Somebody sat on a call with me for forty minutes last night while I did my first injection

Started 29 January 2026 · 8 replies · 402 hearts · read 3.1k times

WinkleWeymouth, UK · 29 January 2026

6 months ago

Weymouth. Nickname from childhood, it stuck, and I am writing this the morning after because I want to get it down before it becomes an anecdote.

Background, briefly. I do not do needles. Not in the way people say that — I have not had a blood test since 2011, I left a job medical halfway through, and when my dentist mentioned an injection two years ago I walked out of the building and did not go back. My GP knows and has been kind about it and it has cost me things.

So the prescription sat in my fridge for six weeks. I read everything on this site. I got as far as holding the pen twice.

Last night somebody from this circle got on a call with me at eight o’clock. I am not going to say much about the details because they were quite personal, but the shape of it was this. They talked for the first fifteen minutes about absolutely nothing — a broken washing machine, mostly. Then they said they were going to describe what they used to do, and did, in a very flat voice, with no encouragement in it at all, which I now understand was deliberate. Then they asked whether I wanted to get it out of the fridge, and said it was completely fine if the answer was no and we could just talk.

It took another twenty minutes. I got as far as the skin and stopped twice. They did not say well done or nearly there or any of the things that would have made me put it down. They said, both times, that is fine, you can wait as long as you like, I am not going anywhere.

I did it at about twenty to nine. Then I cried a bit and they talked about the washing machine again.

Fifteen years of this. I want that on the record somewhere, and I want to say to anybody else in here with a fridge they cannot open: ask. Just ask.

134

TaaviTallinn, EE

That was me and I would rather not make a thing of it, but I will answer the part you have not asked, because somebody reading this will want to know why the flat voice.

Because encouragement is pressure. When somebody says you can do it, what a phobic person hears is a clock. I know that because I spent 2024 having people cheer at me down the phone while I sat with a pen in my hand and could not move, and every kind word made the room smaller.

So what I do is the thing that worked on me eventually: describe, offer, wait, and mean it when I say the answer can be no. I have done nine of these calls now and two of them ended with the person not injecting, and those two were just as successful. One of them did it the following week. One has not yet and rings me anyway.

Winkle, fifteen years. You did that on a Tuesday with a stranger on the phone. I am not going to say well done because I do not do that, but you know.

60me too 11

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada

I want to say something about how this works, since people ask and since Taavi will not.

These calls are not a technique we invented. Graded, unhurried exposure with a calm person present is roughly what a clinical psychologist would do with needle phobia, minus the psychologist, and the reason it works is the absence of pressure rather than the presence of company. Taavi is unusually good at it because he has been on the other end.

Two honest caveats. It does not work for everybody, and if a fear of needles is affecting your medical care more broadly — bloods, dentistry, vaccination — that is worth raising with your GP, because there are proper treatments for it and this circle is not one. And nobody here is ever made to do anything, which is a rule and not a courtesy.

Winkle, if you would like somebody on the call next week too, say so. Most people want two or three and then find they have stopped needing it.

52me too 8

TiernanOmagh, NI

Omagh. I did one of these calls in November as the frightened party and the flat voice thing is exactly right. My person talked about a hedge.

I have since had a blood test, which I had avoided for nine years, and I told the nurse in advance and lay down for it. Would not have gone near it in October.

49me too 9

NissaHaifa, IL

Haifa. Careful reader of the reading group notes and mostly silent in here, but this deserves a reply.

What strikes me is the two calls that ended without an injection being counted as successful. That is the whole difference between support and pressure and I have never seen it stated so plainly.

47me too 7

FreyaReykjavík, IS

Reykjavík. I had one of these last spring for a much milder version of the same problem — mine was nine days of a box in a fridge, not fifteen years — and I still think about it.

Winkle, the crying afterwards is completely standard and it is not about the needle. It is about the fifteen years.

44me too 6

GudrunAkureyri, IS

Akureyri. Northern Iceland, one pharmacy, one chance — and no circle of any kind within two hundred kilometres, so I want to say what this site actually is for people like me.

I did my first one alone with this thread open on the counter. Not the same as a call. Better than nothing by a very long way.

51me too 10

ZoraSarajevo, BA

Sarajevo. Not much local guidance here, so I am making my own, which mostly means reading this site late at night.

I am going to ask for a call. I have had the pen since the eleventh of December and I have told myself every Sunday since that I would get to it during the week, and then I have not, and then I have felt foolish about it on the Saturday. Reading that two of those calls ended with nobody injecting is what made asking feel possible.

39me too 12

WinkleWeymouth, UK

Zora, ask. That is the whole content of my post and I nearly did not write it.

Taavi has offered me a second call for next Tuesday and I have said yes, and then I think I will be all right. And I have booked the blood test I have been avoiding since 2011, which I am telling you all so that I cannot quietly cancel it.

60me too 8

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