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Needle phobia

Eight weeks from the box to the first dose

Started 14 October 2025 · 15 replies · 129 hearts · read 1.5k times

BassCoventry, UK · 14 October 2025
9 months ago

Starting a thread on this because it keeps coming up in ones and twos: Eight weeks from the box to the first dose

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

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.

Before anyone says it: yes, I have an appointment booked. I would still like to hear from people who have had this, because I would rather go in able to describe it properly.

I want to describe this accurately rather than politely, because the polite version is what I said at my last appointment and it got me nowhere.

I have checked my notes before posting, so eight weeks is accurate rather than the impression I had been carrying around.

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

43

PietPretoria, ZA
#1

Nobody in this circle is going to tell you it is only a small needle. That sentence has never helped anybody with an actual phobia.

9

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada
#2

Slowing this down for a moment. The question asked was whether this is ordinary. That is not the same as asking what to do about it and we have answered the second one.

12

Ollie OPeterhead, UK
#3

I practised with the pen without doing anything, several times a day, for two weeks. Getting used to holding it was a real step and I nearly skipped it.

7me too 6

BramwellRipon, UK
#4

Ollie O — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.

Mine came from a childhood hospital experience I had not connected to any of this until a therapist asked, and that connection was most of the work.

10

DelythBala, UK
#5

What I would say is that this is not the same as squeamishness and you do not need to justify it as more than that.

5

Bryn MNeath, UK
#6

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

Graded exposure over about three months got me there. Slowly, in small steps, with somebody who knew what they were doing, and none of it was dramatic.

9

WinkleWeymouth, UK
#7

I could not be in the room with the box for the first fortnight. That is where I started and I now do this weekly without difficulty.

6

TaaviTallinn, EE
#8

My GP took it seriously the moment I described the fainting rather than the fear. The physical detail was what got me the referral.

10me too 2

PerrineStrasbourg, FR
#9

Talking about it here was the first time I had said it out loud to anybody who did not immediately try to talk me out of it.

5

BessLouth, UK
#10

Mine is still there. I have a set of things I do that make it manageable, and the fear itself has not gone, and that is an honest description of where I am.

9me too 1

BronLincoln, UK
#11

This is the honest version, and the honest version is harder to write.

10

IslaOban, UK
#12

A phobia is a different thing from being nervous, and I spent a year being told to just get on with it before somebody used the right word for what I had.

6me too 6

TavitaApia, WS
#13

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

I keep a small written plan of my own steps and I still read it sometimes, eighteen months in. It costs me nothing and it steadies me.

10

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada
#14

I am going to gently push back on the drift towards reassurance. The person who asked described something specific and deserves an accurate answer rather than a comfortable one.

12

PietPretoria, ZA
#15

What changed it was doing it at the same time every week with the same person present, for about ten weeks. Repetition with safety, rather than repetition alone.

9me too 2