"People just can't see what you feel."

You can say that again.

Your comments are rather intolerant . . . since none of us can help how we are. That would be like me saying “don’t you just want to slap those wimps who cry over a broken bone or something insignificant like that?”.

There are definitely major disadvantages in being over-tolerant to pain as well.

For people who do not feel pain the same way as most, we can be nearly dead before we even realize there is something wrong. For instance, I was feeling brain-incoherent for several weeks as a teenager, which my doc blamed on stress. When I got to the point that I couldn’t hold a beat dancing (I was a competitive dancer) and I didn’t know whether “green” meant “stop” or “go” while driving, I steered the car directly to the hospital.

Turned out I had broken my nose at some point (didn’t feel it) and I had a sinus infection causing severe pressure on my brain . . . which is a very dangerous situation. The first thing they said was “don’t you feel any pain??”, which I did not. Within 30 min of giving me pain relief though, the confusion went away.

In fact, I have had several serious situations/complications because I don’t feel pain the same as others....

Trust me, we all become “wimps” when things get too rough for us . . . no matter what our tolerance level. It’s not as if people with a high tolerance don’t feel pain at all, it just gets or almost gets out of control by the time they do. When this happens, it takes twice as many meds, for twice as long, in order to get it under control again.

Like when we have surgery, and the nurses keep us pain killers every 4 hrs (and we don’t think we need them). The reason they do this is it is much easier to keep pain in control, than try to deal with pain that is out of control. People with a high tolerance (or messed up communication channels in this regard), often don’t hear those messages until things are really bad. The recovery can be much, much worse too.

So, I hope you have a little more understanding the next time someone “brags” that they have a high tolerance.

Cherie