My Childhood Fear of Doctors and the WWofW
I developed a fear of doctors as a kid and have never fully recovered.
My mother took me to doctors far more frequently than would've been normal. I knew I was a basically healthy kid yet I went to doctors a lot, maybe every 2-3 weeks. I knew other kids didn't go that often.And I always seemed to be getting an injection for some reason and I was afraid of needles.
My mother was very unsympathetic and seemed to do everything she could to make it harder for me. For one thing, she would never tell me anything about why I had to go there when I was well. If I asked her, she would snap at me and refuse to tell me. Also, often she would cancel an appointment at the last minute (for no reason she'd tell me) and then reschedule it a short time later, thus giving me more of a chance to be nervous. Another of her ways of making me nervous was to scold me and yell at me in the car on the way there for no specific reason so by the time we got there, I was already in tears and a nervous wreck.
If the doctor told her I didn't have some disease she suspected, she wouldn't "believe" him and she'd insist on a laboratory test. I hated these tests because they were usually invasive and painful; I especially hated blood tests which always made me feel like I was going to faint. But I knew I would be in for yet another screaming session if I did. Crying or fainting was definitely out of the question. So I would take long deep breathes as we headed down into the bleak cement prison-like basement where the lab was located. It didn't help that the lab technician was irritable and not very patient or sympathetic. He found nervous girls like me annoying. I dreaded these tests and all the more because I knew I didn't really need them. The doctors would tell her something like, "It's nothing to worry about. She's fine. There is about a one in a million chance she has this disease." And my mother would answer, "But I would feel so much better if I could know for SURE." She'd throw a little Actor's Studio into it and add in a phony sentimental voice, "You know how mothers are..." And to my disgust and anger, the doctor might argue but he'd always cave in and say, "Well, OK, if it will make you feel better, I can arrange it." And there we'd be heading to that grim basement lab once again with my mother alternating shooting me stern looks with a small satisfied smile on her face. I developed little trust for doctors who seemed to care about my mother's irrational feelings more than they cared about me, the patient. Wasn't I the one who was supposed to "feel better"?
Whatever treatment or test I got, especially if it involved a needle or other pain, my mother would insist on being in the room with me, no matter how personal it was. I hated this because she was never comforting about it but just seemed to enjoy watching me. I felt violated and it made me angry and I knew I would only make things worse if I complained about it.
The evil psychotherapist my mother sent me to called me a "sissie" and ridiculed me telling me I was immature and a "brat." At school, my mother kept telling the teachers and kids that I was a very sickly and delicate child with a lot of health problems, which made me different and a target for teasing and bullying. I used to wonder why she couldn't take me to doctors after school like other kids but she always seemed to make the appointments during school time. So her arrival to pick me up always happened during class time and I stood out as she interrupted the class to take me out of it.
The time in the doctor's waiting room was another factor adding to my fear and discomfort. If I knew I was going to have to get a shot (or strongly suspected it since she'd never actually tell me), I would have to wait a long time. Usually from 45 minutes to an hour or so. That gave me time to build up more fear. When I would ask my mother,"WHY are we waiting so long? It's been almost an hour!" She would turn and glare at me and say in a loud stern carefully enunciated tone, 'WE. HAVE. TO. WAIT!" And then I was expected to shut up and wait some more. Any questions made her angry.
I suppose that what lost me trust in doctors was the way they always did whatever my mother wanted them to do, as if they had very little medical judgment of their own.
Eventually, around the age of 9, I actually found a way to stop my mother from the doctor torture.
First, I had to become mature enough to see and admit to myself, that my mother was not only the Wicked Witch of West Hollywood, but an outright sadist, someone who fully enjoyed making me miserable. It was difficult and scary for me to admit this to myself. But I thought about the school bully who also tormented me. I knew that the more I minded it, the more I reacted, the more she, the bully, would repeat the same action; it worked well and made her feel powerful. I began to wonder if my mother would get more out of it if I reacted, and maybe the cure for it would be to stop reacting. So I made a very strong effort to not react in any way to what bothered me the most. I just stuck with a bland and polite affect, no complaints, no questions, no crying, no nothing reactive to the situation. I learned to fix my imagination very firmly on something else, something happy and pleasant, while getting a shot or blood test. I brought a book with me to read to pass the long waiting time in the accurately named waiting room. I never ever asked questions or argued with my mother as she screamed at me in the car on the way to medical hell.
And....drum roll please....it worked! It took about 2 months and about 3-4 appointments before she eased up on her medical sadism but she stopped. This was proof to me that I had been right about her being a sadist. Once the "joy" was gone, she stopped the excessive appointments, the school interruptions, the insistence on unneeded medical tests, the incredibly long waits, the car ride temper tantrums etc. I was delighted that I had actually found a solution for my doctor problems. I wonder how many mothers do this kind of thing and how many doctors are aware of it. Abusive parents are not exactly unknown and this is a form of abuse and should be known by mandated reporters, and people like doctors.
Of course, since my mother was, after all, the Wicked Witch of West Hollywood, it didn't totally improve my life. Mom was both intelligent and creative and she just continued to find some brand net ways to make me miserable and enjoy it thoroughly. But I felt I now had at least some insight into how to get her to ease up on her sadism. Of course, by the time I'd hit my teens, she'd figured out how to break me down by being twice as mean and more violent. It's hard not to react to, say, having your bones broken. And her threats of torture became more detailed and horrifying than they had in my childhood midnight drug/hypnosis interrogations (see Featured story here for details). And I knew her threats were not empty threats; I knew she could and would carry them out if I tried to ignore her. So eventually, my stay-cool scheme stopped working. But it had erased one bad part of my pre-teen childhood and it helped a lot at that time.
Now I don't fear needles much any more and I do get any needed medical and dental care. But medical facilities still cast an evil spell on me at times and I suspect that when I do get bad medical care, as I did a few years ago before finding my present very good doctor, it has twice the bad effect on me mentally as it does on most people.
My mother took me to doctors far more frequently than would've been normal. I knew I was a basically healthy kid yet I went to doctors a lot, maybe every 2-3 weeks. I knew other kids didn't go that often.And I always seemed to be getting an injection for some reason and I was afraid of needles.
My mother was very unsympathetic and seemed to do everything she could to make it harder for me. For one thing, she would never tell me anything about why I had to go there when I was well. If I asked her, she would snap at me and refuse to tell me. Also, often she would cancel an appointment at the last minute (for no reason she'd tell me) and then reschedule it a short time later, thus giving me more of a chance to be nervous. Another of her ways of making me nervous was to scold me and yell at me in the car on the way there for no specific reason so by the time we got there, I was already in tears and a nervous wreck.
If the doctor told her I didn't have some disease she suspected, she wouldn't "believe" him and she'd insist on a laboratory test. I hated these tests because they were usually invasive and painful; I especially hated blood tests which always made me feel like I was going to faint. But I knew I would be in for yet another screaming session if I did. Crying or fainting was definitely out of the question. So I would take long deep breathes as we headed down into the bleak cement prison-like basement where the lab was located. It didn't help that the lab technician was irritable and not very patient or sympathetic. He found nervous girls like me annoying. I dreaded these tests and all the more because I knew I didn't really need them. The doctors would tell her something like, "It's nothing to worry about. She's fine. There is about a one in a million chance she has this disease." And my mother would answer, "But I would feel so much better if I could know for SURE." She'd throw a little Actor's Studio into it and add in a phony sentimental voice, "You know how mothers are..." And to my disgust and anger, the doctor might argue but he'd always cave in and say, "Well, OK, if it will make you feel better, I can arrange it." And there we'd be heading to that grim basement lab once again with my mother alternating shooting me stern looks with a small satisfied smile on her face. I developed little trust for doctors who seemed to care about my mother's irrational feelings more than they cared about me, the patient. Wasn't I the one who was supposed to "feel better"?
Whatever treatment or test I got, especially if it involved a needle or other pain, my mother would insist on being in the room with me, no matter how personal it was. I hated this because she was never comforting about it but just seemed to enjoy watching me. I felt violated and it made me angry and I knew I would only make things worse if I complained about it.
The evil psychotherapist my mother sent me to called me a "sissie" and ridiculed me telling me I was immature and a "brat." At school, my mother kept telling the teachers and kids that I was a very sickly and delicate child with a lot of health problems, which made me different and a target for teasing and bullying. I used to wonder why she couldn't take me to doctors after school like other kids but she always seemed to make the appointments during school time. So her arrival to pick me up always happened during class time and I stood out as she interrupted the class to take me out of it.
The time in the doctor's waiting room was another factor adding to my fear and discomfort. If I knew I was going to have to get a shot (or strongly suspected it since she'd never actually tell me), I would have to wait a long time. Usually from 45 minutes to an hour or so. That gave me time to build up more fear. When I would ask my mother,"WHY are we waiting so long? It's been almost an hour!" She would turn and glare at me and say in a loud stern carefully enunciated tone, 'WE. HAVE. TO. WAIT!" And then I was expected to shut up and wait some more. Any questions made her angry.
I suppose that what lost me trust in doctors was the way they always did whatever my mother wanted them to do, as if they had very little medical judgment of their own.
Eventually, around the age of 9, I actually found a way to stop my mother from the doctor torture.
First, I had to become mature enough to see and admit to myself, that my mother was not only the Wicked Witch of West Hollywood, but an outright sadist, someone who fully enjoyed making me miserable. It was difficult and scary for me to admit this to myself. But I thought about the school bully who also tormented me. I knew that the more I minded it, the more I reacted, the more she, the bully, would repeat the same action; it worked well and made her feel powerful. I began to wonder if my mother would get more out of it if I reacted, and maybe the cure for it would be to stop reacting. So I made a very strong effort to not react in any way to what bothered me the most. I just stuck with a bland and polite affect, no complaints, no questions, no crying, no nothing reactive to the situation. I learned to fix my imagination very firmly on something else, something happy and pleasant, while getting a shot or blood test. I brought a book with me to read to pass the long waiting time in the accurately named waiting room. I never ever asked questions or argued with my mother as she screamed at me in the car on the way to medical hell.
And....drum roll please....it worked! It took about 2 months and about 3-4 appointments before she eased up on her medical sadism but she stopped. This was proof to me that I had been right about her being a sadist. Once the "joy" was gone, she stopped the excessive appointments, the school interruptions, the insistence on unneeded medical tests, the incredibly long waits, the car ride temper tantrums etc. I was delighted that I had actually found a solution for my doctor problems. I wonder how many mothers do this kind of thing and how many doctors are aware of it. Abusive parents are not exactly unknown and this is a form of abuse and should be known by mandated reporters, and people like doctors.
Of course, since my mother was, after all, the Wicked Witch of West Hollywood, it didn't totally improve my life. Mom was both intelligent and creative and she just continued to find some brand net ways to make me miserable and enjoy it thoroughly. But I felt I now had at least some insight into how to get her to ease up on her sadism. Of course, by the time I'd hit my teens, she'd figured out how to break me down by being twice as mean and more violent. It's hard not to react to, say, having your bones broken. And her threats of torture became more detailed and horrifying than they had in my childhood midnight drug/hypnosis interrogations (see Featured story here for details). And I knew her threats were not empty threats; I knew she could and would carry them out if I tried to ignore her. So eventually, my stay-cool scheme stopped working. But it had erased one bad part of my pre-teen childhood and it helped a lot at that time.
Now I don't fear needles much any more and I do get any needed medical and dental care. But medical facilities still cast an evil spell on me at times and I suspect that when I do get bad medical care, as I did a few years ago before finding my present very good doctor, it has twice the bad effect on me mentally as it does on most people.
70-79, F
