Needle Phobic Gives Blood

This week I gave blood. A fairly mundane activity for most people, but for me it’s always a great joy to do. Up until a few years ago I suffered from needle-phobia and could rarely get through a donation session. I successfully gave blood the first time I tried, at the age of 18, but after that occasion it became an ordeal which was rarely fruitful.
The first time I had a problem was when I was in my first term at university. I was standing in a queue to sign my name, and all of a sudden I started to feel light-headed and then experienced tunnel vision. I had to sit down and put my head between my knees. After that, whenever I went along to a donor session, I would suffer from all manner of problems:

• Light-headedness
• Nausea
• Palpitations
• Cod sweats
• Shortness of breath
• Tunnel vision
• Shaking (so much I couldn’t sign my name)
• Inability to remember my address (I once gave one I hadn’t lived at for 20 years)

That all made the process of blood donation a bit of an ordeal, and since this mainly happened before I’d even had the finger prick, there was little point me attending. (One time I did give successfully was on the day I my (former) wife crashed the car with our two children in. They didn’t need any blood as it happened, but it made me so thankful for the health service that I just went along to my nearest donor session and had no problems at all.)
The turning point was a few years ago when I did a training course in NLP. The trainer described how some people react to the ordeal of standing up and speaking in public; and it sounded to me very similar to my needle-phobia. The technique they proposed was called the Circle of Excellence, and over lunch I asked if they could take me through it in detail. So we set up my circle that I could step into to keep myself calm and relaxed and off I went to a donor session a the local church hall the very next day to see if it would work. And it did work. I was able to wait 20 minutes for my name to be called, sign my consent, give my correct address, have a prick test, and then lie down and make a full donation with no adverse effects. Since then I’ve given twice a year, and only once had to lie down afterwards. The ordeal is all in the past now.
The fascinating thing is that my symptoms seemed so physical, it was difficult to believe that this was all caused by my thinking. Clearly it was, since there had rarely been any needles involved, except in my head. But the result of some unconscious interaction between my mind and my body was completely debilitating.
So here’s the moral at the end – don’t ever believe that you “could never do that”, whatever that may be. It’s all in the mind, no matter how much it feels like a medical condition. It’s your mind and your body. You just have to learn the techniques to get them to work for you and not against you.