Whangārei Hypnotherapist Derry Cooke. Photo / Michael Cunningham
If needle phobia is preventing Northlanders from getting Covid jabs, a Whangārei hypnotherapist might have a solution.
In an attempt to boost the vaccination drive, certified hypnotherapist Derry Cooke is offering a 15-minute free session to anyone who suffers from needle phobia.
Needle phobia, or trypanophobia, is the out-of-proportion fear of needles.
Incidence estimates of needle phobia are highly variable, both because it is not well-publicised and the population being studied often avoid healthcare settings.
One of the key findings from a 2018 meta-analysis, which included 119 research studies, found that an estimated one in six healthcare workers in long-term care facilities and one in 13 healthcare workers in hospitals avoided influenza vaccination due to fear of needles.
Having worked as a nurse in the emergency department for years Cooke said he was well aware of the trauma people go through, particularly when they were children, which is usually when the phobia is developed.
"Needle phobia is fairly common. It is because, unfortunately, a lot of people had traumatic experiences with needles, especially when they are too young to understand the full context of what is going on.
"When I took my second jab a few days ago, I thought that was easy for me but I do work with a lot of people who have needle phobia. I wondered if there are people out there for whom that is the only thing holding them back from getting the Covid jab."
Cooke said it normally requires at least a two-hour session for the therapy to work, but "when you already know you want to work on the needle phobia, then there is no need for the discovery process. This makes the process much quicker."
People often learn things after only one exposure - in psychology, it's called one-time learning, said Cooke.
"If there is enough energy or fear behind it, that gets patterned into the brain.
"Now, it's not locked in there, the patterns are just connections between different parts of the brain. Think of patterns as electrical and the brain as a circuit. The circuits can be switched off.
"What I do might be mysterious to some but it's nothing mystical. It is just applied neuroscience.
"It is just the way of taking what we know about the brain and applying that in a really focused way to get people from where they are to where they want to go.
"The change can happen that quickly, and I have seen it. As people, we all have this amazing ability to make that sort of instantaneous kind of change."
In the last couple of years, Cooke had treated around 10 people with needle phobia.
Cooke said if more people turned up he would be running a group session and take them through the process.
"It works for phobia, trauma, pain. I do a lot of work with people with chronic pain and it is the same process."
The worker logged 437 hours in five weeks - all of which was unpaid.