Trypanophobia: trypano (puncturing or piercing) + phobia (fear)

Opossum tracks in the snow in front of my house last January. This particular creature was living under my neighbor’s deck. I feel an affinity for a creature that adopts a false death as a strategy for survival, and then promptly reanimates once the danger has passed.

Up until almost eight years ago, I had a phobia of needles. Is a phobia learned? If it is, I have no memory of learning it. I have memories of being held and crying when I got a shot as a small child. At some point, maybe around age 9 or 10, I discovered that I couldn’t tolerate having the barrier of my skin broken through intentional manipulation. I could fall and scrape my skin or accidentally cut myself without the phobia being triggered. I could pick scabs, calluses, or cuticles until they bled with no problem apart from the obvious issue of compulsiveness. The degree of pain or purpose for the puncture or cut had nothing to do with my fear. The basis for my fear involved my inability to tolerate another person cutting or puncturing my skin.

Over the years I learned to remain still, submit, breathe deeply, stay relaxed. The prick, or shot, or blood draw would be successful. I would wonder at the relative lack of pain compared to my fear. And then, as I sat or stood up, the fear I had been containing would be released in a vasovagal rush. I would find myself sitting down again, head between my knees then carefully sitting upright and waiting until I could stand and walk without becoming lightheaded. Getting a shot, stitches, a blood draw was inevitably traumatizing. Seeing a shot or cut happen to someone else would have a similar effect. I found myself crouching toward the floor one afternoon as the veterinarian removed stitches from my dog. Even a picture of a needle would cause my stomach to spasm.

I decided to conquer my phobia when I couldn’t manage my allergy symptoms anymore and found myself having to go on prednisone at least once a year in order to bring them under control. Prednisone is hard on the body, and the idea of needing to take it as I got older forced me to consider the benefits of immunotherapy, also known as allergy shots. The day before my first scheduled shot, I happened to attend a one hour mindfulness meditation workshop. I hadn’t planned to go. I friend who worked down the hall from me encouraged me to come with her. After the guided meditation, I told the facilitator about my needle phobia and the need to start allergy shots. I told him about my failed efforts to distract myself by focusing on my breath or talking to the nurse or phlebotomist. He said distraction was the problem. “Don’t try to distract yourself. Notice everything. Let yourself notice everything. Pay attention to everything you see, hear, smell, taste, feel.”

In that moment, I understood the dynamic of the phobia. My avoidance had placed the phobia in the middle of my awareness with the inevitable result of my fear overwhelming me. The new strategy would help me scale the experience back down to the size of a small needle. The next day when when the nurse called me to come behind the curtain, I opened the aperture of my awareness as fully as I dared. I didn’t look at the needle beyond a quick glance at the supplies laid out on the table next to the chair where I sat. I fixed my gaze at the wall in front of me. I did listen to everything–the classic rock playing on the speaker in the room, the hum of the small refrigerator, the crinkle of the paper, the squishy sound of fresh gloves being donned, the pop of the plastic cover coming off the syringe, the mumbled conversations in the room and passing in the hallway. I felt the temperature of the air, the cloth of my trousers, my toes curling and uncurling in my shoes, the tingling of the alcohol on my arm, the warm spark as the needle penetrated my skin and deposited the allergens.

I stood up from the chair, no lightheadedness, yet floating in my body, euphoric at not feeling scared, not feeling traumatized. I practically skipped back to my seat in the waiting room, bursting with joy, containing an impulse to tell everyone in the waiting room about my new reality. “I’m not scared of needles anymore!” I wanted to announce. I looked around, seeking eye contact so that I could at least smile at someone. All heads remained bowed over phones and magazines. Perhaps some were genuinely distracted and others sensed the slight mania of my energy. Reading the room, I kept to myself and waited the required 30 minute for the nurse to examine my arm for signs of an adverse reaction to the shot before clearing me to leave. I had experienced, really experienced, the healing touch of a needle for the first time.

As I go through chemotherapy and all it entails, I find myself wanting to feel a much as I can tolerate. I’ve learned to trust the decidedly variable skills of the nurses and phlebotomists who have had to struggle with my small, shy veins. Based on their encouragement, I requested a port, which was surgically implanted under the skin of my upper chest the day of my second chemotherapy treatment. The port provides a sterile access point for medication to be administered and blood drawn. I listen to the conversations around me, feel the fabric of the sheet under my fingers as I stroke it, experience the sting when a needle is inserted into the port and the tugging sensation as it is removed.

I ignored the sensations of my body for too long, out of ignorance and a sense of shame about my symptoms which I attributed to menopause, not enough exercise, and weight gain. And even earlier in my life, before menopause, when I was more active and thinner, I would ignore pain and discomfort until my ability to walk or sleep was compromised for more than three or four days. And then I would wait a few more days to see if things got better on their own. I wanted to handle it, to let my body handle it, on its own. It was my good fortune that I almost always did get better. Until this last summer.

Now I place my life in the hands of others, the clinicians who want to help me, who want to cure me. I look at their faces and listen to their voices. I tell them what matters to me. I recognize and accept the discomfort of treatment as something very different from the trauma of disease. I need to feel it all, so that I know when I am getting better, and when I am not. So that I can learn about when to ask for help, and how to ask for help. So that I can fall to my knees with gratitude for the chance to get better and to keep living.