How to Put in Contacts: A Personal Journey Through the Looking Glass (Literally)

I still remember the morning I decided to ditch my glasses for contact lenses. Standing in front of my bathroom mirror at 6:47 AM, squinting at my own reflection, I thought, "How hard could this possibly be?" Twenty-three minutes later, with one bloodshot eye and a contact lens somehow stuck to my bathroom tile, I had my answer.

The truth about learning to put in contacts is that it's simultaneously one of the simplest and most unnervingly intimate things you'll ever do with your own body. You're essentially asking your brain to override millions of years of evolution that scream "DON'T TOUCH YOUR EYEBALL!" while performing what amounts to a delicate ballet with your fingertips.

The Mental Game Nobody Talks About

Before we even get to the mechanics, let's address the elephant in the room: your brain is going to fight you on this. Hard. The first time I tried to put in contacts, my eyelids developed what I can only describe as superhuman strength. They'd slam shut faster than a Venus flytrap whenever that lens got within striking distance.

This isn't weakness or failure – it's your body doing exactly what it's supposed to do. Your blink reflex is there for a reason, and convincing it to take a coffee break while you poke around near your cornea takes genuine mental rewiring.

What worked for me was starting with just touching near my eye – not even on it, just near it – for a few days. I'd wash my hands, look in the mirror, and gently touch my eyelid, then my lash line, gradually working closer. It sounds ridiculous, but this desensitization process made all the difference when game day arrived.

The Prep Work That Actually Matters

Everyone tells you to wash your hands. What they don't tell you is that the type of soap matters more than you'd think. That moisturizing lavender hand soap? Terrible idea. The residue it leaves behind will make your contacts feel like they've been dipped in hot sauce. I learned this the hard way during what I now refer to as "The Great Eye Burning Incident of 2019."

Stick to basic, fragrance-free soap. Dry your hands with a lint-free towel – paper towels work in a pinch, but those tiny fibers have a way of finding your contact lens like heat-seeking missiles.

Here's something else nobody mentions: the temperature of your hands matters. Cold fingers make you tense up, which makes your eyes clamp shut even tighter. Run your hands under warm water for a few seconds after washing. Your eyelids will thank you.

The Actual Insertion Process (Where Things Get Real)

Right, so you're standing there with a contact balanced on your fingertip like the world's smallest, most expensive frisbee. Now what?

First, check that it's not inside out. Yes, contacts have a right side and a wrong side, which seems like a cruel joke but is actually important. When it's right-side up, it looks like a perfect little bowl. Inside out, the edges flare out slightly, like a contact lens doing jazz hands. Some brands have tiny numbers printed on them that read correctly when they're oriented properly – a small mercy in this whole process.

Now comes the part where technique matters, but not in the way you might think. Every tutorial shows someone pulling their eyelid with their middle finger while holding the contact on their index finger. This works, but what they don't show is the twenty different ways people actually do it successfully.

I've seen people who use their non-dominant hand to hold both eyelids open while placing the contact with their dominant hand. I've watched someone successfully put in contacts while looking sideways in the mirror. My sister swears by looking down while sliding the contact onto the white of her eye, then blinking it into place.

The point is, there's no single "correct" technique. You're going to develop your own weird ritual, and that's perfectly fine.

The Mistakes That Everyone Makes (And How to Fix Them)

Let me save you some suffering by sharing the greatest hits of contact lens mistakes:

The death grip: Squeezing the contact too hard between your fingers. It'll fold, stick to itself, and generally refuse to cooperate. Hold it like you're cradling a butterfly – firm enough that it won't escape, gentle enough that it keeps its shape.

The dry finger dilemma: If your finger is too wet, the contact won't transfer to your eye. Too dry, and it won't come off your finger at all. The Goldilocks zone is just barely damp – I usually touch my finger to the towel after washing to get the moisture level just right.

The blink-and-miss: You get the contact on your eye, but your turbo-powered blink reflex immediately ejects it. The secret? Don't try to blink normally right away. Close your eye slowly and gently, like you're savoring the world's most expensive nap. Then look around with your eye closed – up, down, left, right. This helps the contact settle into place.

When Things Go Sideways (Because They Will)

Sometimes a contact will fold in half on your eye. Don't panic. Close your eye and gently massage your eyelid – the contact will usually unfold itself. If it doesn't, take it out and try again. No shame in the retry game.

Occasionally, a contact will migrate to the side of your eye, hiding under your eyelid like a tiny, transparent fugitive. Again, don't panic. Look in the opposite direction and gently pull your eyelid while blinking. It'll slide back into view. Despite what your anxiety might tell you, it cannot slide behind your eyeball. There's a membrane called the conjunctiva that prevents that particular nightmare scenario.

The worst-case scenario I've personally experienced? Putting the same contact in the same eye twice. Yes, it's possible. No, I don't recommend it. If your vision seems extra blurry after insertion, count your contacts. You might be doubling up.

The Learning Curve Nobody Warns You About

Here's what frustrates people most: the inconsistency. Monday, you might pop those contacts in like a pro in under thirty seconds. Tuesday, you're back to wrestling with your eyelids for fifteen minutes. This is normal. Completely, maddeningly normal.

Your eyes are different every day. Sometimes they're drier, sometimes you're more tense, sometimes Mercury is in retrograde and your contacts have decided to be difficult. I've been wearing contacts for over a decade, and I still have mornings where it takes three tries.

The game-changer for me was accepting that some days would be contact lens days, and some days would be glasses days. Having that flexibility removed the pressure and, ironically, made me better at insertion overall.

The Unexpected Benefits

Once you get past the learning curve, something interesting happens. That daily ritual of putting in contacts becomes oddly meditative. It's a moment of forced focus in the morning – you can't multitask, you can't rush, you just have to be present with yourself and your slightly ridiculous human body.

Plus, you develop what I call "eye confidence." After you've successfully touched your own eyeball hundreds of times, very little phases you. Eyelash in your eye? No problem. Need to rinse out some debris? Easy. You become the person others turn to when they need eye drops administered.

A Final Thought on the Journey

Learning to put in contacts is really about learning to trust yourself. It's about overcoming an instinct, developing a skill, and accepting that some things in life require patience and practice. It's humbling in the best way – a reminder that even the simplest-seeming tasks can teach us something about persistence.

So if you're standing in front of your mirror, contact lens in hand, feeling like you'll never get the hang of this – know that everyone who wears contacts has been exactly where you are. We've all dropped lenses down drains, blinked them across rooms, and wondered if glasses weren't the better option after all.

But we figured it out, and so will you. One slightly uncomfortable eyeball at a time.

Authoritative Sources:

American Academy of Ophthalmology. Clinical Optics. San Francisco: American Academy of Ophthalmology, 2020.

Bennett, Edward S., and Barry A. Weissman. Clinical Contact Lens Practice. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2005.

Efron, Nathan. Contact Lens Practice. 3rd ed., Elsevier, 2018.

Phillips, Anthony J., and Lynne Speedwell, editors. Contact Lenses. 6th ed., Elsevier, 2019.

Ruben, Montague, and Michel Guillon, editors. Contact Lens Practice. Chapman & Hall Medical, 1994.