Hey if you own it that’s totally cool and fairly noble. And frankly even if you don’t it’s cool too. Not my job to decide who to take on as long as you’re within my practice scope and not actively suicidal, murdering people, or diddling kids, which are like three main dealbreakers for getting your therapist to snitch (varies by state and there are other exceptions check the fine print)

One of the things I explain to people when I’m doing needle desensitization is that the phobia does make sense to a degree. At its core there is a threat. We know that it will hurt. It’s why I fucking hate it when people use bullshit lies to get people to get shots, “oh it won’t hurt at all!”. No, that’s a lie, it by definition will cause some pain. And it’s pain you see coming. A scrape is different. We generally get those accidentally and often don’t notice it’s happened until the pain registers. But a shot or blood draw is more analogous to torture: I get a sharp needle, put you in a weird chair, and let you know that I will absolutely stick this into your body, piercing your flesh. You anticipate it. You tense up.

The thing to remind yourself is that it’s irrational and your anxiety is magnifying the intensity. The pain is real and will happen, that is true, but it is generally not that big of a deal outside of certain scenarios that are uncommon for most people. And even in some of the more painful scenarios like lumbar punctures there is an anesthetic involved (trust me I’ve had one. It’s not awesome but not as bad as you’d think).

Desensitization can help for the obvious reason of lowering your anxiety in reaction to the aversive stimuli. Avoiding it only serves to sensitize you and lower resilience to the stimulus. However this is the challenge of the phobia. Often they’re things we don’t have regular exposure to: vomiting, spiders, air travel, etc. so we desensitize, do much better, and then don’t have to deal with the thing for months or years and end up with it being an issue again. Maintenance is always necessary.

But with needle phobia there is a specific benefit. If you can calm yourself down during blood draws and relax your body the blood draws will actually hurt less. Tension held in your body makes the piercing of the needle sting a bit worse. It’s not a huge difference but apparently a noticeable one.

I am a therapist who does desensitization for specific phobias as part of my repertoire and one of the things I do somewhat regularly is needle desensitization for kids that struggle to get their vaccinations and blood draws, especially kids with autism. It’s no fun but unfortunately a part of life.

Often when I do it their parents have to leave the room or look away which is outright cowardly and sends a really bad message to their child who is terrified of needles

anti vaccination originally started rising in popularity because a lot of parents of kids with autism wanted an explanation for why their kids were “disabled” (keep in mind this goes back to like the 90s leading up the the discredited wakefield study in 1998). Then it had other people latch on for similar reasons, by the early to mid 2000s those people were blaming ADHD, dyslexia, generic “learning disabilities”, allergies, etc on vaccination. This is all pretty well established.

But I have this theory that it kept growing in popularity because people were simply afraid of getting needles. Covid was the catalyst for it to truly explode because a great deal of adults could skip most compulsory vaccinations. Before Covid if you were really stupid you could skip flu shots and your parents probably forced you to get most of the truly necessary ones ages ago. But then all of a sudden the big bad government is saying you need to get a big scary needle!! And not just one, but two!! And then maybe get them indefinitely!

The core kooks who say it has 5g nanochips or whatever probably truly believe that. But that’s probably a small minority. A great deal more are probably people who are otherwise sensible but are willing to enter delusional beliefs and are extremely susceptible to the kooks rhetoric because it allows them to believe something that enables them to endorse what they truly want to do, which is avoid the extremely brief moment of pain, because they are entitled whiny babies that cannot handle even a second of discomfort

This is just my theory though

To back this up with garbage anecdotal data I have talked to physician friends who describe adult patients having a much lower likelihood of getting bloodwork orders filled, a much lower rate of getting things like flu shots and newer vaccinations like hepatitis, shingles, hpv, chickenpox, etc.

I mean they’re obviously arguing chromosomal sex is the end all be all

while it is true the gonads and external genitalia of embryos appear the same regardless of chromosomal sex it is also true that generally that embryo will develop sex characteristics in weeks 7-12 based on chromosomal assignments that occurred at conception.

The xy embryos have the presence of the sry gene on the Y chromosome which triggers development of gonads into testes, testosterone, and amh. Wolffian ducts become early stages of a penis, amh causes Müllerian ducts to regress

Xx embryos lack sry gene obviously, which allow the gonads to become ovaries. The wolffian ducts regress without amh and the Müllerian ducts become early stages of a vagina

Then week 12+ is when uterus/prostate start

That said biological sex is obviously much more complex than this. Intersex people exist. And there’s a great deal of variation in that.

Gonadal dysgenesis can occur when the gonads do not fully develop into testes or ovaries, incomplete or ambiguous genitalia.

True hermaphroditism can occur where both ovary and testicular tissue is present, again usually leading to ambiguous genitalia (no futas)

Androgen insensitivity can lead to ambiguous genitalia or in some cases an xy person with female external genitalia

Alternatively excess androgen can cause masculinized genitalia in xx people

Kleinfelters (xxy) can give underdeveloped testes, infertility, and low testosterone

Turners (x) underdeveloped ovaries, infertility

And this just kind of hand waves all those people away. Do you feel like your identity is linked to the fact that you’re in this minority and maybe doesn’t match what people perceive you to be? Are you an xy person with female genitalia because of androgen insensitivity who feels that your genitalia don’t match who you are. Well technically you’re a guy now I guess by these rules although we all know they mean “if you look like a chick you’re a chick”

And this all is besides the scientific evidence on transgender neurology, which is large and growing.

The bed nucleus of stria terminals is associated with gender identity and is typically smaller in cis women and larger in cis men. In amab trans women it tends to be similar to that of cis women

Cortical thickness of trans individuals tends to align more closely with their preferred gender

Trans people tend to show brain connectivity patterns in regions associated with self perception and body image aligned with their identity

Etc. this is already a novel. And this doesn’t even touch upon the *many many * more things at play here like genetics and epigenetics, prenatal neural developments and hormonal factors, social structures around gender (though tbf they did somewhat touch on this if only to outright deny its validity without offering any real rationale other than “we think it’s dumb”)

But these people obviously don’t give a shit about any of this. They’ll negate it, attack the source, outright deny the claims with no counter evidence, etc. or they’ll just do what they’re currently doing, remain completely ignorant on the topic and seize authority and power to implement their will regardless of the scientific consensus.

Dark times but fuck them. You don’t need the governments approval to express yourself. although I do recognize this will probably be an absolute nightmare for anyone who has not gotten a name change, modified birth certificate, drivers license, etc. if you haven’t done that maybe do it asap, especially for federal documents like passports (especially if you plan to bail on this shithole)