Do you hide your pain?

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Hah, I'm exactly the same! I tend to complain a great deal and let everyone know when I'm in minimal pain, but when I'm in greater pain I tend to be rather quiet about it.
My theory is that it takes too much effort to complain about major pain, as I tend to concentrate on it to try not to think about it (if that makes any sense you..., it does to me).

I usually cannot show pain. My mother remembers when I broke my arm and didn't make any fuss. A nurse, not long ago, was very surprised at how I didn't flinch or moan during a very painful procedure. I don't think I'm insensitive to pain; it's a problem with expressing pain. I just sort of freeze. People also cannot tell when I'm in extreme emotional pain or states of anxiety.

It has been suggested that Autistic people are marginalised and ignored when it comes to matters of physical pain and suffering. This may be because we feel pain differently, or process our response differently, or our reactions to it as they appear to outsiders. I suspect that because we lack the social skills to correctly indicate exactly how much pain we are in, and do not perform the correct activities and expressions of one in pain, we are often ignored when in considerable pain.

The same can be said for many autistic issues. The difficulties with communication, vocally, physically and instinctively, mean that we are quite simply ignored or misunderstood. Thus we suffer a great deal more from the depredations of others.

This is a interesting thread. If I'm in pain then I often choose to keep it for myself, but I never try to hide my pain.

And I hate painkillers, I just thought that I would make a note about that. Here in Sweden we have something which is called alvedon ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvedon ) which I myself haven't taken for several years, but I remember in the past when I felt headache sometimes I often chose to take one of these. Later I found out that it's possible to cure headache by just drinking some water and I have always experienced this as a better mehod on solving the headache problem.

I am a big baby when it come to pain. (physical) People touching me very softly hurts.
I work at McDonalds and I burnt my hand on a coffee burner. I cried and cried and cried. As I taking people's orders.

Unless I like and know well who I am around at the time I refuse to show any emotion over pain and such like.

My first recollection was at around 5yrs when my sister and I were staying at her Grandma's...For some reason my sister's grandma thought I was pretending I was hurt one day when we were staying at hers - they were in another room and I had actually fallen down the stairs and broke my arm but because I must have been attention seeking a bit that day or something my sisters grandma said to ignore me!! My sister soon felt that was wrong and came to me. She said to her grandma that we should call our mom so she could take me to hospital [my sister knew it was broken] her grandma said it would be just a bruise and that it's fine!! and in turn no one was called - we stayed for nearly a week longer!! People around the village were starting to show concern as my arm had gone a funny shape and looked in a bad way but I was walking around not showing any pain. I would only show pain at bed time when my sister and I were alone and I would finally cry and get her to pet my arm to help me sleep. My sister ended up getting so concerned that she found a phone box and called my mom - my sister didn't wanna upset my grandma by telling her she was wrong about my arm. When my mom saw it she instantly knew it was broken by the way it looked and took me to hospital where they couldn't believe that I had been like this for a whole week - it was severely broken and had started to reset it's self but obviously not in the right position. They had to put me under anaesthetic to re brake it and it took several attempts and made them feel really bad...Still throughout that week I never cried infront of anyone but my sister.

Old habits die hard and I have since had accidents and done the same everytime.

I fell down some more steps once that were icy and hurt my spine really bad, cuts and massive bruises and alot of pain to my back but I didn't even flinch because people were there - hours later when we left, on our own, my gf took a look at my back and saw how bad it was and I finally cried and said how much it f---k!ng hurts....

I had an awful accident caused by a careless idiot boss which nearly took my eye out, big cut to my face that needed stitches, I was knocked to the floor by a peice of heavy duty 'unbreakable' plastic that my ex boss was cutting on a circular saw which got snagged, spat out and ricocheted straight into my face just under my eye / cheekbone. Blood was everywhere and while they were trying to stand me up I was to afraid to remove my hand incase my eye was out I was in terrible shock - but I didn't cry or say anything - I was taken to hospital and had to sit 5 - 6 hrs in emergency and all I did was made light of how I really felt - I sat all those hours waiting to be seen, bleeding, with a rapidly developing black eye and concussion and in shock and people had no idea how I felt - it wasn't until hours later when I was home and trying to go to sleep that I finally cried really hard and couldn't stop because everytime I shut my eyes I kept reliving the accident and I had finally allowed my emotion to show - it was pretty traumatic - 7 or 8 yrs on that accident still makes me feel really bad

Also once I was stood talking to a woman who was admiring one of my dogs - who was onlead - my dog then saw something she wanted to run after and pulled real hard and because I was unprepared and because the way I was holding the lead it broke my finger. There was a loud snap and I just stood there and the woman heard it and for some reason I just told her it must have been the stitching in the lead!! and I continued letting her chat! After she walked away, I ='d f--k!ng owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!...said a whole bunch of curse words and finished walking my dog - but I sure as hell wasn't gonna show the woman I had felt any pain.

I have no idea why I do this. I don't plan on it, it just happens.

I really don't try to hide my pain in the sense that I try to keep it a secret. I just don't like talking about it, even to the doctors.

I forgot to add to the things I mentioned that on opposite side to those things, I have completely spazed out at being sprayed with silly string or being hit with a snowball or a crunched up paper ball etc...Although the snowball and paper ball did hit me right under my eye where the previous bad accident happened which is what I think caused me to over react in a big way - I am still traumatised if I get hit in that area. Also sometimes I sometimes go to get upset at getting hurt in a accident, or even when an accident happened where I didn't even hardly get hurt and I'll be on the verge of tears but then laugh alot instead.

serious pain, serious worries, i tend to keep to myself.

little stupid annoyances, like internet disconnecting in the middle of posting a thread, MAN the whole neighbourhood knows when The Zegh loses it

I can't hide either emotional or physical, but especially physical.

Here's an example: One time a few years ago, I was turning to go down the stairs. A split second later, I was near the bottom of the stairs, screaming my head off. It all happened so quickly, I couldn't even remember falling. One second I was at the top, and the next, I was at the bottom in misery. I had sprained two of my toes and my ankle. The doctor said that hurts worse than breaking them.

We've since moved and now we have two staircases, so if I don't want to go down one, I can go down the other instead.

Oh, yes, you are not alone! I have endometriosis too. I try to control it, but there are times when I have to cry out and hit the floor, etc. It can be just awful!

I, also, think I am hypersensitive to pain, though I also don´t like showing my pain to people. Sometimes I just can´t help it though.

i felt very little as a kid in relations to physical pain.
i knock myself now and run into things.....i don;t feel those.

but i have a low pain threshold with dentistry or anything incising - including tattoos.

I used to hide my pain 100% of the time. Now, I show it 100% of the time. Or at least 99%.

The only thing I can think of is when I worked in a resturange and got my hands burnt by a (big) cloud of steam about 100 C hot whilst lifting a big pan (it felt like the skin on my hands were comming of) but neither letting go of the pan or change facial expression. I just went in with the pan in my bare hands (around 50-70 C, no one els does that bare handed) and cooled my hands with water before going straight out again. When we had lunch later one of the others asked how I who can feel in the airshifting when someone comes in could lift that thing without any kind of protection. ^^

You'll just have to suck it up.
And yes, small wounds is worth than big ones.

I do hide my pain and am always afraid of someone discovering it. The reason for this is that I'm more afraid of the attention I'd get (even if it wasn't "negative") than of the pain itself.

When I was 12 I slept over at a friends house, in the middle of the night my tonsils get swollen and my breathing turn from a deep inhale to a Darth Vader like slow inhale. I then take my two fingers shove them in my throat, separate the tonsils (almost squashing them), go back to sleep without waking a single person.

Waking up in the morning laying curled up on the side with two fingers in my mouth and a drooled down pillow.

(I had them removed a couple of weeks later)