Most people assume that it is the injections that make people afraid of insulin. That’s true sometimes -- I won’t try to deny it -- but that’s not the big issue for most people. Even when it is the big concern, once you have them do just one or two they lose most of their anxiety about the shots because they are almost painless.
The real reason people fear insulin is all psychological. In the minds of most people, if they are on oral diabetes medication, they assume they don’t have a very serious problem. “I have a touch of sugar” is a phrase you still hear in many areas of the country, and it sounds almost quaint. In contrast, people think that if they are on insulin, they must have a serious medical problem. They fear being told that they have to take insulin because they are afraid this means that they have moved from a minor medical issue to something that is going to cause them real trouble.
The irony here, of course, is that what makes diabetes frightening are the problems that occur when it is not well-controlled, and insulin does a superb job of controlling diabetes when it is used correctly. A person who is on pills but has poor control of his her diabetes has a much more serious problem on their hands than a person who is on insulin but has near-normal blood sugar readings. The anxiety is so deeply-ingrained that simply being told that this is true is often not enough to help some people overcome their fear of starting insulin therapy. It can be a real challenge to persuade someone that it is the right thing to do. The silver lining is that once they start insulin most people realize how wrong they were in their beliefs and they quickly come to see how smart they were to overcome those feelings and start insulin.