How I explained this to a sceptical clinician

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.

Applied tension helped my fainting more than anything else. It was taught to me properly, it is a specific technique, and it is worth asking about by name.

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.

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

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.

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.

Bookmarking this. Thank you.

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.

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.

You have said something a lot of us have not managed to. Thank you.

I worked with someone for six sessions, specifically on this, and it was the best thing I did that year. It is a treatable thing and it does not have to be endured.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Mine improved and then regressed during a very stressful autumn, and I had to accept that it is not a linear thing and I had not failed.

I would say to anybody starting: tell your prescriber the actual word. I described mine as being a bit nervous and got advice for being a bit nervous.

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

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.