by Kathrin Brändlin
A gifted boy in my group would – at even the slightest injury – experience extreme panic and could hardly be calmed down. I talked to his mother and found out that he was afraid of bleeding to death. He imagined that, as happens with an open and tilted bottle, even the slightest scratch of his skin might result in his blood spilling out of his body entirely.
I brought up the issue of blood coagulation with him. We talked about how it works and how dangerous certain injuries are. We also discussed cases in which blood coagulation did not take effect (hemophelia – not contagious, use of anticoagulants). This helped him a lot, since now he would be able to estimate the danger of his injuries more realistically.
With this I want to show that sometimes there is more behind a certain behaviour or utterance than seen at first glance. I could have thought the boy overly timid. I could have thought, he simply gets sick at the sight of blood.
In reality he was simply concerned about a very serious and frightening question which he could not have answered by himself.
Date of publication in German: November 10 th
Translation: Arno Zucknick
Copyright © Hanna Vock 2009, see Imprint.