Strange psychology thing with my training partner..

Hi guys,
My training partner has been away for a while and just got back so I can start again

I have been teaching him because I have experience and training and he hasn't trained much in the past.

Anyway, i've come across a strange thing that would only be his downfall if he really had to protect himself. He has a real problem with blood. There was a little bit of blood on tv last night and he was going "ahh' and looking away.. but the real story is when he had a blood test and he actually passed out and wet himself and then woke up not know what had happened.

I assume it may be from something that has happened in his past, I don't really know. But what I do know, this is a really BAD thing for self protection.. i've had several times in my line of work (not really doing it anymore though) where i've had to deal with blood and had it all up my arms from dealing with a brawl. If that happened to my friend he would be out cold just from seeing the blood even if from nothing else..

So i'm most interested in Richies response because of all his psychology work, but maybe other guys have dealt with it before also?

Any ideas how to help this?? Even if we get the physical part of training right this would be a big problem that would possibly negate all that.

-Ben

I'll jump in...

I used to start to pass out at the sight of blood or gore myself when I was a kid and in my teens. If I was channel surfing the TV and came across one of those lovely 'get the camera inside the patient on the operating room table' shows I'd immediately start to black out.

I really don't know when it stopped but I must have grown out of it as it's been a good ten years since it's happened. I suspect your training partner may be young(ish) ?

Oh yeah.

Breast Augmentation Ops always get me. Put me right off having it done.

seriously, those boob job ops are rough arent they? I thought it would be all delicate but they really dig around in there, nasty, another reason to hate fake boobs.... other than that they look ridiculous and feel minging

sounds like your partner has a striaght up phobia, get him to a decent NLP /hypnotherapy/ phobia cure specialist and some good headway should be made quite quickly

blood doesnt bother me, but if I see broken arm/ legs....

Richard Grannon wrote:

seriously, those boob job ops are rough arent they? I thought it would be all delicate but they really dig around in there, nasty, another reason to hate fake boobs.... other than that they look ridiculous and feel minging

sounds like your partner has a striaght up phobia, get him to a decent NLP /hypnotherapy/ phobia cure specialist and some good headway should be made quite quickly

blood doesnt bother me, but if I see broken arm/ legs....

I'm having a hard time not posting that clip of the MMA fight where the guy breaks his leg

sorry Richie, I know I'm a bugger, I'll behave

lol!, that is one of the worst... where his leg breaks and wraps around the other guys leg? yeah it makes me twitch

Richard Grannon wrote:

lol!, that is one of the worst... where his leg breaks and wraps around the other guys leg? yeah it makes me twitch

sorry what




in all seriousness, that was gross as f'k, that's my sicky-factor too. i always forget about
blood for other people. one of my students had his had open up and he's a bit of an OCD
guy--so he just kept going. good for him i thought, when it was time for the next person
up, the remaining 8 or so looked horified. i flipped the pad, but folks were still approaching
like it was ebola, gross, etc...

but when a student walks up with a finger slightly bent--sideways or whatever, the sort of
thing that can be set and splinted...i turn into this stuttering "guh guh guh" person, so i don't
talk and motion them to the nurse, trying to appear nonchallent. several words like,
you just need a splint [burp], then it's back to silence.

Years ago, back in 1988(yes I'm that old), when I went through the police academy we were in a first aid class and the instructor showed us an emergency child birthing class. We had a 6'2" 200lbs cadet get lightheaded when they showed the baby "crowning". The next thing you know he passed out and hit his head on the neighboring desk. The guy at the offending desk exclaims "Oh Shit" and jumps up.

After that when we got to the CPR segment when the instructor asked us what the first thing to do upon discovering the scene, we as a class, all exclaimed "Oh Shit".

The interesting thing was later the guy who passed out later went on to become an EMT as well, so you can overcome this..Seems to me that Jim Wagner (fraud that he is) had some interesting training ideas. This included the use of theatrical blood in knife training as a way to help experience the difficulties of securing the weapon bearing arm after someones been cut. Something to think about?

One last story about how this can be situational. I am not a huge fan of blood, but I do deal with it on the job. One night I was the second officer on the scene of a very bad auto accident. The first officer on the scene was a rookie and as I approached he came back to me looking very pale. The operator of the vehicle was pinned in the vehicle but very much awake and needed calming, but the rookie asked me to take over because it ws "creeping him out" so I walked up and proceeded to have a 15 minute conversation with a man missing part of his skull allowing me to see his brain during the conversation.

So if you concentrate on taking care of what needs done you can often deal with these issues and yes it was creepy.

Keep safe and train hard, Mark H