Friday
Moderator
<grin> Those people usually have a disorder, in and of itself; Specific Phobia.I was thinking about things like...people who are anxious about going to the doctor because they're afraid s/he'll find something wrong so they just don't. Ever. Support from someone else or not. In someone normally not anxious otherwise.
Not always, some people are just stubborn, and some aspect of the one thing that they’re avoiding? They’re morally opposed to. Like being the center of attention / being fussed over, or paying good money (just burn it, why don’t you??? A waste!) to be told what they already know, or being told what to do, etc.
IME The “tell” between specific phobia & stubbornnes? Emotional involvement. People who are stubborn might go on a rant -or not- but they’re still reasonable. If whatever their objection is, is met? They’ll agree to go, and be just fine. Someone with a specific phobia, on the other hand, gets more and more unreasonable, and more and more emotionally unstable, until they’re popping off like a frog in a sock, ending relationships, lashing out, making threats, doing anything and everything they possibly can to avoid doing what’s causing them to feel this way. And no matter how distressed they are at even the IDEA of the thing happening? It only gets worse if the reality shows up knocking.
Paramedics run into both groups of people on a fairly regular basis. Someone who is just being stubborn? Can be talked into it, once you have a discussion with them that allays their concerns. The only way to get someone with a specific phobia around medical anything* in the ambo? Unconscious.
And unlike people with anxiety disorders, or agoraphobia, etc... bringing someone TO them is useless / doesn’t change the situation, at all. People whose terror is around going somewhere, being touched, feeling a bother, etc.? Can be worked with. By removing those hurdles. No one will touch you without your permission / instead of my wrapping this cuff around your arm, would you like to do it? Can you run this across your forehead, for me? Is it okay if I insert this needle, whilst you hold your arm steady with your hand? But I can also set up a 1:1 training session for you to be able to take your own blood in the future with the hospital phlebotomy team, if you’d like? (All about helping a person be in control of their own life/issues, more often than not. This terrible thing made okay-ISH now, because in the future, it won’t have to happen). Thanks! Or; You don’t have to leave your house, we can bring someone to you. Etc Etc.Etc.
But phobias are unreasonable, by definition. You can’t talk someone into doing something they have unreasoning fear of, you have to remove what they’re afraid of. There’s also the quirk that the more generalized someones anxiety? The more practiced they usually are at working with it / around it/ etc. Specific phobias, meanwhile, are most often simply avoided, & life is sunshine & rainbows. Until they’re confronted with the unavoidability of whatever they’re afraid of.
But phobias are unreasonable, by definition. You can’t talk someone into doing something they have unreasoning fear of, you have to remove what they’re afraid of. There’s also the quirk that the more generalized someones anxiety? The more practiced they usually are at working with it / around it/ etc. Specific phobias, meanwhile, are most often simply avoided, & life is sunshine & rainbows. Until they’re confronted with the unavoidability of whatever they’re afraid of.
* Correction. I have known exactly one person who was afraid of ambulances, but was fine being being airlifted (which they knew from a skiing accident). They hadn’t done it, yet, but their “plan” was to move to somewhere that the only emergency aid services available were by chopper. Essentially, retiring back of beyond. That didn’t make a whoooooole lotta sense to me? Since a person can & does usually drive themselves to the doc infinitely more times than they’re transported.... but, again, we’re talking phobias. Which are unreasonable. So it can make sense -in the context of a phobia- to have a 5 hour drive each way for a physical or an earache or any other regular medical care, just to avoid the potential of having to be in an ambulance in an emergency.
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