Hey everyone! So I'm due for my fourth injection of T today, I tried doing it this morning before work but I always end up freaking out. I'm pretty afraid of needles and while I'm not quite as petrified of doing it like I was the first time I still get really anxious about it. Im excited to do it until I have to actually do it lmao so I was wondering if any of you guys have any suggestions/recommendations on how to give yourself your shots? I usually put on music and eventually sike myself up into doing it but today I've hardcore chickening out

Dude I'm 9 months on T & shot day was today and I still got a bit nervous. What I do is put on a show like parks and recreation that's super funny, and tell myself I'm going to have the shot done by the end of the ep. If you're into it, meditating really
helps before you do the shot. I massage my leg too.

I allow myself to listen to 3 songs while I do the whole process. It's usually one shot to get everything together, one to do it, and one to clean up. Sometimes it goes faster. I was really afraid of needles at first, and it would take me around 30 minutes to do it. Now it's maybe a 5 minute process.

Or watch a good show. I wouldn't do a movie. Something short with a time limit. I think the time limit is important. I liked to do mine in the morning for a really long time for that reason, it couldn't go on too long or I'd have wasted the whole day.

I'm not afraid of needles at all, and I never really have been. But I look at it as some kind of primal, instinctive tension. It's like your hindbrain, the lizard brain, knows what you're doing is going to be painful, and it goes against your body's instinctive drive to keep things out that don't belong in the body. As I said, that's the way I look at it and the way it seems for me. I mean, I donated plasma a lot when I was at university, and as routine as it became, going to the clinic a couple times a week, getting stuck, having to sit there for 30+ minutes during the draw-return cycles, the act of having to be stuck with a needle always gave me the instinctive creepy crawlies.

And I say that to make the point that I have this sort of anxious mental and physical response even though I have no conscious fear or even real dislike of needles. I don't really feel one way or the other about them, consciously, but my body seems to have a strong aversion.

Anyway, my point is, I think that it can be a biological, hindbrain sort of thing more than a more phobic situation when it comes to shots. I'm planning to try meditating or yoga before my next shot and seeing if that helps, but if that doesn't work and I still feel keyed up, I might just ask my mom to do it, as much as I hate to consider that. The stupid macho parts of me want to do everything myself, even when it would be ten times easier to do it with someone else's help. But when it comes to something as important to me as this, I'd rather do it right.

So, I don't know, but if you have a partner or a close friend or family member you could ask, that would be my suggestion.

I've been on T for over 3 years and still occasionally get jittery.  I'm the kind of person that refuses to have anyone else do it for me. I usually give myself a time limit. A song, a commercial, a boss battle when my partner is playing a video game,  etc. It used to be anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours before I got the nerve to do it. Now it's 2 to 4 minutes. I'm not really afraid of needles, I have the tats abs piercing to prove it, but we do have a basic instinct to avoid causing ourselves pain. 

I used to use an ice cube to partially numb the area. It had the added bonus of giving me a target so to speak, as I'm very pale and my skin would turn a bright red. I also used a massager to scramble the nerves in the past and both methods helped with the pain in my first two years.

Since I've always done my own shots, I've gotten it down to a pattern. Now I have my five minute max. When I do occasionally get the jitters I allow myself 3 times of counting from 5 to 1 at most. 

It just takes time to get used to it.

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I met someone in the healthcare field who's been working around needles for 30 years and he said he still has to look away when he injects himself!

I got over my fear of needles by telling myself every time I was at the doctor's office that it wasn't going to hurt until it came out, and I could handle that. The needles for injecting T should be very narrow so you don't even feel a pinch when it goes in. You're doing intramuscular and avoiding veins so it's basically okay to stick that part of your body as long as you kept your needle sterile.

I was going to say it's not actually painful if you're relaxed, but everyone's pain perception is different. I stapled my own thumb and sliced the tip of my finger off and didn't feel either one, so I may be a bit weird.

Maybe give yourself a reward if you inject yourself so you have something to look forward to after you do it?