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Needle phobia

A year on and it is a Tuesday chore

Started 21 September 2024 · 20 replies · 248 hearts · read 5k times

Bryn MNeath, UK · 21 September 2024
1.8 years ago

A year on and it is a Tuesday chore Writing it down partly to work out what I actually think.

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

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.

I would like to hear timescales more than remedies. Knowing how long other people's lasted would turn this from an open-ended thing into a bounded one.

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

83

DelythBala, UK
#1

Lying down changed everything for me. My nurse suggested it in about ten seconds and it solved a problem I had had for twenty years.

6

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada
#2

I am going to steer us away from comparing severity. It has crept in over the last few replies and it does not help anybody who is currently in it.

20

BronLincoln, UK
#3

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

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.

16me too 1

BramwellRipon, UK
#4

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.

12

BessLouth, UK
#5

Gently disagreeing with Bron, or rather adding the other half of it.

I found the anticipation ran for two days beforehand, which meant a weekly thing was taking up two sevenths of my life. Reducing the anticipation was the whole project.

15

Ollie OPeterhead, UK
#6

What helped was having a plan for if it went wrong. Knowing what I would do if I fainted meant I stopped being frightened of fainting.

10

TaaviTallinn, EE
#7

A specific technique taught by somebody trained is worth ten pieces of general advice from anybody, including me.

13

BassCoventry, UK
#8

What Ollie O described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

My partner learned to do it, which I resisted because I felt it was my responsibility, and which was the right answer for about eight months.

11me too 4

TavitaApia, WS
#9

This is the post I wish had existed when I was looking for it.

8me too 7

PietPretoria, ZA
#10

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.

13

HéloïseGeneva, CH
#11

Here, reading, and glad you posted.

10

WinkleWeymouth, UK
#12

Mine has a fainting response attached, which meant the advice aimed at anxiety did not work at all. Lying down first was what changed it.

14

PerrineStrasbourg, FR
#13

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.

12

Bryn MNeath, UK
#14

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.

6

DelythBala, UK
#15

Please do not let anybody, clinical or otherwise, make you feel unreasonable about this. Mine was dismissed twice before it was taken seriously and the delay cost me a year.

11

IslaOban, UK
#16

Gently disagreeing with Delyth, or rather adding the other half of it.

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.

11

BronLincoln, UK
#17

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

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.

8me too 1

BramwellRipon, UK
#18

Coming back to say I did it alone, calmly, last Tuesday, and then sat down and cried a bit. Both parts are the update.

13

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada
#19

Holding a boundary: we do not swap remedies in this circle as though they were prescriptions. Describing what happened to you is welcome; telling somebody what to take is not.

28

Ollie OPeterhead, UK
#20

Quietly agreeing from the other side of the country.

11