Doing it at work in a locked room

Started 5 February 2025 · 16 replies · 154 hearts · read 1.7k times

CatoAntwerp, BE · 5 February 2025

1.5 years ago

A question rather than an update: Doing it at work in a locked room

Squeamish subject, so I am going to be plain about it and get it over with.

What I cannot tell is whether this is the ordinary tax or the sort of thing that needs somebody today, and that distinction is the whole of my question.

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.

I will come back and say what my appointment produced, because I hate reading threads that stop before the answer.

IslaOban, UK

I was three days late twice because I could not face it, and I want to say that here because I felt like the only person that had ever happened to.

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada

Thank you all. Somebody arriving embarrassed and being answered without a trace of it is the whole reason this circle is worded the way it is, and it takes everybody to keep it that way.

SaraOslo, NO

What helped was letting it be a big deal at first rather than insisting it was not. Pretending it was nothing made it worse for about two months.

BrodyDunfermline, UK

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

Cold hands made mine worse. Warming up for a minute beforehand genuinely changed the experience and I found that out by accident.

9me too 4

OttaviaBologna, IT

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.

ZoëHackney, UK

Reading Sara, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

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.

TedIpswich, UK

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.

DelythBala, UK

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.

BrackAlnwick, UK

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.

4me too 4

OmarAmman, JO

#10

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.

PerrineStrasbourg, FR

#11

Counting down out loud sounds silly and was the only thing that stopped me hovering. Three, two, one, done, and the hovering was where all the fear lived.

NadirCasablanca, MA

#12

The dread built through the day and peaked about an hour before, so I moved mine to first thing in the morning and cut the anticipation to ten minutes.

6me too 6

NylaNairobi, KE

#13

My nurse talked me through the first one on the phone and stayed on the line, and I have never been more grateful for nine minutes of somebody's time.

Ozzy GWalsall, UK

#14

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

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.

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada

#15

Facilitator note: if any of this has landed close to home while you were reading, our support resources page lists the kinds of service worth finding.

TabbyMargate, UK

#16

Not a solution, just company.