I have a high pain tolerance, no one believes me

Post Reply New Topic

Because there is a girl that I don't like who is mentally handicapped at my school who has a low tolerance to pain and I am worrying that people think I am like her.

Prediction: If you worry about things like that, you will spend your whole life worrying.

My advice (from an old fart): Live your life—not theirs or hers.

We kind of look the same. I have a high pain tolerance to burns, bumps, bangs etc. Not inner body upsets. Once I kept telling and showing people a scar I sustained for accidently touching an iron. When I told them the pain was over in a matter of seconds they didn't believe me. I once burnt my finger on a light bulb, didn't treat it and went to sleep. No one believed that either, so I threatened to put my finger in hot tea.
As a kid I used to see how long I could keep my finger in a flame.

OK, the problem is she is like the opposite of me and people treat us the same and we have different needs.

Well the thing is everyone seems to think that s/he has a "high pain tolerance". That's why there's always debates about men vs. women having a higher pain tolerance and throwing childbirth and kidney stones and all that crap in there. I think it's a "being a grown-up and not being a wuss" thing and an attempt to measure who is tougher, most likely started by a male-dominated society - since it's always men who always seem to like to compare who has the bigger stick - and where women probably just initiated a counter-attack so they could beat men at their own game.

Personally, I don't believe in the concept of individual "pain tolerance". I mean, you only know what your pain feels like, therefore you have nothing to compare it to. Person A can never know what Person B feels when Person B feels pain. Person A can only know what Person A (imagining he is Person B) would feel like when he feels pain. We also have different chemical levels at different times, so there really is no set benchmark of where our level of "pain tolerance" is. A person may not be some tough guy every day, but when there comes a time when he has to fight for his life he doesn't feel the 20 or so stab woulds he received from his muggers (true story).

And what is "pain tolerance" in the first place? It is the ability to withstand a certain level of stimulation, or the inability to register said stimulation? When two people put their hands on the fire, does the person with hands that are numb to pain have a higher or lower "pain tolerance" than the person who feels it but has the discipline to ignore the pain? Is it pain tolerance, or inability (or impeded ability) to feel pain?

Myself, I don't care to compete with people and their "pain tolerances" and their tough guy attitudes. If I feel any pain or discomfort, I go to WebMD then a doctor. If I get a blister, I wrap it up. If I get a concussion, I sit it out. If I am labeled a wuss for this, then so be it. That's just the way it is I guess. I don't feel the need to impress anybody, nor do I feel the need to act-out my pain (since I'm not a basketball player).

For me, I'm more vocal about minor pains than major ones. My partners knows that a loud noise followed by a yelp means I'm mostly okay, followed by silence or a hissing intake of breath means I'm hurt. Odd? /shrug

I know my pain threshold is annoyingly high. My best example was in gymnastics class. Trying to learn handstands, I landed on my shoulders over and over and over. At the end of the lesson, I found my shirt was damp and my shoulders were stinging a little. I assumed I'd rubbed a blister and it had broken. On the locker room, I found out I'd rubbed large patches of skin off and I was bleeding through my shirt. Those were some awkward bandages for a week.

I have a high pain threshold and usually that's a good thing ... it however is not in my favor when I'm trying to express a problem to a doctor and the doctor doesn't believe me because I don't look like I'm suffering enough, I have had doctors ignore time and time again what have turned out to be very real problems ... yet rather than address the real issue they're often more than happy to prescribe and try to push me to take pain killers even though I didn't ask for them, don't want them and won't take them except in the most extreme of situations. I meet the diagnostic criteria for a syndrome that lists high pain threshold as a common feature.

Edit:

I do that too.

Its funny, they sad that at the hospital, when i broke brokens in my hand, and they needed to break them back in place, took around 20min. Yeah sure it did hurt, but i would rather have some pain that all sorts of drugs.

At the Dentist i got a Root treatment without any drugs for pain as well, that did hurt. they thought i was crazy as well for not taking any, but i really dont like drugs and all their side effects :S i would rather have pain than unforseen sideeffects, pretty stupid i guess.

never actually thought much about it until now in this topic.

Maybe its the one thing im good at in this would, handling pain, that is something i can do, mind over matter sort of.

One thing i quickly learned as a kid, now where other kids when they get hurt cry like mad to get attention from everyone, now that is like WHAT YOU DONT WANT, as aspergers / autism, i actually dont want any attention at all. So maybe its just learned that way, to accept pain, to suck it up.

I have no problem myself with taking painkillers, and sometimes I have to take something if I want to sleep at all - that's aside from the muscle relaxers I take every night because even on nights when I am not in severe pain, I can't easily sleep, and will wake up repeatedly due to pain.

Anyway, I have encountered this. I have a high pain threshold and don't show a lot of suffering, and I recently learned that when I rated my pain at 6 or so when seeing my physician it was rated as "mild." I did not describe mild pain, but now I know why my attempts to describe pain were not really acknowledged.

I have no problem being numbed for a procedure or being sedated for surgery but I don't like taking a lot of pain killers during recovery, I want to have some idea of how I'm actually feeling. A lot of people re-injure themselves after surgery because they think they're better than they are on painkillers and push themselves too hard. It's not just pain killers, I've mentioned it elsewhere that I had a major birth defect in my nose, a solid bone blockage and I was 16 and very angry before anyone would listen, they just threw decongestants at me. I'm not completely immune though I used to take Midol for very painful periods because I could barely function (I now know my uterus is deformed and I probably have PCOS), that's my meter for whether or not should take a pain med - whether or not I can function.

I used to be like that, but I concluded that I don't really care for pain even when I can tolerate it. I will not hesitate to medicate my pain away to improve my personal quality of life.

There's nothing wrong with refusing painkillers. I don't regret refusing them outside of extremes, but I don't regret using them now to deal with less debilitating pain, either.

Am I the only aspie with a low pain tolerance?

I have a high pain tolerance too. I had a cyst on my upper leg and I was cutting it out with a hobby knife and I actually got down into the muscle (it's very stringy)

True.

How does "I have a high pain tolerance" even come up in normal conversation? They don't need to know, you don't need to tell.
Also, a lot of people say "I have a high pain tolerance." Then, they freak out over a minor paper cut. Most people don't have quite a high pain tolerance as they say. Their reactions might not have anything to do with you-- and if it does, it's probably in how you say it. If someone thinks you're bragging about something or being smug, they'll say "no you don't" to what you're saying more.

High pain tolerance doesn't always mean not feeling pain, but may mean not showing many effects from it. I can function sort of during a migraine and someone observing may conclude I am experiencing less pain and impairment from said pain than I am because of how I function.

However, it is also my experience that most people with chronic pain of some sort have a higher pain tolerance than the general population, and put up with pain every day that would have many able-bodied people moaning in bed about how much their life sucks. I mean, imagine feeling like you have the flu all the time. And then you catch a flu on top of that.