The other day, I started rambling to my long-suffering husband about childhood stories. I was talking about how blood, flesh, and dead creatures have always grossed me out in a big way. It seemed to me this could be related to being highly sensitive. If not, then hopefully it’s at least entertaining.
Story Time!
When I was in 5th grade, we were shown a cow lung in class. The entire class crowded around a long table as the teacher showed air expanding the lungs. I remember thinking it was interesting.
Someone looked at me and said, “Are you ok? You are white as a ghost.”
I remember thinking that I felt totally fine….what were they talking about? They said, “Why don’t you go sit down.” And it was at that second that I felt it. I went back to my desk and put my head down. My ears were ringing and felt burning hot, I felt nauseous, dizzy, and weak, and saw blackness. (Textbook vasovagel response.) I was also embarrassed, because no one else had a problem but me.
In middle school, we learned how to classify insects into their genus or species or whatever. We had to go out and capture bugs using nets, kill them, then stick pins through their thorax and display them in cases. (Sounds barbaric, doesn’t it?) The idea of sticking a pin through a dead insect disgusted me beyond belief. I spent weeks convincing classmates to do the pinning for me. I’d say, “Can you show me how to do this?” I got all my pinning done this way. One day, I was determined to pin a bug myself. It was a grasshopper–I remember. I shakily held the pin over the dead bug, identified the exact spot to pin it, and hesitated. I didn’t want to do it. It was so gross! I waited and waited, trying to talk myself into it, and finally I gently pushed the pin in AND ITS HEAD POPPED OFF.
nope nope nopity nope!
Lastly, in high school biology, we had to dissect fetal pigs. Some kids got out of it because they felt sick from the smell of the formaldehyde. Sadly, I was ok. We had to choose a lab partner, so I purposely teamed up with a guy with the explicit understanding that he would do ALL the dissecting if I did all the worksheets and wrote the reports. This arrangement worked well. I don’t think I set eyes on the pig once. I’m actually impressed by that feat, even now.
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I listened to a Radiolab episode the other day where they explained how, after heart surgery, this woman could hear her own heart beating all the time. They played the soundtrack of a heartbeat while she told her story–how her super powerful, loud heartbeat distracted her all the time, generally making her life difficult.
However, the craziest thing is this: At the end of her story, the Radiolab folks reported that a few people in their live audience had passed out and vomited from hearing her tale.
They interviewed one of the audience members who felt faint and nauseous. This person said that hearing this story of the ever-present and loud heartbeat made her feel like the thing that was giving life was also the thing causing torment. The woman with the loud heart was trapped, there was no way she could escape this loud beating sound–it was a constant reminder of her life. And that made people queasy.
A scientist Radiolab interviewed explained why some of us feel gross when we see blood and guts. She said: It could be a leftover from evolutionary times–if you faint, a passing hungry lion might leave you alone because you look dead. Or, if your blood pressure drops (you feel faint) and a lion attacks you, there’s less chance you will bleed out since there’s less blood in your extremities.
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Why am I talking about this?
In this post, I’ve talked about how dead pigs, a cow’s lung, and sticking pins through insects made me feel nauseous, dreadful, and faint.
I have always seemed to be more sensitive to blood and gore than most people. I’m not saying this is definitely related to being highly sensitive (I can’t prove it), but I think it is.
So, why do some people have these reactions when others don’t?
I did some research and found lots of interesting answers. I’m not a scientist or doctor, so I’m not the best person to explain them intelligently. But here is one great explanation I found on reddit:
There is a nerve called the vagus nerve, think of it as the “brakes” of the heart. For unknown reasons, some people have a sudden activation of their vagus nerve when they see blood, needles or gore.
Oddly enough; blood, gore and needles for some people causes the parasympathetic nervous system to take over, causing a polar opposite response from that of a normal “anxiety” type reaction.
When the parasympathetic nervous system is activated in this case, the vagus nerve is abruptly activated, causing blood pressure and heart rate to drop. This decrease in blood flow deprives the brain of blood and oxygen, causing a loss of consciousness.
Kelly, I defiantly have a strong reaction to blood and guts than others and it cracked me up when you talked about dissecting fetal pigs in high school because I also went through the same traumatic experience in high school. I, also like you, roped a guy into doing all the work because even though I put a glob of Vix under my nose every time I looked at that pig I got really nauseous and dizzy. It didn’t help much either that the guy doing the work kept calling our specimen “Wilber”.
Another story did not happen to me personally, but is so horrifying that I will never forget it. My friend was told that if he got an A at the end of the semester in his Forensics class that his Professor would take him and the other A students to see the autopsy of a real cadaver. Creepy right? Well, he and three other girls got A’s and was watching the autopsy. The specimen was on a table about knee length with its abdomen open when one of the girls started to sway and then… Splat! Feel face first into the open abdomen of the cadaver!! They got her out quickly and she was ok, but now I know never to take Forensics. Ever.
Whoops! I meant fell not feel. Sorry. 🙂
Oh my goodness!! If that happened to me, I would never ever ever ever be able to stop replaying it in my head. Pretty sure I’d need therapy.
That’s funny that you also got a guy to do the work in your biology class! ha ha! I was so surprised that almost none of the other kids seemed bothered by it like I did!
LOL! I shouldn’t be laughing, but this brought back my lovely memories of the same fetal pig ordeal. I actually refused to dissect mine. My biology teacher told me that if I didn’t do it, he was going to fail me. I said, “Fine, fail me then, I am NOT doing it”. I sat in the front of the classroom while all the other students did their deed. Just seeing the baby pigs made me sick to my stomach. Thank goodness, I had a very understanding teacher. I passed Biology with an “A” and he never mentioned it that fetal pig day on my report card. I could barely stand the grasshopper day. A lot of the kids laughed at me, saying “the pigs are dead, so what’s the big deal?”. It didn’t matter. I was not going to have any part of it. I’m 43yrs old and the thought STILL makes me sick to my stomach. I love being highly sensitive, it is who I am. I couldn’t imagine being anything else.
Oh my god your post has just answered why I have these episodes when I see or hear about blood , I wondered for the longest time if I got something serious so your post gave me relief, thank you
I had a similar experience in 5th grade except with a sheep heart and I went to the bathroom and almost didn’t make it there cause that black out part started happening before I got to the bathroom , thankfully made in into the bathroom …. Over the years I’ve prob experienced this 30 times sense then😝
I consider myself to be a HSP and I’ve always been sensitive to blood and guts also. I definitely think there might be a connection between the two. Luckily I never had to do any graphic dissections in high school, but I had to dissect a frog in college Biology. Fortunately for me, I took the course over the summer (online) to get a head start on the next semester. The awesome thing was that I found a way to complete the lab assignment without actually performing the dissection. With my good friends Google and Wikipedia, I was able to find some diagrams online to successfully identify each of the frog’s inner parts. While I still had to look at them for a short time, it saved me from having to touch and smell the specimen. Additionally, it saved me a lot of unnecessary guilt from killing an innocent little frog. Hooray!
The only time I’ve ever actually fainted (or so I think I did) was one day at the doctor’s office. The nurse was giving me a shot and I blacked out temporarily. Apparently she was asking me if I was okay, and I didn’t respond. Luckily I didn’t fall over and I gained consciousness within a few seconds.
Hi Tyler! I also once passed out from a shot–well, giving a blood sample. I had to give a sample twice in one day after fasting and I was leaning against a wall and I just slowly slid down the wall. Ha ha. My mom was there and still tells the story about how I slid down.
We HSPs are nothing if not resourceful! Thank goodness for google 🙂 🙂 I love that you stood up to the teacher and refused to dissect!
I was the same way too. Not so much about blood though-I mean, I don’t get bothered when the techs take my blood. I actually like to see everything they are doing. In High School, we had to dissect a frog. I was like you “no no no!”. Let me back up. Earlier that same year, we were each *supposed to* take our blood and put it on slides, etc…No one wanted to do that in my group! So I gave my blood for everyone. Later in the year, when it came time to dissect the frog-me-lil ol’ nervous, shy, anxious me-went to the teacher and said “I think I should be able to get out of dissecting the frog because I’ll have you know, I gave MY blood for the whole group!” He tried not to laugh, but I saw him smile, then he said “Ok, it’s a deal”. I was so happy! I am also an HSP and absolutely cannot watch anything violent, gruesome, gory, medical related, etc…Nor could I ever be a Dr. or a nurse because of all the things they have to do.
It’s not just the “blood and guts” thing that upsets me. It’s the killing of animals and hurting things that devastates me. I seem to almost feel the horror and pain and suffering of the poor animals/insects, etc.
I can’t watch violence on tv because I get terribly upset. All these things can cause horrific nightmares. My friends get disgusted with me for not like movies, especially intense ones or horror movies. Why do something that causes such distress, just because someone else enjoys it? It is very difficult to explain.
I can’t watch needles being put into myself or anyone else, even when it’s just the tech drawing blood and it doesn’t hurt.
I find your web site and pod casts very inspiring and, as I am able to empathize with so much of what you say and write, very moving, as well.
I find that as I age (I am now in my late 40s) I am becoming more sensitive to gratuitous acts of violence and the usually macabre details that so often accompany such acts. There are authors whom I have read and enjoyed but whose writing I can no longer stomach because of the gruesome and gory details that accompany their stories. The author that first comes to mind as an exemplary example would be Jeffrey Deaver who has written the Lincoln Rhyme detective/mystery series. For those same reasons I have stopped watching television news, listening to news on the radio or regularly reading news either online or otherwise. On unusual or rare occasions I will visit a national or local news website but I usually end up leaving because imagining the details of so much violence (which, it seems, is just about all that is “newsworthy” any longer) is simply too disturbing. What really annoys me is when someone says, “Oh, I know you don’t watch television but did you see about that guy who killed all those people…” Sometimes I feel like telling them that there is a GOOD REASON why I don’t watch, read or listen to the news and that if what they experience when they watch, read or listen to it is so disturbing that they actually have to share it with others to cope then maybe they’d be better off skipping it, too!
I totally agree with you on the news thing. I can’t turn off the Radio or tv as fast as they are counting deaths. I think news should be rated r16 AT least. And when I Tell people that I really don’t want to hear it I am being called irgnorant and that I wouldnt care about the World.Which I actually really do. I had so many discussions about this. So, thanks for charing.
Ohhh, YES…! Fortunately the UK high school syllabus seems to have a lot less dissecting than the US one – but after a traumatic experience dissecting a squirrel’s eyeball when I was 10 (the teacher, while well intentioned, was under the impression it was a treat for me as the oldest in the class to do this), when I got to secondary school I just flatly refused to do anything that involved dissection. (I was otherwise an exemplary student but I wasn’t budging on this one!) I read textbooks in the corridor instead, because I couldn’t be in the same room as people cutting up animals with knives – the smell, the sight and the general idea of it freaked me out way too much.
Squirrel eyeball??!?!? EWWWWWW. I wish I had the nerve to stand up and simply say NO like you did! I wonder if kids nowadays still have to do dissection in regular classes? Thanks for sharing, Carla! 🙂
Omg the more I read your blog the more I can relate. To me hospital smells make me extremely nauseous seeing sick people makes me sick and hearing what they feel or have makes me very sick. It is extremely hard one time I passed out from hearing how they extracted a molar from a family member, they were very explicit in their language and I just completely passed out !!! It seems to sffect me more to see people sick or hear other people sickness than to be sick myself or hurt. Does anyone feel the same way?
You aren’t alone! As you can see in the post, I am quite easily grossed out by stuff. I have a very hard time hearing people talk about surgeries or injuries. That’s just how we are!
Kelly
Thank you so much it makes me feel not so alone and strange. Since I’ve always been the odd one in my large Mexican family 🙂
Wow, I’m going to do some more research on the Vagus nerve now that you mention it. All my life, I’ve been sensitive to needles, blood, gore, etc. Even getting ears pierced or watching my daughter get her ears pierced gave me a reaction. I get very light-headed, white as a ghost (except my ears. I think they are bright red. Weird, I know) and I have passed out on occasion too. My first experience was when I was a teen and I had a small mole removal done. I remember looking at the wound in the dressing room, and by the time we had gotten to the elevator, I had passed out. Getting tattoos, getting blood drawn, shots. All of those things do something to me. I have just learned to deal with it, and give people a warning that I’m uber sensitive to it, but it sucks. And it’s not just things that happen to me. I almost passed out when my mom had an epidural, when my husband got stitches. All of those things do it to me too. Glad I’m not alone.
It’s weird, I get more grossed out when things are happening to other people instead of myself. Thanks for sharing, Cindy!! 🙂
I am exactly the same. I pass out if I don’t lie down when having blood taken. The saddest part is that I don’t feel health care workers/phlebotomists understand this problem in patients. It’s the understanding that I need to feel less anxious about it (HSP for 36 years).
Lady, I totally get you. It’s not just blood and guts though, it’s any type of violence. I am a 30 year old women, and have just accepted that I am not going to “grow out of” hiding my eyes and plugging ears when there is any type of violence, blood or gore shown on the news, TV, or movies.
It affects me so deeply, and the images linger with me for a long time. I had a boyfriend get stern with me one time when we were watching “Argo” and there’s a scene where it looks like a bunch of people are going to get killed, so I hid my eyes and plugged my ears. He said I was acting like his kid nieces and nephews and essentially told me to in so many words that I was acting infantile.
Boy, did he hear it from me after that. He eventually came along and realized that I’m really sensitive and he best deal or else 🙂
Haha, thanks Bethany! I also cover my eyes and plug my ears at disturbing stuff. In my mind, *other people* are weird for watching that stuff without feeling bothered!! I think when I was younger, I felt embarrassed about it, but as a grown-ass woman I don’t care what other people think anymore–thank goodness! I’m glad you were able to get your bf to understand!! 🙂