Did my first at home microneedling attempt and…

So I just did my first at home session with a Dr Pen. I’ve been to an aesthetician twice and after discovering she uses a Dr Pen herself I figured to just try it at home (for acne scars).

I did a LOT of research…primarily following Penn Smith’s tutorial as many here do. I used alcohol to sanitise EVERYTHING as she did. But I’m kind of scared for a couple of reasons…

1) I decided to go very slowly for my first attempt, sticking to 0.5mm and speed 1. Still it HURT. a lot. When my aesthetician did my treatment, she went DEEP (like 2mm at least) and didn’t use numbing cream, I’d say today was the same level of pain.

2) I went red IMMEDIATELY. With the aesthetician, I didn’t bleed or anything, and was hardly red, just had a bit of microswelling.

3) At the end of it all, something was flaking a LOT?? I don’t know whether it was the HA serum, the alcohol, or my skin, but most unlikely to be the latter.

This was 15 mins ago. My face felt kinda bad straight after but its fine now, just red and microswelled.

I’m kinda worried, starting to think maybe this is something to be left to the professionals tbh 🤷‍♀️

UPDATE: just wanted to say thanks for the reassurance everyone! I think I just panicked because i became conscious of the thought that I’m literally stabbing my face with needles lol. My skin feels tight and a little sore but the redness is gone, the microswelling is so satisfying 😂 if only my skin always looked like this. Obviously time will tell theres still a chance for things to go wrong, but I’m hoping not! I may need some numbing cream though because damn this stuff is painful when doing it on yourself