I’ve been looking into getting two characters in Hebrew that mean “father” for years now. It has a lot of personal meaning to it, but I’ve heard so many different things about pain tolerance and whether or not I should finally get the tattoo or not. I’m really not good with pain but I’m deciding whether or not it would be worth it. Could you guys help me out? Thanks


Pain tolerance is a tough question to answer – everyone’s pain threshold is different and different parts will hurt more or less than others. You could use an emla patch to null the pain in the area you are going to get tattooed. Emla can be bought at any drug store or Walmart. I would talk to my tattooist first though and make certain they are okay with you doing this. It should have no effect on the tattoo colors etc but I would still run it by them first. I’ve known a few people who have done this got through a smaller tattoo pain-free.
Certain areas are more painful than others (e.g. feet, elbows, back side of the arms, elbows, chest) The inner wrist may sting a little, but it shouldn’t be too bad, mostly just weird and uncomfortable. The vibrations from the gun numb it out a little. Take an aspirin or ibuprofen about 30 min. before to help with pain and swelling as well.
I have one on my back (between the shoulder blades) and one behind my ear. The one behind my ear is about 1 inch, 4 colours. It took about 10-20 minutes to do. If yours is just black and small, it would probably be about the same. It did not hurt at all for some reason. The one on my back is about the size of my fist (just in black and white). It took about 2 hours. It hurt a little down the centre of the spine. It’s a different type of pain though, the only way I can describe it is that it felt hot, and was on and off. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be.