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Panic Attacks after seeing blood

NAS77116

Hi

So a while back while I was in a biology lesson my teacher was talking about blood circulation around the body. Seeing blood doesn’t bother me at all but this was really making me feel uncomfortable. It got to a point where I just had my head in my hands and was breathing really fast and felt extremely lightheaded due to what he was talking about. I felt like crying because of how it felt. He then made the situation worse (as he didn’t see me freaking out) and started talking about a guy who cut through that big artery in the leg that’s really dangerous. He went into detail about the blood squirting out and all that stuff and I full on started to loose it. I felt like I was gonna be sick or pass out and I was struggling to breath properly so I was taking lots of breaths and I just remember being so distressed. It got so bad the teacher sent me out of the class room to talk to me and to check if I was ok. I can’t remember if I blacked out but I don’t think I did. This was the first time anything like this has happened to me and it hasn’t happened again after it. I never get panic attacks and I don’t have anxiety so I was wondering what this could be caused by.

Any help would be great.

  • My anxieties and panics are all socially-based, triggered by people. I have the stomach of a concrete elephant and worked with human blood (donated) most of my working life, so blood-related panics are a bit alien to me.

    It possibly could have been triggered by a sort of pernicious loop. Knowing that things like blood and the operation of the human body are triggers for panic and disgust in some people, you therefore reacted to the thought that you might be triggered and therefore be embarrassed in public by your reaction, and this then became a 'self-fulfilling prophesy'. If you think that you might not have reacted as you did, if it had just been you and the teacher discussing the topic, without a classroom full of your peers, then it might be the result of what I suggested.