The countdown method that worked for me

What worked for me was a ritual. Same place, same order, same music, and about six weeks of that turned it from an event into a routine.

Brody, answering your question directly rather than going round the houses.

I did the first four in the bathroom sitting on the floor. There is no correct place and nobody is watching.

Brody, I have been where you are and I would rather say so than stay quiet.

Have you got anyone who can be in the room? It made an enormous difference to me and I felt ridiculous asking, and I would ask sooner if I could do it again.

Coming back to say that the dread went. Not immediately, not tidily, but it went, and I have not thought about it in over a year.

The two hours before were always worse than the thing itself, every single time, for about four months. Naming that pattern was the beginning of it getting better.

Mine is now genuinely uneventful and I remember very clearly that it was not, and I would not want anybody to think it was uneventful from the start.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Well said, and thank you for taking the time over it.

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.

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.