 Sensitive to sharp pain? Perhaps you have some trauma at the dentist or doctor. Do you struggle with new experiences, things that you haven't experienced before? How about needlephobia? Well, me too. Tattoos for anybody can be a scary, daunting process, especially for autistic people. I mean, you're literally getting someone to stab yourself repeatedly over the course of maybe 30 minutes and all the way up to about three hours maybe. I had my first and currently only tattoo in Thailand. I basically went abroad into Thailand, into this place called Chiang Mai, which is like the north of the country. And I was doing a research placement as part of my biomedical sciences degree at the University of Manchester. So it was basically this industrial experience program. And I decided, Hey, you know, Thailand's on the list. I could go study mosquitoes. Why not? Why not? Why don't just ditch your life at home and just decided to do this absolutely crazy thing that is completely out of character. Or at least it was completely out of character for myself at the time. My tattoo is what you can call a sakyant. Oh, that's the that's the process of it. It's basically a Buddhist based tattoo that is very popular in Thailand. You may have seen I think there's this famous actress who have got like the lion tattooed or the tiger tattooed Angelina Jolie might be her. So I got there. I decided on a whim, you know, why not go get a tattoo. And I got there. And I was greeted by this this sort of organization that was kind of doing all these tattoos, doing all these sakyants. And I was introduced to a monk, you know, they have like different tiers of monks that do it. And you have some people who are like, have done it for likely years and years and years. And you call them like professor or something. Obviously, it's not professor, it's something in Thai. But I just can't remember that. So I got there. Not really sure what to expect. I knew that it was going to be a little bit different to usual tattoo use. Go matter of fact, that the monk brought in a massive steel metal needle, which I assumed was going to go inside my skin. Apparently, this this whole process is a little bit more painful. But it definitely was fairly quick. I think it was done in about maybe an hour and a half, two hours. So the whole reason why I decided to go get a tattoo it wasn't to look cool. It wasn't to sort of create a design and have it painted on my body. It was more of a emotional experience for me. At that time, if you've been following my channel all the way back then, when God, I had like maybe 1000 subscribers only recently started my journey, my grandfather passed away. And he was it was very important to me. I'm very important to my family supported me a lot, especially with my sporting endeavors, especially with university, going and traveling. I guess I wanted a way to try and remember him or a way to some kind of cathartic method in order to sort of show that I cared about him. And I decided to get this head of a tiger with this ring around it. It's supposed to mean power and confidence. And then the rings supposed to be like protection from all sides. I'm not religious. I don't believe that it was this little card that they had. And it said I had like a list of rules that you have to abide by or else the spiritual energy of the tattoo won't work. And one of those is making fun of your mother. And another one is drinking. So I failed that very, very quickly, mostly on the drinking part. The idea of getting a tattoo was more of a way to symbolize taking on more of a role in my family. Before that, I wasn't really, I didn't really understand family at that time to understand why we have to like and help people who, you know, are just given to us, you know, we don't choose our family. And that was the kind of mentality that I had before. And I kind of changed over this, the course of this one year, learning a lot more about myself, sort of looking into philosophy, psychology, and I wanted to sort of mark this as or mark my body, which sounds very crazy, to show that I really cared about my granddad and that I wanted to follow through with his last words to me. Stay in Thailand. It was to learn and to help people. And that's what I've been doing ever since. Now, there are a lot of reasons to get a tattoo, and everyone's going to have their own idea of why and when and how much time you need to put into it and how much thought that you need to do, whether it needs to be original or, you know, and unique, or just something that looks really cool, that's very trendy. You know, I can't tell you which one to go with, because ultimately it's going to depend on you. But for me, my tattoos or my tattoo that I do have and the ones I'm planning to get held a lot of sort of symbolism for me. I mean, I've been thinking of that my next tattoo for, like, what is it, maybe three, four years, which is an absurd amount of time. Pretty sure I'm going to get some, like, wings on my back to, like, go out of the tattoo and sort of go down my arm a little bit. That's still in the works. I'm still not completely sure. And I don't think I ever will be, but I need to be as sure as I can be. After all, it is going inside my skin. I would definitely recommend taking it a bit slower than a lot of people would, because although it seems like a great idea and you love the design and it looks all great, it's very hard to remove. And it's very painful to remove. And if you struggled actually going and getting a tattoo or you struggle with the needles, you are definitely going to struggle with the laser removal techniques that they use to make sure it's personalized, be clear on its meaning to you. It doesn't necessarily have to have a widespread meaning. It could just have something that means mean something to you. You could spend at least a few months, just at least a few months thinking about it. If you're really, really impulsive and just want to you get you first when you get there, get the rush. Oh my God, I can change my body and go and get some more. Try and just tone it down a little bit, but a bit more thought into it. Find a tattooist that does a style that you want. Don't just go to any old tattooist who looks good and does really great designs, but doesn't necessarily do the designs that you want. There's different types of tattoos. I'm not going to go into it. They're kind of like stuff around line work and emblems. There's lots of different ways of doing tattoos, and they all have their little separate genres. Of course, a fail safe thing to do is always invest in a high quality tattoo. Don't get drawn in by you looking at tattoos and looking at the prices and you're like, oh, I could get one tattoo or I could get five tattoos. Perhaps this one tattoo is a lot better, but at least I can get five of them. That is not the mentality that you want. Trust me on that. And of course, this is an autism channel. You're probably talking to me rambling about tattoos and not mentioning anything about autism. So here are some tips that I found to be quite helpful and some things that I wish I did before I went to get my tattoo. Number one, is your tattooist friendly and calm? Do you get on with them? Do you like them? Do you feel at ease as much as you can do with someone holding a machine that's meant to stab you? Have you told them that you at least struggle with certain things? It could be around sensory stuff, hypersensitivity, pain. Well, I suppose that's related type sensitivity. You could just go up and say, hey, look, I'm autistic. They probably won't. A lot of them probably won't know exactly what that means for you and what kind of difficulties you may have around the whole process of getting tattoo. So it's better just to give them a little bit of a rundown to say, you know, I struggle with this, this and this and this. Is there any way that I can make it a bit easier for myself? You also have to consider the environment. You should always go in to actually see the tattooist beforehand. And I know it can be a little bit difficult because maybe the tattooist that you want is, if you're in the States, maybe it's like a couple of States away or in the UK, perhaps it's the other side of the country. You're making that trip down just to see what the environment like. A lot of money just to go and see it. Maybe the best thing is in that situation, maybe just don't spend a lot of money, maybe just ask if they can sort of video call and show you the place or you can look at it on Google Maps. But basically, you just want to have an idea of what the environment's going to be like. And if you find that it's a little bit too distressing, noises, lights, perhaps the decorations, perhaps the general feel of it, if it's very open or is it like in a closed sort of space. These are all things to consider. Another thing to consider is the use of numbing cream. You know, a lot of people have made the mistake and they've drunk loads of alcohol to turn them in the pain. But we all know that that causes your skin to bleed a lot easier. So pretty much all of them recommend you don't drink. But there is actually a difference and some tattoo artists have like preferences on using numbing cream or not. Some of them, they're very comfortable doing it. Other people, not so much. And you don't want to go to someone who's not had experience using the numbing cream and tattooing over that spot. You want to go to someone who actually has experience with that. So what do I think? Do I recommend getting a tattoo? Yes. I cannot stress how much I absolutely hate needles and absolutely hate sharp pain. I'd say that I wouldn't go and get a piercing again. You know, I had my piercing done, don't know, like a few months ago. And it was the most horrible experience I've ever experienced. And apparently the lobe is supposed to be a very insensitive place compared to the rest of your ear and your body. And oh my God, I cannot imagine someone shoving metal things in their nipple. Must be so painful. But borrow all that, borrow the difficulty of it and the pain and the anguish. Make it sound like some kind of horrible feat, like some kind of horror movie situation. But it's not. And I found most of it quite tolerable. Some parts a little bit more difficult because it was kind of in my spine area. Any place where there's bone closer to the skin than in other places, like the non-meaty parts of your body, like your ribcage, stuff like that, that's supposed to hurt like a lot, basically. So despite all of these issues that I had going and getting a tattoo, I would probably do it again, honestly. So if you are kind of thinking of going and get a tattoo and you're really worried about it, you're autistic, maybe you have a lot of hypersensitivity, maybe you have a needle vobia, please take comfort in this video. If you get all of this stuff right, if you take on board what I'm telling you, maybe watch a few more videos, you'll pretty much do everything that you need in order to have a semi-pleasant experience. It's never going to be fun. Well, some people find it fun. Some people like it. Some people fall asleep and you could be one of those people, but I am definitely not. So if anything, just know it's going to hurt a wee bit, depending on where you get it, depending on how long the session is, depending on how big it is, depending on how much colours added into it. All of those factors are going to determine how difficult it is for you, but you are going to feel so great once it's finished. And I think that is the beauty of the tattoo. It is to mark on your body of something that you're willing and ready to get and something that represents something quite deep and emotional to you. And so you put it on your body. Let me know, have you had any particular difficulties with getting tattoos and you are autistic? Just need to make that clarification please let me know. And are you planning to get any more tattoos? I would very much love to hear what you have to say about that. Let me know down in the comments. And of course, if you want to stay up to date with all of my shizzle, links are that side, this side. And you can get all of my links to my videos, to my TikTok, to my Instagram, and of course to the 4TOD podcast, which is going full steam ahead with season 2. Well, one episode going out every two weeks at the moment. So we've got the ball rolling. I hope you have found this video insightful or helpful or anything like that. Please make sure to like and subscribe and I will see you in another episode on the Thomas Henley YouTube channel. Yes.