I Got Shot 4 Times and Lived to Tell About It!

I got shot 4 times and lived to tell about it! I have generally not been afraid of getting shot as long as the shot involves a needle and a syringe. But for my immunization which I recently received, I had to get 4 shots within a period of an hour, which was a whole new experience all together. It made me wonder as to why people get afraid of injections.

My experience with the four shots was quite surprisingly the least painful. I was getting four shots of a variety of immunizations which included Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B combine vaccine, a Varicella vaccine (for chicken pox), a vaccine for tetanus and diphtheria and the fourth vaccine was for MMR (measles, mumps and rubella). These immunization injections are supposed to be given intramuscularly (which is supposed to be one of the most painful routes of parenteral administration of drugs). For all four of the injections all I felt was a mild sting and nothing more. It made me think as to why people get pain during injections.

Getting injections can often be painful and the pain is what makes people afraid of injections. Surprisingly it has been noticed that adults perceive injections as a painful procedure even though the pain experienced by them is comparatively low. This is because these adults have got some injections when they were young. And as children, these injections are a lot more painful. I suppose it is this inbound fear from childhood which makes the injection seem dramatically more painful than it really is.

So how should one cope with the fear of injections? For a child it is normal to perceive the actual amount of pain, and there is really no alternative to cope with the pain. Adults on the other hand get tougher and more used to pain and so should be able to cope with pain better. I have personally noticed a reduction in pain during injection if I do not keep my mind on the injection.

I did a little research among my friends and have further found that people who play video games and watch more of action packed programs have generally a higher threshold for pain. This could be due to the fact that video games contain violence and gore which makes us think of painful things in life as a part of a game as well. This doesn't mean that kids should be allowed to play video games with gore and violence, but the therapy could be recommended for adults who want to overcome their fear of injections.

Although I do not know the intricate details of how the brain functions to perceive the pain, I do firmly believe that pain is all about perception. If you can block the thoughts of pain, then at least to some extent it is my belief that the amount of pain which you experience would reduce. After my experience of being shot four times with injections of different immunizations, I really don't think that getting injections is all that bad.