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Injection anxiety

I have done fourteen and it is still hard

Started 9 February 2025 · 14 replies · 135 hearts · read 2.3k times

CatoAntwerp, BE · 9 February 2025
1.4 years ago

A question rather than an update: I have done fourteen and it is still hard

I have avoided asking about this for six weeks out of pure embarrassment.

The physical part is manageable. What is wearing me down is the constant low-level monitoring of it, and I would like to stop doing that.

Something is going on and I would like to know whether other people have had it, mostly so I know whether to raise it or wait it out.

My pharmacist has been helpful and my question has now outgrown what she can answer at a counter, so I am asking here while I wait for an appointment.

The number in the title is the actual number: fourteen, not a round figure I reached for because it sounded about right.

Not after remedies particularly. Mostly I want to know whether this is ordinary and how long it went on for.

45

NadirCasablanca, MA
#1

I looked away for the first six months and then one day watched, and it was so much less than my imagination had been supplying.

9

IslaOban, UK
#2

The anticipation faded for me at around week ten. Not gradually — I just noticed one week that I had done it without the preceding hour of dread.

14

BrackAlnwick, UK
#3

Building on what Isla wrote rather than answering the original question.

My partner did the first several. That is a completely legitimate arrangement and it is not a permanent one unless you want it to be.

6

IvesPenzance, UK
#5

I set a timer for two minutes, sat down, and told myself I only had to do it when the timer went. Ninety per cent of the time I did it before the timer.

8

OmarAmman, JO
#6

Coming back to what Esi wrote further up, because it is the bit I keep thinking about.

What I would say is that the anxiety is not a sign you should not be doing this. It is a very common response to a genuinely unusual thing to ask of yourself.

6me too 7

Ozzy GWalsall, UK
#7

Talking to my prescriber about the anxiety specifically, rather than about the medication, opened up a conversation I did not know was available.

7

SableCape Town, ZA
#8

Mine got much worse for a fortnight after one that stung, and then went back to baseline. One bad experience can reset the whole thing temporarily.

10

NylaNairobi, KE
#9

What worked was doing it at the same moment every week rather than at a convenient moment. Deciding when was where the dread lived.

8me too 4

TedIpswich, UK
#10

Sable said something I want to sit with for a second.

The bathroom floor is a legitimate venue and I would like that on the record for anybody who thinks they are the only one.

6

ZoëHackney, UK
#11

Picking up Ted’s point rather than starting a new one.

Something that helped: I stopped calling it an injection in my own head. Silly, and it took a surprising amount of weight out of the word.

8

SaraOslo, NO
#12

I still do not enjoy it, two years in. I do it in about forty seconds without thinking, and I do not enjoy it, and both of those are true.

10

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada
#13

Gently noticing that we have drifted from the symptom that was asked about to a different symptom that two of us have. Let us come back to the person who opened the thread.

13

DelythBala, UK
#14

Sara, thank you for that. It gives me somewhere to start from.

Somebody here suggested breathing out during rather than holding my breath, and it changed the physical experience noticeably. Very small thing.

9