I use to cry every time I would go and get cavity fixed. The drilling sound and the smell of my teeth being drilled away wasn’t very comforting. Until one day, I stopped crying all of the sudden. I still remember the moment: laying down, facing upward, the bright light, crying my eyes out. Then I paused and thought, “Wait…why am I crying? It doesn’t even hurt that badly.… I’m just wasting my energy.” Never cried again since. I still wonder what the dentist might have thought when that happened. Edit: I know having cavity fixed is not as painful as a shot, and I completely understand the scuba diving thing. You can totally die from that, so it’s totally justified, I think. And yeah, I can totally see myself being scared of a needle in my spine, I would think it will impale me or leave me disabled or something. Maybe knowing how it works will reduce the fear a bit. I don’t know. The only reason why I stopped crying in my cavity story was because I gone through it so many times that I knew what was going to happen. So…know thy enemy?