Without doing therapy via forum (I am a therapist)... you and your husband can do a technique called desensitization together to reduce your "phobic" response.

In short, it involves exposing yourself to various intensities of a stimuli (blood) while being coached by a partner to reduce anxiety. A brief example would be a half hour of thinking about blood while your husband coaches breathing, relaxation techniques, etc. until you experience no anxiety at the thought of blood. Next would come 30 min. sessions looking at a picture of vials of blood. You might progressively increase exposure to the stimuli until you are able to, for instance, sit in a Red Cross clinic with little or no anxiety while others give blood.

Now, this is best done in a very regimented, manualized fashion by a trained professional but you can achieve a similar affect by doing a self-directed approximation. Either way, it's important that you are able to successfully control your anxiety response (the neg. symptoms you've described) at a low level of exposure before moving to the next. This may take 10-20 sessions at one level, so it's hard work.

It seems to me, though, that even though it bothers you a great deal, it doesn't inhibit your day-to-day functioning. If this is accurate, then it can't be considered disordered in a clinical sense, which points to your existing ability to cope somewhat effectively. In other words, you may be a normal person that's just really freaked out by blood.

Of course another therapeutic technique you could try is flooding. It would be more work but would take less time, so it's actually a pretty popular option. Unfortunately, it would involve you "flooding" yourself with stimuli by doing something like sticking your hands in a tub of blood.

Upon reading that statement, I feel it's probably necessary to follow with...

<calm voice> Take a slow, deep breath in through your nose and then breathe out while saying "calm." Feel the stress and tension leave your body... </calm voice>

Jon Priest, MS, Licensed Psychological Examiner
(so you don't think I'm a quack <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />)