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Needle phobia

I cannot look at the box, let alone open it

Started 28 September 2025 · 15 replies · 152 hearts · read 2.9k times

WinkleWeymouth, UK · 28 September 2025
10 months ago

Starting a thread on this because it keeps coming up in ones and twos: I cannot look at the box, let alone open it

Something is going on with my body and I would like to know whether it is ordinary.

What I keep tripping on is not the physical bit. It is the not knowing whether what I am experiencing is normal, and having nobody to ask who is not either selling something or frightened for me.

My prescriber has been fine, genuinely. The problem is that I get nine minutes twice a year and there is no version of nine minutes that covers this.

The thing that has surprised me most is how much of this is about other people rather than about me.

Not looking for a plan. Just company and whatever anyone has found.

51

BramwellRipon, UK
#1

I have been in this circle a year and this question comes round every few months. It is not a silly question. It is the question.

5

TaaviTallinn, EE
#2

Similar here, and mine turned out to be a completely unrelated deficiency picked up on bloods.

8me too 7

DelythBala, UK
#3

Mine lasted about seven weeks and then lifted over a few days. I cannot tell you why. I can tell you it lifted.

6

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada
#4

Thank you for writing this. I am not going to add information to it. I am going to say that what you have described is very common and very rarely said out loud.

16

Ollie OPeterhead, UK
#5

I would take that to a clinician rather than to us, and I would do it this week. Not because it is definitely serious — because it is the sort of thing that is much easier to rule out than to worry about.

11me too 2

IslaOban, UK
#6

Two things that helped me, neither of them clever: small amounts more often, and drinking a lot more than felt necessary.

10

PerrineStrasbourg, FR
#7

The phrase that unlocked my appointment was asking what specifically she wanted me to watch for. It moved us from reassurance to a plan in about thirty seconds.

12

HéloïseGeneva, CH
#8

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

Different experience here, for balance. Mine did not improve and in the end I stopped, and that was the right call for me. Both outcomes exist.

6

Bryn MNeath, UK
#9

I keep a two-line diary and it is the only reason I could answer this question about myself. Worth starting even now.

11

BronLincoln, UK
#10

the reply above said something I want to sit with for a second.

No advice, just recognition. That sounds exhausting and I am sorry you are in it.

9

BassCoventry, UK
#11

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

Yes. All of this. I had the same in my third month and I remember thinking there was something specifically wrong with me, which there was not.

10

TavitaApia, WS
#12

Can I gently push back on one thing? Not the substance, just the framing — you have written twice that you should be coping better. Who told you that?

11

BessLouth, UK
#13

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

My pharmacist was more use than anyone. Ten minutes at the counter, no appointment, no charge.

6me too 1

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada
#14

I will leave this open for a few more days and then add it to the circle's resources, because the answers here are better than anything I would have written.

23

BramwellRipon, UK
#15

I am about four months behind you and I have been dreading exactly this, so thank you for writing it down before I got there.

8