<p>Ask practitioners who work in this area what surprises them most and they tend to give the same answer: not what patients describe, but how long they waited before describing it.</p>
   <h2>The gap is mostly about the room, not the doctor</h2>
   <p>When people explain the delay, they rarely say they were afraid of the medical part. They describe the receptionist. The waiting room. The possibility of being recognised. The question of what to write on the form.</p>
   <p>That is worth noticing, because it means the barrier is logistical and social rather than clinical — and logistical barriers can be removed.</p>
   <h2>What the waiting actually costs</h2>
   <ul>
     <li><b>The searching gets worse.</b> Search results on this subject are dominated by people selling something. Weeks of reading usually leaves someone more anxious and less informed than when they started.</li>
     <li><b>Avoidance compounds.</b> Whatever the original difficulty, avoiding situations because of it tends to make the anxiety around it larger over time.</li>
     <li><b>Simple explanations get missed.</b> A meaningful share of what people worry about turns out to relate to sleep, alcohol, medication they are already taking, or stress from something unrelated. Those are quick to identify and often quick to address — but only once somebody asks the right questions.</li>
   </ul>
   <h2>What a first conversation usually looks like</h2>
   <p>Shorter than people expect. A practitioner will generally ask when it started, whether it is constant or situational, what else changed around the same time, and what medication you take. Those four answers narrow things down considerably.</p>
   <p>Nobody needs a speech prepared. "I have been worried about something and I have never asked anyone" is a complete opening.</p>
   <h2>If you take one thing from this</h2>
   <p>The discomfort of asking is front-loaded — it is worst in the minute before, and it drops sharply once the conversation is underway. Almost everyone says afterwards that the waiting was harder than the asking.</p>