Does the sight of a syringe or blood freak you out? Do you feel embarrassed at the thought of being examined by a doctor? Are you afraid that the doctor is going to criticise you for smoking/drinking/being overweight?

Most people feel a certain amount of fear around these issues. But they can still face making and keeping an appointment with their GP. However, some people can’t overcome that fear and run the risk of serious illness because conditions are not caught in time.

Admitting your anxiety can be the first step to getting help, says Cork city-based hypnotherapist and life coach Martin Styles. He is a member of the Clinical Hypnotherapists and Psychotherapists Association of Ireland (CHPA).

“People usually seek help when the fear starts disrupting their normal life. Thinking about the subject, as with any person who has a phobia, can mean the person starts to panic. Adrenaline flows into their system and they may have physical symptoms like butterflies in their stomach, a dry mouth, sweating or shaking.

“They also spend a lot of time thinking about whatever the phobia is and they want to avoid the situation they dread, which means that, in this case, they put off a check-up even though they really need one.”

Fearing the fear

“Usually what the person is fearing is the fear itself,” he says. “The person who has the phobia generally knows that there is nothing logical or rational about their reaction, but they still can’t help feeling like that. When you slow it right down, it’s a case of the person thinking about the needle (or something bad happening in the surgery) and immediately their imagination conjures up a scenario in which dreadful things are happening to them.”

Trigger

The gist of phobia, he adds, is that it’s set off by a trigger, usually the sight of something or a smell, for example. Then a (negative) thought process that had become anchored to that (sight or smell) is set off.

“It’s usually the antiseptic smell of the hospital that people don’t like. They have anchored a feeling of fear or a feeling of being out of control with that smell, with that white coat or with that sort of atmosphere.”

Having a phobia about something is more likely if a parent has had a similar fear, e.g. spiders.

“You may also have seen some dramatic hospital programme on television as a child and that may have convinced you that you should avoid that type of situation.”

A negative childhood experience of a hospital stay can have a detrimental effect also.

“You’d be amazed at how often people in therapy speak of being in hospital as a child and of how being separated from their family affected them,” he says.

“That can seem life-threatening for a child, particularly in the past when parents couldn’t stay with their children in hospital.”

Luckily, white coat phobia like this doesn’t involve lengthy treatment, he says.

“With most phobias it’s really a matter of unscrambling the thought process. We try to change the thinking around it (going to the doctor/hospital) so that the person never looks at it in the same way again. The first thing you do is get them to accept that what they are responding to isn’t something that is real.

“They are reacting to something that’s going on in their own mind, stuff they are imagining might happen. Once they’ve agreed that that’s the case, it becomes something that they can do something about.”

Treatment

“Treatment, in the case of hypnotherapy, involves scrambling (mixing up) the message in their head,” he says, “so that the fear goes out of it. ”

The scrambling process involves a 15-minute visualisation exercise and is about making it so that the person never looks at doctor/hospital visits in the same way again.

“They imagine a video of their worst fears, as if they are looking at another person going through it, then they imagine ‘the film’ running in different ways, with sound effects and comedy angles – they often end up laughing then. You’d be amazed at how it works. If you can get them to the stage where they are starting to laugh at their now totally mixed-up film, then you know you’ve made progress.

“This fast phobia cure strategy that hypnotherapists use is accredited to Richard Bandler, co-developer of NLP (neuro-linguistic programming).”

Relaxation techniques

“Learning relaxation techniques is also important,” says Martin Styles, “as people can put these into practice in the doctor’s, dentist’s or in hospital.

“That’s so that they can almost hit a relaxation button when they get there (the doctor’s surgery). It’s an anchoring strategy.

“What you’re doing is asking the person to remember a time when they felt really calm.

“For most it’s a memory of being on holiday. You use their imagination to get them into a relaxed state. You know they have a good imagination because they’ve already proved to you that their imagination can get them into a bad state.

“Anyone with a phobia has a good imagination. We give them a gesture to help them tap into that good memory of being relaxed, for example, the OK sign – pressing thumb and first finger together.”

“Practicing this means that in a stressful situation, some of this (calm) feeling comes back when you need it. This anchor is a portable coping strategy that can be used anywhere.

“That’s giving people the controller that also stops the imagination running away and turning the event into something disastrous or catastrophic in their mind, i.e. the fear.”

Confidence

After that it’s about building confidence.

“It’s about imagining more positive things going on when you do get to the doctor’s surgery, such as imagining that the doctor is actually quite a nice guy, or finding good things that we could look forward to rather than things that frighten us. This positive outlook will help us feel calm and confident.”