Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is distancing himself from his anti-vaccine work as he seeks to become the leader of the nation’s top health agency under President Donald Trump, according to government ethics documents released Wednesday.
Kennedy has pulled in roughly $10 million in income from his work over the past year, which includes speaking fees, leading an anti-vaccine nonprofit and legal fees, government ethics forms filed for his nomination show. He has millions of dollars more tied up in investments and other assets.
If confirmed, he has promised to stop collecting fees on some of his vaccine lawsuits involving the U.S. government.
The idea of pain doesn’t really factor into my issue with needles, I’m not worried about it hurting, I’m just skeeved out by the needle itself.
If it were an option I’d gladly take needle-less vaccines and blood draws that hurt 10× worse (which still wouldn’t be that bad, needles really don’t hurt much)
Hell, if they hurt more I’d probably have less of an issue with them. I’d rather have an actual reason to dislike them instead of just a random case of the heebie-jeebies for no particular reason.
You bring up a good point. I ultimately oversimplified my post to illustrate the point which upon reflection was probably not the best idea
Your presentation is not uncommon at all. It is totally a thing to fear the needle and not fear the pain. Ultimately the strategies remain the same (which is why I kind of glossed over this but it was still a bad idea to do so, my bad)
In addition to desensitization you can also try diversion in the short term. Create sensations in other areas of your body to divert your focus away from the needle. Put an ice pack on your thigh or something similar that’s not harmful but mildly uncomfortable to pull focus. Similarly you can just go with good old distractions if possible like watching a video while looking away. This isn’t the best strategy, especially long term because in some cases it can worsen the stimulus you’re anxious about, but in a pinch it can be helpful. And of course if your phobia is trauma related processing said trauma is helpful (although that in and of itself is often a desensitization process fyi)