hurt at all!”. No, that’s a lie, it by definition will cause some pain. And it’s pain you see coming. A scrape is different. We generally get those accidentally and often don’t notice it’s happened until the pain registers. But a shot or blood draw is more analogous to torture: I get a sharp needle, put you in a weird chair, and let you know that I will absolutely stick this into your body, piercing your flesh. You anticipate it. You tense up.

The thing to remind yourself is that it’s irrational and your anxiety is magnifying the intensity. The pain is real and will happen, that is true, but it is generally not that big of a deal outside of certain scenarios that are uncommon for most people. And even in some of the more painful scenarios like lumbar punctures there is an anesthetic involved (trust me I’ve had one. It’s not awesome but not as bad as you’d think).

Desensitization can help for the obvious reason of lowering your anxiety in reaction to the aversive stimuli. Avoiding it only serves to sensitize you and lower resilience to the stimulus. However this is the challenge of the phobia. Often they’re things we don’t have regular exposure to: vomiting, spiders, air travel, etc. so we desensitize, do much better, and then don’t have to deal with the thing for months or years and end up with it being an issue again. Maintenance is always necessary.

But with needle phobia there is a specific benefit. If you can calm yourself down during blood draws and relax your body the blood draws will actually hurt less. Tension held in your body makes the piercing of the needle sting a bit worse. It’s not a huge difference but apparently a noticeable one.

I am a therapist who does desensitization for specific phobias as part of my repertoire and one of the things I do somewhat regularly is needle desensitization for kids that struggle to get their vaccinations and blood draws, especially kids with autism. It’s no fun but unfortunately a part of life.

Often when I do it their parents have to leave the room or look away which is outright cowardly and sends a really bad message to their child who is terrified of needles

anti vaccination originally started rising in popularity because a lot of parents of kids with autism wanted an explanation for why their kids were “disabled” (keep in mind this goes back to like the 90s leading up the the discredited wakefield study in 1998). Then it had other people latch on for similar reasons, by the early to mid 2000s those people were blaming ADHD, dyslexia, generic “learning disabilities”, allergies, etc on vaccination. This is all pretty well established.

But I have this theory that it kept growing in popularity because people were simply afraid of getting needles. Covid was the catalyst for it to truly explode because a great deal of adults could skip most compulsory vaccinations. Before Covid if you were really stupid you could skip flu shots and your parents probably forced you to get most of the truly necessary ones ages ago. But then all of a sudden the big bad government is saying you need to get a big scary needle!! And not just one, but two!! And then maybe get them indefinitely!

The core kooks who say it has 5g nanochips or whatever probably truly believe that. But that’s probably a small minority. A great deal more are probably people who are otherwise sensible but are willing to enter delusional beliefs and are extremely susceptible to the kooks rhetoric because it allows them to believe something that enables them to endorse what they truly want to do, which is avoid the extremely brief moment of pain, because they are entitled whiny babies that cannot handle even a second of discomfort

This is just my theory though

To back this up with garbage anecdotal data I have talked to physician friends who describe adult patients having a much lower likelihood of getting bloodwork orders filled, a much lower rate of getting things like flu shots and newer vaccinations like hepatitis, shingles, hpv, chickenpox, etc.

I posted a guide to modding a tatacon for taiko no tatsujin