I guess I also have an issue with needles, but perhaps not a phobia. I can have an injection, I have to look away and it does get my heart pounding, and sometimes makes me feel faint, but I can do it. I can't watch an injection, in real life or on the television, the sight of it is too much.
I had hundreds of injections when I was a child, in hospital. I got to know the sound of the trolley being pushed by nurses down the ward, with the kidney shaped metal dishes and syringes rattling together. I would lay in my bed fretful and fearful of that sound and hoping so much the trolley wouldn't stop at the end of my bed. Sometimes it didn't, but of course sometimes it did. Then I would start tearfully pleading with the nurses not to give me injections, but they would insist and make it happen, often with gentle but firm physical restraint. In the course of an entire childhood having frequent surgeries, I never got use to the injections, I always feared it and still do.
But I'm an adult now and I can accept it as necessary on occasion and can handle it. And I am in control, unlike when I was a child. I think that probably makes a difference?
