Spontaneous reactions to pain

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Wonder if this is a "spectrum thing", whenever I suddenly have a clumsy moment and hurt myself, I yell out or curse - or at best, I muffle it with a very pained and "scrunched up" expression. Which I'm told comes off as "very weird" and inappropriate. My wife has told me this before. It happens whenever I bump my shin against something, stub a toe really hard (or something falls on my foot), burn myself while cooking, or...well, that's pretty much all I can think of.

Maybe it has something to do with difficulty filtering emotions or sensations - but I suspect many NTs might do the same. After all, you only have a fraction of a second to react and decide "am I going to suppress this intense pain or not" - and let's face it, that's not much time to decide, heck I just release it with full force and frustration...

That's pretty common. Almost everyone would shout out with some kind of reaction. It is common that Autistics overreact to things, though, so your level of shouting out may in fact be inappropriately high. I know I observe these reactions in my mother quite often and think "really? is that minor little thing something to swear at the top of your lungs about??"

I tend to freeze and become very quiet. Physical pain is very much like any other kind of overload, and I have to get my mind around it and get back to some state of equilibrium before I can do anything else, including asking for help. You know how you might gasp in shock if you were thrown into a cold lake and have to take a second to figure out which way is up? It's kind of like that.

OP, it's very normal to cry out if you are in pain. Most NTs do; many autistics do, as well. One of the dangers of being autistic is that we might not be able to communicate it if we are in pain. That's not a particular problem for me because once I get out of the initial freeze I can usually ask for help or at least scream, but for someone who has to think about it before they make noise, it can mean that the only sign that they're in pain is that they're unusually quiet and unresponsive.

Perhaps your particular response to pain isn't quite the stereotypical NT-type response and seems odd to them. Just so long as you can ask for help if you need it, there's no danger.

Some people are rather offended by cursing, so it's probably a good idea to suppress that if you can. I remember learning how to use curse words--I was about eleven and I didn't realize that people thought they were bad. I just thought they were a new vocabulary word like any other. Oops.

I cannot think fast enough ahead of time, to stifle a YOW!! !

If I hurt myself I don't automatically react by making any sound or expression. I'm just silent and do what needs to be done to sort it out. If I make a noise or a face it is something I do deliberately to show someone else I've been hurt.

However, when I get hurt I instantly and automatically get furiously angry inside. If anyone laughs at me when I'm like this I will immediately snap or shout at them. It is one of very few situations I can think of where I respond without conscious thought.

I've always put this reaction down to the fact that my father used to laugh whenever I got hurt and shouting at him was the only way I had to stop him.

it depends. if i fall down then i am kinda more silent anger. but if i slam into something, then i become verbally angry and cuss a bunch and even get angry it the object.

I smash things that hurt me.

lol me too! my mom has had to stop me from smashing stuff

That's pretty much how I react too. I freeze and I probably have a scrunched up expression, but at most I whimper.

OP, it's fairly common to curse or yell when you hurt yourself.

I don't do that, naturally; more like Callista described. In fact, cussing due to pain was one of my many passing adaptations (until it all fell apart, anyway).

I read somewhere about a scientific study that found that cussing reduces the perception of pain, so there may even be a physiological reason for it (to my observation it's pretty normal to do).