How to Overcome the Fear of Medical Procedures (A Therapist’s Guide) | Ep. 408

In this episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit, Kimberley Quinlan guides listeners through practical strategies for managing the fear of medical procedures, such as needle and blood phobias. Drawing from both professional expertise and personal experience, she shares actionable tips to help listeners confront their fears with compassion and resilience. Learn how to turn anxiety into a manageable experience and feel empowered through the process.

What you will learn:

• 5 actionable steps to manage medical procedure anxiety.
• Discover how to use Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) for needle and blood phobias.
• Practical tips to ease the fear of waiting for medical results.
• Strategies to handle the anxiety of scheduling doctor’s appointments.
• Mindfulness techniques to stay calm during hospital visits.

Facing the Fear of Medical Procedures: Practical Strategies for Anxiety Relief

Many people feel anxious about medical procedures like blood tests, needles, waiting for results, or even just entering a hospital. In this article, we’ll explore practical, therapist-backed strategies to help manage those common fears. From learning to tolerate uncertainty to using techniques like Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), these tools can make a real difference. Let’s dive in.

Step 1: Acknowledge Your Fear Compassionately

The first step in managing anxiety around medical procedures is simple but crucial: acknowledge your fear. Anxiety over needles, hospitals, or test results is entirely normal, and accepting that fear can be the first step in easing it. Instead of suppressing it, try saying, “Yes, I’m afraid, and that’s okay.” Recognizing your fear allows you to approach it calmly with the skills you’ll read about below.

Step 2: Educate Yourself—But Set Limits

One of the biggest anxiety triggers for medical procedures is fear of the unknown. Knowledge can be empowering, but it’s essential to set boundaries, especially for those with health anxiety. Here’s how to educate yourself without overloading:

• Ask questions: Speak to your doctor about the procedure to clarify what will happen, how long it will take, and what sensations you might feel.
• Avoid excessive research: Reading numerous articles or Googling worst-case scenarios often fuels anxiety. Set a limit on how many questions you’ll ask or how long you’ll allow yourself to research.

If you find yourself obsessing over potential negative outcomes, remember that no amount of rumination will change what happens next. Focus on asking just enough questions to feel informed, then practice letting go of the need for certainty.

Step 3: Practice Mindful Breathing

Before a procedure, it’s common to breathe quickly or take shallow breaths, signaling to the brain that there’s danger. Practicing mindful breathing can help you regulate your response.

• Breathe normally: Aim for regular, not necessarily deep, breathing, as trying to slow your breath too much might increase anxiety.
• Stay present: Mindfulness involves keeping your attention on the here and now rather than anticipating the procedure. Each time your mind wanders to the upcoming test or results, bring it gently back to the present. This might take practice, but repetition will strengthen your ability to focus on the present.

Step 4: Invite Anxiety to Join You

Rather than resisting anxiety, try allowing it to come with you to the procedure. When Kimberley Quinlan, anxiety specialist, faced her own health scares, she practiced accepting that anxiety would be there with her during medical tests, knowing that fighting it only made it stronger. When anxious thoughts arise, say to yourself, “It’s okay that you’re here, anxiety. We’ll get through this together.”

Step 5: Waiting for Results—Strengthen Your Anxiety Skills

Waiting for medical test results can be excruciatingly difficult. This is the time to double down on mindfulness and allow space for your anxiety. Shift your focus away from results and toward activities that bring meaning to your life. Quinlan advises practicing patience and kindness with yourself during these moments and reminds us that, with practice, waiting does get easier.

Targeted Tools for Specific Fears

Overcoming Needle Phobia

Needle phobia, or trypanophobia, is common, but ERP (Exposure and Response Prevention) has proven effective for addressing it. Here’s a step-by-step approach:

1. Identify Triggers: Note the situations that trigger your fear, like seeing needles or hearing others talk about injections.
2. Gradual Exposure: Start with smaller exposures, such as looking at pictures of needles or watching videos of injections, then build up to holding a syringe or being in a doctor’s office.
3. Prevent Your Usual Responses: Resist avoiding the situation or using distractions. Instead, let yourself feel the anxiety, acknowledging it as it passes.
4. Repeat and Build Confidence: The more you face the fear in controlled settings, the more confidence you build for the real situation.

Celebrate each small success as you progress through these steps, as every exposure brings you closer to overcoming the fear.

Reducing Blood Phobia

Blood phobia, or hemophobia, can be addressed similarly with ERP:

1. Identify Triggers: Notice what sets off your fear—images, stories, or thoughts about blood.
2. Practice Gradual Exposure: Begin by viewing short clips or images involving small amounts of blood. Gradually increase exposure by watching medical procedures or stories about blood.
3. Response Prevention: During exposure, avoid the urge to escape or distract. Allow yourself to sit with the anxiety until it subsides naturally.
4. Increase Exposure Gradually: Work your way up to real-life situations where you might see blood, like during a blood test. Each step builds resilience.

Reward yourself for each win along the way—facing your fear is no easy feat, and you deserve to celebrate.

Tackling Appointment Avoidance

Sometimes, making the appointment itself is the hardest part. Here are a few tips for handling that anxiety:

• Break it down: Just setting a reminder or picking up the phone can be a step forward. Reward yourself after each step.
• Ask for support: Have a friend or loved one sit with you while you make the call or even accompany you to the appointment.
• Use it as practice: Treat appointment-setting as another chance to practice your anxiety skills. The more you engage with these situations, the stronger your skills will become.

Facing Hospital Anxiety

If hospital visits make you uneasy, try ERP to desensitize yourself to the setting:

1. Visit the hospital when you don’t have an appointment. Spend time in the waiting room or simply sit outside to get accustomed to the environment.
2. Practice mindfulness techniques by focusing on what you see, hear, and feel around you. The more you expose yourself to the hospital, the more comfortable you’ll eventually feel.

You Can Do Hard Things

Overcoming the fear of medical procedures takes time and practice, but each skill you build will serve you in multiple areas of life. With these tools—acknowledgment, education, mindfulness, and ERP—you have what it takes to face these fears. And remember: today is a beautiful day to do hard things.

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TRANSCRIPTION: How to Overcome the Fear of Medical Procedures (A Therapist’s Guide)

“Raise your hand if you’ve ever panicked at the thought of a medical procedure. 

Needles, blood tests, waiting for results, or even just stepping into a hospital—these are things that cause so much anxiety for many of us. 

But today, we’re going to talk about how to overcome those fears and share some specific tools for managing common fears like needle phobias, blood phobias, and more.

“Well, hello, my friends! Welcome back to Your Anxiety Toolkit, where we talk about how to face your fears, big or small. I’m Kimberley Quinlan, a licensed anxiety specialist, and today we’re focusing on how to overcome the fear of medical procedures. We’ll discuss general tips and tools for common fears, including needles, blood, waiting for results, and hospital visits. I’ll even guide you through using Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) to help manage those fears, so let’s get started!”

Before we get going, let me say that this is a topic I feel particularly qualified to talk on. 

As many pf you know, in 2019, I went down a very scary rabbit hole of finding a lesion on the left side of my cerebellum and I had to undergo dozens of tests, dozens of specialist appointments, and several hospital visits. 

It was horrible, and without the tools to manage my anxiety, I am not sure I could have handled it all.  

My hope today is to first give you some helpful tools to manage the fear of medical procedures and then go into depth on a few specific conditions and fears that many of you have (and many of my clients ave had), such as needle phobias, blood phobias, and panic attacks during medical tests.. 

Lets look at some general tips to get us started. 

When it comes to managing the fear of medical procedures, the first thing I want you to do is compassionately Acknowledge Your Fear

Before you do anything, let’s recognize that fear of medical procedures is completely normal. 

Whether it’s fear of needles or just stepping into a hospital, many people experience it. 

The key to managing it is to acknowledge your fear. 

You have to say, ‘Yes, I’m afraid, and that’s okay.’ Once you accept that, you can start to face it with the tools we’ll cover today.”

Another very important step is to Educate Yourself.  Remember, Knowledge is power!
One of the biggest causes of anxiety around medical procedures is the unknown. 

Now, as you all know, I am a HUGE advocate for tolerating uncertainty and willingly bringing on your anxiety, but it is okay to ask questions about the procedure and what to expect.  You might want to ask questions such as “What will happen during the procedure? How long will it take? Should I expect discomfort?” 

Getting educated on what to expect is key. It is okay to Ask your doctor questions until you feel more comfortable with the process. 

That being the case, there is one thing I want you to all to keep an eye one. If you find yourself asking for reassurance over and over, that might be a sign that you nee to return to practice the skill or willingly allowing uncertainty to be there. 

Some education about the condition is completely fine, but we dont want you spending hours reading articles, googling the procedure, or trying to figure out all the possible catastrophic outcomes.   

If you have health anxiety, you might want to set some rules for yourself on how many questions you are allowed to ask the doctor and hold yourself accountable (compassionately, of course).  Remember, ruminating doesnt solve anything.  It will just upset you more.  

Once you have the appropriate education about the procedure, you will likely still be anxious. I totally get it.  

I am one of those people who feels anxious before any procedure, so no matter what, I need to practice the skill of mindfulness and mindful breathing. 

When we’re anxious, we tend to take shallow breaths, which tells our brain that something is wrong. Practicing breathing at a normal rate can be very helpful as you anticipate your medical procedure. Dont worry about slow breathing.  

That might just freak you out more.  Instead, just stay mindful of your breath and try to get back to a regular breathing pattern. 

Mindfulness also involves staying present. Often, when we know we have a medial test or procedure, we focus on it instead of staying present.  Bring your attention to the here and now and stay focused on now, not later. 

It is likely your brain will keep nagging  you with thoughts about the medical test, blood test, or test results.  Just note them as thoughts and come back to the present.  You might need to practice this OVER AND OVEr and that is okay. Do not give up. Just keep trying.  

The other thing you will need to remember is to allow the anxiety to come with you. 

It is okay to just let anxiety come.  When I had to have a series of brain MRIS, there is nothing I could do about the anxiety. It was coming, no matter what I did.  

So, my solution was to just let it come.  I would talk to anxiety as if it were a perosn. I would say” Hi anxiety.  Its okay that you are coming.  We will get this MRI together, but you are not in charge and you will not be the focus of my attention”.  

WHile I was in the MRI machine, I would just breathe and bring my attention to one focal point.  

Sometimes I would plan my 90ths birthday party haha and other times, I would put my attention on the sounds of the MRI machines.  If you have ever had an MRI, it is a wild experience.  It was nothing like anything I had ever heard before.  

There were times when I felt like I was going to panic and I just let the panic come and go. When you dont fight it, it does not have power over you.  I just let the panic rise and fall, which it did multiple times. 

If you want more info on how to manage panic, we have lots of episodes about panic in your anxiety toolkit. 

Now, as you wait for the medical test results, you will have the task of doubling down on these skills. THe good news is that you will just keep practice the tools we have already outlined. 

As you wait, double down on being willing to be uncertain and having anxiety.  Put your attention not on the results but on what you value and what matters to you. I get how hard it is.  

There was once a time I had to wait almost 2 weeks to get a very scary result back and I have never had to practice my skills as much as I did those two weeks.  Each anxiety wave would come and go and I just kept reminding myself to be patient, kind, and mindful.  

Do not give up. You can do this and it will get e asier each time you practice. 

Now, If you’re specifically afraid of needles, you’re definitely not alone. Needle phobia is a common fear, but Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is a highly effective way to work through it. Here’s how we practice ERP with out clients who have a fear of needles, also knows as trypanophobia:”

Step 1: Identify the feared situation: Start by identifying the situations that trigger your fear of needles—whether it’s seeing a needle, hearing someone talk about needles, or imagining an injection.

Step 2: Gradual Exposure: Begin with small, manageable exposures. This might involve watching videos of injections or looking at pictures of needles. Over time, increase the intensity of the exposure, like visiting a doctor’s office or even holding a syringe without a needle attached. 

We do these exposures a lot in sessions and they are so powerful.  We have clean needles that our clients can practice holding.  Often, the person with needle phobias are afraid of the pain they will feel. With their permission, we might have them hold a paper clip at the area where they will get a needle and practice having pressure applied in that area.  

Step 3 is to Prevent Your Usual Response: 

As you do these exposures, work on resisting your usual responses, like avoiding the situation or using distractions to cope. 

Instead, allow yourself to feel the anxiety, notice it, and let it pass without reacting.

Lastly, Step 4 is to Repeat and Build Confidence: Continue to expose yourself to the fear in controlled settings, gradually building up to the actual experience of receiving an injection or getting blood drawn. 

Over time, your brain learns that the feared situation is not as dangerous as it once seemed, and the fear lessens.”

Of course, do not forget to be as kind as you can and also remember to celebrate as much as you can when you finally have the procedure.  Go out. Have ice cream or go see a movie or do something fun, because you definitely deserve it. 

Okay, so now lets take a look at what we do when working with someone who have a Blood Phobia

Blood phobia, or hemophobia, can be intense, but Exposure & response prevention can be incredibly helpful in reducing that fear too. 

Here’s how to apply ERP for blood phobia:”

Step 1: Once again, we want to Identify Your Triggers: 

Whether it’s the sight of blood, hearing others talk about it, or even just thinking about it, identify what specifically triggers your fear.

Step 2 is to practice Gradual Exposure: 

You might Start by watching short clips or looking at images of small amounts of blood. Over time, increase the intensity of the exposure by watching videos of medical procedures or reading stories involving blood.

Step 3 is always Response Prevention: 

During these exposures, you will want to notice your anxiety but resist the urge to escape or avoid the situation. Sit with the discomfort and allow your body to naturally calm down as you realize the situation isn’t harmful. 

The last step is to Increase Exposure Gradually: 

Keep building on these exposures, working your way up to being in situations where you might encounter blood, like during a medical procedure. By doing this gradually, you’ll reduce the overall intensity of your fear.

Once again, celebrate any and all wins. This is hard work and you deserve to bask in the very hard things you are doing 

Okay, so sometimes the hardest part isn’t the procedure or waiting for hte results—it’s actually making the appointment. 

If you’re someone who avoids scheduling doctor’s visits out of fear, I suggest breaking it down into small, manageable steps.

First, just set a reminder or pick up the phone. Then, reward yourself for taking that first step. You don’t have to go from zero to being completely comfortable with appointments. Take it one small step at a time.” 

You might also benefit from asking a loved one to help you by sitting with you to schedule the appointment.  Remind yourself that you are stronger than you think and today is a beautiful day to do hard things. 

You might also benefit as using the appointment-making task as an opportunity to practice your anxiety skills.  I try to use any opportunity I can to help me strengthen my anxiety skills.  

These are not just silly skills. 

They are skills you can use in any area of your life and i have found that they have helped me get through so many regular life experiences. 

Now, If stepping foot in a hospital makes you anxious, you might benefit from running through the same process as we did for needle phobias and blood phobias. 

The goal is to have you practice visiting the hospital as many times as you can. 

I would not encourage anyone to wait until they have a medical condition to do this.  Try to target visiting the hospital as many times as you can when there is no pressure, even if you go and sit in the waiting room or even outside the hospital over and over.  

If you have a friend in the hospital, use it as an opportunity to drop them off a care package just for practice facing your fear.

Try practicing mindfulness techniques. 

Focus on what you can see, hear, and feel to keep yourself present. The more you expose yourself to the place without fear, the more comfortable you’ll become over time.”

“So there you have it guys. I know that was a LOT, but I hope it brought you some clarity and direction

I have complete confidence that with practice, you can overcome the fear of medical procedures, including the fear of needles, blood, waiting for results, scheduling appointments, and even walking into a hospital. 

Remember, these fears are natural, but they don’t have to control you. 

You have the tools to face them. 

And do not forget, today is a beautiful day to do hard things.