Helpful Tips For Fainting

For background information, you may want to read the following blog posts before reading this one. The blog posts are "Fainting At The Sight Of Needles" and "Fainting From More Than Needles".

If you are like me, don’t feel alone! There are many of us out there. In my case, I know I’m a highly sensitive person (see blog post 01/20/11) and this adds to the situation.

Here are some tips that may help you in dealing with this situation but most of all, don’t beat yourself up for it! Keep looking for ways that will help you overcome and deal with this situation.

If you have helpful tips to share, please feel free to leave them in a comment so you can help others.


Tips To Manage Fainting:

1. Let the person or office know where the medical procedure is being done that you easily faint. Many times this will help you feel a little more comfortable and safe plus it helps alert them to be a little more gentle and careful with you.

2. Try not to think about or look away from what is being done to you. Think about a song or something you want to do. Talk to someone that you trust about anything other than what is going on. Do anything you can do to get your mind off of what is going on.

3. Close your eyes so you can’t see any of the needles or medical instruments.
4. If you have a close and trusted friend that can go with you, sometimes that is a big comfort to you as long as they are able to function in that situation.

5. Insist that you lie down when things are being done. There have been many times that medical staff feels this is a waste of time and I usually just let them know that either they can let me lie down or they can pick me up off the floor. Most of the time, that conversation is enough to convince them.

6. Trying to focus on your breathing can be very helpful but even I know that when I get in this situation, that is like trying to drain the ocean with a single gulp. It does help but for me, the fear and anxiety often take over before I can get myself focusing on breathing.

7. Doing intense healing work on yourself is helpful but not always easy. Going into the pain head on can be liberating in the end but often we shy away from this because we are too afraid to do it.

8. Try to limit yourself in eating a lot of sugar or caffeine or other stimulants before having any of these medical procedures done. It just adds fuel to the fire. The more you can relax before something is done, the better the chance of you making it through without fainting.

Further Reading:
1) Afraid Of Needles? Why Some Faint At The Very Sight (MSNBC)
2) Fainting At The Sight Of Needles (June 9, 2011)
3) Fainting From More Than Needles (June 10, 2011)
4) Fear Of The Dentist (July 6, 2010)
5) Living As A Highly Sensitive Person (Jan 20, 2011)


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Blog Post & Images (c) 6/7/11 Don Shetterly - use by permission only
http://www.donshetterly.com

If any part of this post is used or shared, a link back to this site is required.
http://mindbodythoughts.blogspot.com/
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Fainting From More Than Needles

For background information, you may want to read the previous blog post, "Fainting At The Sight Of Needles posted on June 9, 2011.

For me, it is more than just needles that makes me faint and pass out. Often, it is perceived pain long before any pain or procedure might take place. Just writing this is enough that I can feel my anxiety level is very high. It does not even have to be something I experience but someone close to me that is going to experience a procedure.

I remember my father telling me that when he was younger, he would pass out easily. It wasn’t until he went through a time where he got so angry and screamed and yelled that it began to change. I’m not sure he was ever cured and I do know that he found other ways to take his anxiety and fear out, rather than passing out.

To someone that says “Man up!” or just get over it, this phobia is not that easy to deal with. It isn’t like I sit there waiting for the room to get warm and the lights to begin going dark. It isn’t like I think about it as I try hard not to think about it. Fortunately though, I have not fainted for several years which is in part because of the intense healing work I’ve done on myself and learning how to manage this better.

For me, I’ve learned how to go in and really become one with myself, including all my fears, pains, hurts and traumas in life. It has not been an easy process. While going through some of these sessions with Dr. Paul Canali, I’ve often experienced feeling like I was going to faint or pass out on the table. It has been a frequent occurrence that we have had to work with. Dr. Canali has learned how to work with me to take me to the edge of this feeling and then back me off from it. My nervous system is no longer revved up with a pulse rate of 99 (see blog post April 1, 2010) and above constantly since going through this healing work. That in itself has allowed me to handle more situations and not faint or pass out.

One situation though that is still extremely difficult is that of going to the dentist. (see blog post of 07/06/10). I do take a sedative so I can get into the dentist office but the thought of scheduling an appointment is enough to make me faint. If I don’t faint, the anxiety and heart rate skyrocket! Hopefully there will come a day for me where I can do something as simple as booking an appointment to the dentist without having to take a sedative.

For a continuation of this topic, read the next blog post on June 11, 2011, Helpful Tips For Fainting.

Further Reading:
1) Afraid Of Needles? Why Some Faint At The Very Sight (MSNBC)
2) Fainting At The Sight Of Needles (June 9, 2011)
3) Helpful Tips For Fainting (June 11, 2011)
4) Fear Of The Dentist (July 6, 2010)
5) Living As A Highly Sensitive Person (Jan 20, 2011)




-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Blog Post & Images (c) 6/7/11 Don Shetterly - use by permission only
http://www.donshetterly.com

If any part of this post is used or shared, a link back to this site is required.
http://mindbodythoughts.blogspot.com/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fainting At The Sight Of Needles

If you have experienced fainting to the degree that people with phobias have, it isn’t a pleasant experience. In fact, if you are like me, just writing about this topic is enough that I need to take frequent breaks from. Just the topic about this can almost make me feel like I’m going to faint. So, if you’re one of those, go gently on yourself when you read this.

According to an article on MSNBC.com, Afraid Of Needles? Why Some Faint At The Very Sight, seeing a needle in a medical setting is enough to make even the toughest of us faint. People who are terrified of needles get the same heart racing, shallow breathing and nerve jangling reactions seen in other intense fears. But the tendency to faint is what sets some medical phobias apart from, say being petrified of heights or spiders.

Ever since I can remember, I fainted at just about everything. Let’s see, there was the time I was in the waiting room of the doctor’s office when my brother was getting his cast off and I heard the sound of the saw cutting the plaster apart. There were many times when I would get a cut on any place on my body and the minute I felt it or saw the blood, down I would go.

I used to get a lot of splinters and my parents would take the sewing needle to get them out. More often than not, I’d be passed out before they were done. I can remember getting all of those shots you get in school as a kid and either crying every time or passing out.

There were times that I have had to have medical xrays or procedures done which required no needles and have passed out. Far too many times, I’ve passed out in dentist offices and often it was before any work was scheduled to be done. Even one time when I had an MRI done, I passed out.

Watching veterinarians do medical procedures on animals has brought me to my knees on more than one occasion and in college, I was an Animal Science/Pre Vet major. Imagine trying to do some of these things and learn in college labs but passing out so easily.

I still remember when we were doing blood types in a college lab and I told the lab professor about my dilemma. She quickly excused me from lab and prevented me from having to go through that experience.

For a continuation of this topic, read the next blog post on June 10, 2011, Fainting From More Than Needles.

Further Reading:
1) Afraid Of Needles? Why Some Faint At The Very Sight (MSNBC)
2) Fainting From More Than Needles (June 10, 2011)
3) Helpful Tips For Fainting (June 11, 2011)
4) Fear Of The Dentist (July 6, 2010)
5) Living As A Highly Sensitive Person (Jan 20, 2011)




-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Blog Post & Images (c) 6/7/11 Don Shetterly - use by permission only
http://www.donshetterly.com

If any part of this post is used or shared, a link back to this site is required.
http://mindbodythoughts.blogspot.com/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Self Discovery

Self discovery could be compared to a sewing needle. It takes focus, patience and if you don't get the thread through the eye of the needle, just keep trying until you do.

Pins And Needles

For a licensed print ready version, download on LuLu.com

You’ve probably had one of those moments where you were reading something or you heard something and it about dropped you dead in your tracks. One such event did that for me and before I could even begin to finish what I had started reading, my heart was pounding as if I were running for my life. In some ways I was running for my life, but the event had occurred many years earlier.

In 1991, when I was going through all the hospital tests trying to determine the cause of my paralysis, there was one test that just about did me in. I had not thought about it much until I read an account by an online blogger friend of mine. As I read her detailed account of a very similar test she went through, it was all I could do to keep reading what she wrote. I wanted to read it but the fears, the horrors and the emotions of a lifetime came rushing up. Even as I write this, I can feel my heart racing and so while I feel I need to record this, it is not easy.

The doctors had tried many tests on me trying to determine the cause of my paralysis. At first it had been proclaimed that I had Multiple Sclerosis. At age 26, that seemed like a death sentence for me. I wasn’t prepared to hear these words and I had no way to know how to react to them. As the days wore on though, that diagnosis began to prove itself wrong. My symptoms weren’t common and so specialist after specialist did every test under the sun.

The latest test they did was where I believe they were checking my muscle and nerve reflexes. I’m not 100% certain if that is exactly what it was they were doing, and someone with a medical background may be able to shed more light on this than I can. I remember being taken into this room from my hospital bed and placed upon an exam table. There were instruments and electrical-looking machines and a lady in a lab coat that I don’t even think introduced herself. Most of the time during the test, she was facing my legs and some electrical machine with her back to my face. It was almost as if she didn’t want to see me as a person but that’s just my perception.

Realize that during this time, my movements were almost nonexistent and speech was extremely slow and labored. To get a word out every few minutes that made coherent sense was quite an accomplishment for me during this time. So communication for me was almost impossible, and trying to communicate really zapped the energy from me. At that time, my energy was in a very limited supply and I did not want to waste it. So as I laid there on the exam table seeing these machines around me, with this person who I didn’t know sitting there as if I didn’t exist, I was frightened beyond belief. I had no idea what was going to be done to me, and I felt as if I had no say in it anyway.

She began her test and I felt these little pricks of what must have been a needle. You see, needles were not something good to me. You could show me a needle and I would pass out, and in fact had passed out many times for stuff like that and more. So I was doing all I could and using every ounce of energy I had to make it through this test, for this might have been the one that told the doctors what was wrong with me, I thought.

As I felt these little pricks on my legs, I would feel a little electric type jolt through them. It didn’t seem to be a large jolt of electricity, only a little buzz. The pain of the needle pricking my skin along with the uncomfortable feeling of the electricity I felt, made this very difficult to endure. Prick by prick, little buzz by little buzz, the lady in the white lab coat continued her testing procedure. It seemed like an eternity which would never end. With each prick of the needle, the pain would intensify.

I could feel the tears want to well up within my eyes, but of course my eyes had cried so much there were no tears. I could feel my voice wanting to scream out, “STOP”, but the words and the voice were lost in the void. I could feel my arms wanting to grab the lady in the white lab coat to make her stop, but my arms had no ability or energy to move. My mind knew there was nothing to do but take what was being done to me, while my body just wanted to run out of the room.

Even though I could barely speak, I do remember trying to say to the lady in the white lab coat, “please stop for a minute, please stop. Please stop.” She never heard the faint and few words of my dull voice. She only continued on, one needle prick at a time. There was no stopping her. My mind thought of a million things I would call this lady if only I could speak, and these things weren’t pretty.

The next thing I knew, I saw these doctors working around me on the table. I’m not sure where I was, but the room was full of people in white coats and much more equipment than when I initially came into the room. Seeing all of this, I didn’t really feel any pain in that moment, and actually it felt more freeing and nice than when I was on the table. The one thing I couldn’t understand, though, was why all of these people were so concerned about me and why I was watching all of this.

As my eyes began to open again, I saw the doctor with the little shock paddles and heard the words “clear” as he brought the paddles close to my bare chest and stomach. They had pulled my hospital gown down to expose my chest and abdomen. As I opened my eyes, I remember seeing such a bright light that it almost hurt my eyes to look at it. It was one of the clearest, brightest white lights I had ever seen. At first I chalked it up to the lights in the room, thinking that was obviously the source. It wasn’t until many years later, when I experienced this same bright white light in a healing session from a lady in South Florida, that I put together what the white light was all about.

As my eyes began to focus on the room, I could hear the people giving out the blood pressure readings and the pulse. Everyone seemed to breathe a sigh of relief as they began to leave the room. One nurse who stayed in there with me commented that they had thought they lost me. That’s about all that was ever said or all that I remember being said. Again, this didn’t quite connect with my brain for many years of what really transpired on this day.

While you may be reading and feeling sad for all of what I went through, this is ok. However, there is a much broader reason why I share this. You see, the body is like an electrical box full of circuits. If we overload the circuits with many devices or stresses in our lives, sooner or later the circuits will overload and trip the individual breakers. If you overload too many circuits at the same time, than the entire circuit box begins to trip and shut down.

This is exactly what was happening in my body. My body had endured a lifetime of stresses, events, pains and abuses. I had ignored these for years and thought I was being a strong man by just handling things. After all, everyone I knew understood just how together I had life. There was nothing that could stop me. I was invincible. I was all powerful, not the weak person that was lying in a hospital bed. There was also what I had been taught every day of my life, that you just handled your problems on your own. You didn’t go to others for help because that was not only a sign of weakness, but these people would then use your problems to their advantage in future dealings with you. You could not trust these people from that point forward. I so remember one whipping in the middle of the night to bring this point home in a very clear way.

As Peter Levine talks about in his book, “Waking The Tiger”, our bodies will react to all that we experience. We can try to run from it, hide it, analyze it or mold it into some sort of religion, but if we don’t deal with that which we have endured, it will deal with us. We may go years, like I did, before it begins to rear its ugly head but it has our days numbered.

Many of us go through life having all types of experiences throughout our years. Some of these are horrendous and are further cemented in the experience by strong emotional components, or by our young age of not knowing and understanding what is going on. We then find ways to compensate for these experiences, sometimes not even consciously knowing that we are doing this. We continue to live our lives adding more events, and more stress during each day.

Our body and our mind tries to get our attention with its many warning system lights such as headaches, pains, stiffness, sickness, disease, and other health conditions. We run to the doctors out of fear, wanting to be fixed and wanting some medication, surgery or therapy to fix us. So the doctor in their vast knowledge gives us something that will help. They often give us a name of the condition we are experiencing, and at last we know that we can wear our badge of what we have with pride. We know what it is and we can be cared for. It gives us a spring to our feet and a bounce to our step.

However, the condition does not necessarily disappear. It might be suppressed or it might give way to other conditions. Medications and surgeries with all their side effects may welcome other unwanted and undesired guests into our bodies and our minds. All the while, we’re still not cured. The condition is still there. It is just masked and covered up.

Please don’t get me wrong here, as I’m not saying all medication and all surgery and all medical intervention is a bad thing. We sometimes need this to stabilize our lives so that we can move to the point of healing. However, so many of us stay in this mode and never move on to the healing part. Masking the pain or the condition is never healing. It’s like using a band aid to cover a blood-gushing wound. While it may help temporarily, the wound needs further attention to heal.

While this may sound unreal and difficult to even contemplate, going into the pain and all the fears that may come up will ultimately release what is beneath that which you are sensing. By doing this, we are able to take the power that the fear possesses in the condition, or the pain, and use it to move us forward through this point in our lives. Otherwise, the fear and the pain of the condition remain as stored energy, locked within our cells, holding us back from realizing our true potential. The fears can be strong but the rewards of doing this are much greater.

We should not view pain as something that we must fix, but something that we need to accept. Through acceptance we take the power back from it, so that we more fully integrate ourselves into a complete person. The greatest gift we can give ourselves is to know our self in the fullest possible way. For the more we have fully integrated ourselves as one mind, body and spirit, the more we are human.