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Needle phobia

Thirty-one years of avoiding this and a fridge full of pens

Started 27 June 2025 · 7 replies · 338 hearts · read 3.6k times

TiernanOmagh, NI · 27 June 2025
about a year ago

Omagh. Quiet, watchful, occasionally hilarious, and none of those three are much help here.

I am forty-two. I have had two needles in my adult life, both under considerable duress, and I fainted for one of them and had to be walked to a chair for the other. It started with a dental injection when I was eleven that went badly and got talked about in my family for years afterwards as a funny story, which it was not.

I have avoided it successfully for three decades. That sounds like a failure and for a long time it was just a fact — you can get through an awful lot of life without a needle if you are willing to arrange things around it. What has changed is that I now have a condition somebody wants to treat with a weekly injection, and a prescription, and a small box in the fridge behind the butter that I look at every morning.

Things I have already done: told my GP, who was decent and did not laugh. Read every guide on this site twice. Watched about nine videos, which was a mistake and set me back a fortnight.

What I would like to know from people who have got past something this old. Not tips for the moment itself — I will get to that. What I want to know is whether it is possible to do it at all when the fear is thirty-one years old and has been reinforced every year since, or whether I am going to have to go and get proper help with the phobia first before the pen is even a question. I would rather know that now than find out in six months of standing in front of a fridge.

113

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada
#1

Tiernan, I am going to answer your actual question rather than reassure you, because you have asked it very precisely.

Yes, it is possible, and also: getting proper help with the phobia is not a detour and not an admission of anything. Those are not two alternative routes where one is braver. Several people in this circle did both, and a few found the pen came first and the phobia treatment afterwards, once they had the evidence that the world had not ended.

What I would say about a thirty-one year old fear specifically: the age of it matters less than how well fed it has been, and yours has been fed by a story your family found funny. That is worth knowing because a lot of what you are carrying is about the eleven-year-old and not about a needle.

The videos setting you back a fortnight is important and I would like other people to read it. Watching other people do it is not exposure, it is rehearsal of the fear without any of the safety.

Practical offer, no pressure: we can start with a call where the pen stays in the fridge and nobody does anything at all.

54me too 9

TaaviTallinn, EE
#2

Mine was twenty-six years and started with a school vaccination where a nurse said something impatient to me in front of forty children.

I did it eventually. What got me there was small units, in an order I chose. Holding the box. Then holding it with the lid off. Then the pen in my hand for a minute with no intention of using it. Then the cap off. Then the pen against skin with the cap off and no injection, twice, on purpose, and stopping deliberately even though I thought I could have carried on — which felt like a swindle at the time and was the most important step of the lot.

Six weeks. Nobody hurried me. I still find it unpleasant and I have done it eighty-odd times.

57me too 10

GaelanInverurie, UK
#3

Farm vet, faints at his own blood tests, so I am the professional irony in this circle.

One thing worth knowing: a pen and a blood test are not the same event. A blood test involves somebody else, a chair, a wait, and no control at all. The pen involves you, your kitchen, your timing. People who cannot manage the first sometimes find the second entirely different, and I did.

46me too 7

PádraigGalway, IE
#4

Galway. Sceptic turned quiet believer. Mine was not phobia, it was squeamishness, so I will not claim your experience. What I will say is that the eleven-year-old and the funny family story is the bit I would take to somebody professional.

I did four sessions about something quite different two years ago and the useful part was not learning any technique. It was somebody taking the original thing seriously for the first time.

43me too 8

OzzyAdelaide, AU
#5

Adelaide. Nine videos was my mistake too, in week one, and I am not even needle-phobic. The internet is full of people doing this badly, wincing, with a camera in one hand.

The written guides here were fine. The videos were a fortnight of my life I would like back.

38me too 6

OssieWolverhampton, UK
#6

Wolverhampton. Third Oz-ish handle, it is a problem, and I got past a twenty-year thing last year.

The one bit of practical I will offer, since you said you will get to that part: the pens with the needle you cannot see made all the difference to me, and it is worth asking your prescriber or pharmacist what your options actually are before you assume you have got the only device available. I did not know there was a choice for eight months.

49me too 9

TiernanOmagh, NI
#7

Right. Small units in an order I choose, and stopping on purpose when I think I could carry on — Taavi, that one has unlocked something and I am not sure I can explain why.

Referral asked for, because Esi is right that it is not a detour. Call taken up for a Thursday where the box stays where it is. And I am not watching another video as long as I live.

51me too 6