Fear of Needles.

A woman came to me and she told me she has a fear of needles. The problem was that s she was about to join the army and needed to get vaccinations, which terrified her.

Here’s how the therapy works:

I asked her, “What is the feeling you have when you think about needles? What do you feel?”

She said: “Fear, I'm very scared, I hate putting things in my body”.

“That makes sense”, I said.

The next step was to help her relax. I guided her to close her eyes and taught her relaxation techniques, but the work of relaxing was hers to do. Once she felt relaxed, I invited her to ask her subconscious to take us back to the moment when her fear of needles began.

When a person is relaxed, the subconscious often reveals the origin of the problem.

Back to our case, this young lady said: “I’m 5 years old. My older sister is babysitting me. I’m having trouble falling asleep, and she loses her patience. Finally, she orders me to go to sleep and leaves the room, closing the door behind her. I’m used to sleeping with the door open, but now it’s closed. I feel very scared. I’m being asked to do something I’m not ready for. That’s the story.”

The next step was to invite her to do some “time travel” in her imagination. I asked her to go back to that moment and be with her 5-year-old self—to hold her hand, hug her, and provide comfort. In this imaginary story she was telling me, she spoke to her younger self and said, “We’re going through this together.”

I asked her, “What is it like for your 5-year-old self to have you there? What happens to the fear?” She responded, “The fear goes away.”

Then I asked her what advice she would give to her 5-year-old self. Her advice was: “Just take small steps, one at a time. If you’re not ready, that’s okay. If you need help, ask for it. Don’t try to take big steps—just small ones.”

The logic behind this therapy is that it doesn’t impose solutions. Instead, it allows the 18-year-old woman to advise herself. The advice was simple: take one step at a time, and ask for help if needed.

I asked her to repeat this advice to herself over and over, letting the words echo in her mind. Technically, this process is called “echoing.”

When you keep saying those words to yourself, the problem begins to dissolve. In this case, her fear of needles disappeared.

At the end of the session, I told her she could spend as much time as she needed with her younger self, and when she was ready, she could open her eyes. That was the end of the session.

The next day, she got her shots at the kupat cholim