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High pain tolerance

I also have this same problem. Hypo sensitivity to some types of physical pain, but being touched many times has bothered me. I suppose it is part of asd.
 
Tom said:
When I accidently hit my thumb with a hammer I would say no, I do not have a high pain tolerance.
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O-YES! I've whacked my thumb with a hammer and I went off running and screaming in pain too.
 
FreeDiver said:
O-YES! I've whacked my thumb with a hammer and I went off running and screaming in pain too.
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I think there is probably a difference between a sudden unexpected short sharp pain like whacking oneself with a hammer, and a more prolonged and possibly expected pain such as with an illness?
 
Astroganga said:
With some of my others things didn't go according to plan either though thankfully I have never had to have a c-section or forceps, I am not sure how I would have coped with either of those as I have a phobia of surgery. Xx
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Unfortunately I tick both those boxes. Forceps for the first, caesarean for the second. At least the second time I was prepared for getting sick again and had done many hours of relaxation to prep. That mental prep saved my sanity. Preeclampsia sucks, the treatment sucks, but that treatment saved my life...and my own prep saved my brain. First time around I was traumatised. :rolleyes:

I can say, though, that we are capable of withstanding or surviving great horrors and facing our biggest fears (mine being a caesarean while awake) with that mental preparation. Affirmations are amazingly powerful! :)
 
qwerty said:
when you experience ongoing extreme continual pain everything else is more of a distraction than a pain. i don't know if it's a high pain threshold or just being constantly exposed normalises other pain somehow.
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Yes, I agree. I have endometriosis and have gone through several years of constant abdominal pain plus other cyclical pain. I also am recovering from ME/CFS and that has had me in constant pain, albeit low level. There is definitely a difference between sustained pain and sudden pain. Constant exposure does normalise it to a degree to the point that sometimes when the pain stops I'm not even aware it's gone.

I've also found that understanding the processes in chronic illness that cause pain helps in mindfulness and relaxation exercises.

Anytime there is fear or ignorance involved (such as severe injury or extreme unexplained pain) the threshold seems to be much lower. For me, anyway.

I do tend to take over the counter stuff a lot because with chronic pain there in the background of my mind all the time it's a bit like having an insect buzzing around my head, adding to the sensory overload. So I try to dull the pain to keep meltdowns at bay. :/
 
Even when I was a child, I was told that I have a particularly high tolerance for pain. I'm 54 now, and I'm a cyclist -- active in club rides, and I ride a lot solo (approx 150 miles/ week total). A riding partner said something to me to the effect of don't I ever feel pain? I suppose I do have a high tolerance for pain. This must be one of the compensations of having an ASD.

Sometime in the last year, I read a newspaper article in which the aspie youth had an especially high tolerance for pain. The article said that either a particularly high or particularly low tolerance for pain can be part of ASD.
 
I've walked on broken bones in my feet, only found out feet were broken months later. I've learned I apparently broke the spinous processes (the projections on the cervical vertebrae) in my neck.

My autism manifests as highly challenged awareness in general. Add in plenty of shutdowns due to sensory sensitivities and a major disassociation/physical numbness, and my lack of awareness of many types of pain is more understandable.

In September I broke my left foot, but only learned this months later. Last week I got a 2nd degree chemical burn, and only realized that several days afterward. Guess awareness of things in general and of one's body in specific can have an effect on pain perception.
 
When I donate blood the phlebotomist always presses around my arm with two fingers to locate a good vein. That touch often feels worse than when they actually stick the needle in. That makes me feel like I'm strange.
 
normally I have a LOW tolerance for pain in that hypodermic injections make me wince and groan like a little boy. but when I shattered my left arm and broke my right arm in a severe bike accident, aside from the first 30 seconds which felt like fire, I was numb. maybe I was shocky and didn't know it? did lose lotsa blood, so mebbe.
 
It seems to be a mix with me, when it comes to minor injuries like stubbing my toes or minor burns from touching an oven door I'm a big baby, but when I broke my pelvis the pain didn't really bother me much, instead it was the feeling of something simply being terribly wrong inside me when I moved in certain ways which was awful. The nurses commented when they were asking me the to rate my pain on a scale of one to ten that my pain levels were far lower than what they would expect with my injury. I fractured my arm once and didn't even notice, found out a few months later when I had a bad fall off a horse and had to have several x-rays.
 
Frogverne said:
I also have this same problem. Hypo sensitivity to some types of physical pain, but being touched many times has bothered me. I suppose it is part of asd.
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abby normal said:
normally I have a LOW tolerance for pain in that hypodermic injections make me wince and groan like a little boy. but when I shattered my left arm and broke my right arm in a severe bike accident, aside from the first 30 seconds which felt like fire, I was numb. maybe I was shocky and didn't know it? did lose lotsa blood, so mebbe.
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NothingToSeeHere said:
It seems to be a mix with me, when it comes to minor injuries like stubbing my toes or minor burns from touching an oven door I'm a big baby, but when I broke my pelvis the pain didn't really bother me much, instead it was the feeling of something simply being terribly wrong inside me when I moved in certain ways which was awful. The nurses commented when they were asking me the to rate my pain on a scale of one to ten that my pain levels were far lower than what they would expect with my injury. I fractured my arm once and didn't even notice, found out a few months later when I had a bad fall off a horse and had to have several x-rays.
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I'm glad I'm not the only one with a mix. I am hopeless about injections. Unless I'm prepped. But I still get mocked by the person wielding the pointy needle!
 
I once broke my arm joint and it felt funny and it hurt when I moved it so I kept it still as much as I could but then the pain got worse and worse. My mom told me to go into ER so I did and it turned out it was broken at the joint and it was a good thing I went because I couldn't even use that arm for work and I needed both arms for work so I was on sick leave by the doctor which sucked because of three weeks without pay. Then when my arm healed, I had to ask for a doctor release back to work so the boss would let me work again. But when I step on a nail, I feel it. When I went into labor, I still packed and got stuff ready and still talked. The pain wasn't bad in the first one but it was more intense in the second to a point where I was wanting to scream and cry. But I hear women have higher pain tolerance than men and everyone says I did good for both deliveries because it was better than most women when they go through it, especially when I was so unprepared for a natural delivery because labor went too quickly and I felt nothing when I pushed her out and yet most women describe it as pushing out a watermelon and how painful it is and I felt nothing. I have had papsmears done and I felt nothing, I have had a wart frozen to get it removed and nothing but it stung afterwards and then it was gone and the doctor also said I was doing good. I can burn myself and I remove my hand this instant so I think my pain tolerance is normal. I don't like to feel pain so I don't mind painkillers. I took some after giving birth.
 
I once got hit in the head with a medal bar at work and it felt real funny and then sore but it wasn't bad. My only fear was having a head injury.
 
I'm not sure. I had appendicitis and wasnt in much pain before the surgery, so it took a wile to diagnose. Then after they gave me me a button to press (linked to a drip) and you can top up the pain (with a minimum limit set). I was complaining it was painful, but not loudly then my dad noticed it was set to give the wrong amount - I think it was 0.1 rather than 1. Again they were surprised I wasn't in a lot more pain.

However I had brain surgery and I was in a great deal of pain through headaches, that was horrendous, as were the blood tests. Not sure if it was better then for other people just that it was very bad for me.
 
i dont feel physical pain as much as emotional and mental pain. So i guess i have a high pain tolerance. To me, pain is just hard to feel at times. i normally dont know that i have hurt myself unless i see blood or something. That is when i feel pain, but not before. If i break a bone (which i have done), then i normally dont feel it that much, but my parents know when i break something. I am not sure how they know, but they do. My pain receptors dont work right, so pain is mild for me.
 
When I was ten I had accident which left me with a green line fracture in my wrist.

It was only twelve days later when my mother in a rush grabbed my hand to cross the road that she realised that something was wrong.

We went to the hospital and the doctor carried out a few movement tests and said that nothing was wrong.

My father asked for an x-ray for their peace of mind and when the doctor seen the x-ray, she couldn't apologise enough.
 
Kit said:
I once got hit in the head with a medal bar at work and it felt real funny and then sore but it wasn't bad. My only fear was having a head injury.
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Sounds a bit like the time my youngest knocked down an ikea mirror that had a very pointy corner over, while I was crouching down putting something away. The corner of the mirror jabbed into my scalp and made a dent in my skull-that is still there and this was two years ago. I felt dizzy, odd, a bit sick and had a headache but it didn't hurt as much as it would any 'normal' person and I was fine by the next day.
 
This has been an issue for me. I injured both of my wrists a few years ago, and went to the doctor to get an X ray, but when they squeezed them, I couldn't feel any pain. This caused them to skip the x rays and send me home. To this day, I still have pain in both of my wrists, and certain activities will aggravate it. Of course, at the time, I didn't understand pain tolerances and sensory things, so I just took their word for it that I would feel pain if there was something wrong. Seemed logical enough!
 
I'm pretty sensitive to physical pain. Of course there's no way of knowing exactly how one's experience of it compares to that of anyone else.
 
I sang, laughed, and cracked jokes while pushing out my 9lb 21 1/2 inch baby boy. Also healed super fast, and was fine after having a c section for my aspie baby. That same aspie girl has busted her knees so many times, covered in piles of blood to her feet, and would just ask for a bandaid. So yes :)
 
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