Regarding people who make a big fuss over an injury: do they really have a low pain tolerance level, or are they just big wimps?
For example, two people are shot and have identical injuries to their legs. One is screaming his lungs out, and the other is just grimacing. Does the first one actually feel more pain, or just express it more, or maybe the second one is for some reason just more used to pain?
Exposure, I’d guess. I’ve been in a lot of pain from injuries, shingles, bleeding ulcers, broken bones, etc and you kinda get jaded to it. Plus, you know you’re not gonna die.
Now when my young widdle wife cut her widdle finger, she fweaked!
Different people react differently to pain. The perfect example of this was made clear to me during labor. You had your screamers who were calling for bodily harm to anyone or anything nearby. Then you had the ones that just quietly grunted through the pain. I guess it just amounts to how much you can tolerate.
I have a relatively high pain threshold (years of ear infections will do that for you) with one exception: Needles. I can tolerate vaccinations pretty well: Small prick on the fat of you arm and you’re done. But giving blood? No way. Not this joe.
I’ve had to have blood drawn on various occasions in the past, and every time it’s the same: I become white as a sheet, woozy and faint, and I feel an urge to vomit. Nurses themselves have gone white and made me lay down until I regained color. It isn’t the blood: I’ll happily suck a cut finger before I can get the Neosporin and bandaid, for example, and getting my hand bloody when I crush a mosquitoe isn’t a big deal for me. It’s the needles. I cannot stand needles. I have a visceral aversion to them.
I feel the same way about narcotics. If I think about narcotics use for too long, I get sick and kinda pale and I have to lie down.
I better stop.
I would imagine the enviroment would have an impact on how the pain is handled. A tattoo parlor is a place where people will try their best to clam up no matter how much pain they are in.
I generally sew up bullet holes myself using a rusty needle and some string after I cauterize the wound with a red-hot K-Bar knife.
Derleth’s response makes me think that it’s a psychological or attitudinal reaction, rather than certain people actually red-lining on some Pain-O-Meter[sup]tm[/sup].
And some people just seem to like getting sympathy, or advertising their discomfort. I can’t see that myself. I’m extremely stoic in the face of pain, simply because I prefer to suffer in silence.
In fact, a couple years ago, when I passed a kidney stone in the middle of the night, I was in distress for a long time, and the pain and discomfort wouldn’t go away – in fact, it intensified. When the ache covered my entire left side and went into my testicles, I finally decided to wake my wife and tell her, “I’m in pain.” She knew I was serious, since I wouldn’t wake her just to cry wolf.
I know that for it, its more the shock of the pain rather than the amount.
If I say, am whacked in the head, I’m likely to yell “Ow!” even though I’m not hurt. If I’m angry or adenalin-rushed, you can pound on me for half an hour before it bothers me. It just makes me even more energetic.
Likewise, if I know its coming, I can relax and mentally deal with a needle. If you just stabbed me with it, I would be freaked out. I can ( and have) engaged in “cutting” before, and the apin there is like a release valve. I cut and all the pain comes out and then my cares and emotional stress vanish before the real, physical pain.
I don’t know, my doctor’s (and dentists) have all told me that people just experience pain “differently” and that not a lot is understood about it. Basically, pain is a subjective experience.
I know that certain medical procedures, which some people experience as “uncomfortable,” I have experienced as searing, overwhelming pain (similar to the time the novacaine wore off before a root canal on a severely infected tooth was finished, in case you need a marker for “intense pain.”)
I remember my brother and i having our braces tightened always at the same time when we were kids. He would be ready to go get ice cream or whatever, totally ok with it. I would be suffering so badly I just wanted to go home and be miserable.
On other types of pain, the two of us would not have this discrepancy. I just think that some types of pain affect some people differently.
I think pain is definately subjective. It also depends on prior pain experiences. I used to carry on pretty good over minor injuries until I had back surgery. After that, it’s hard to decribe much as “painful”.
I don’t know- a lot of it is probably attention getting, too. I mean, damn- a small cut just doesn’t warrent constant carrying on unless you’re a child.
for me it’s a bit hormonal.
i’ve walked around the streets of prague with a sprained ankle and a backpack quite happily
i’ve cut out a cyst from my own finger with a scalpel
i’ve had mouth ulcers all over my tongue, gums, lips and throat after an allergic reaction… and treated them with TCP
i can run until i throw up, and then run some more.
i’ve had years of chronic back pain that i treated with ice compresses
but my period pains have me whimpering and crawling up in bed with codeine and a hot water bottle
c’est la vie!
That is the perfect marker. I’ve broken countless bones, been burned, had frostbite, I been given stitches w/o any anesthetic, but I will never forget the pain of root canal.
I’ll agree with the general argument that the experience of pain is largely subjective and once you have a marker for extreme pain, everything else kinda fails in comparison. Having said that, I do think there’s also a novelty component as well. If you break the same bone a few times, you get used to the experience and can shrug it off as no big deal. After doing it half a dozen times it doesn’t even really hurt anymore. But I’d imagine that the first time around, you’ll scream like a banshee due to the sheer newness of it all.
Physical differences definitely enter into it. My dentist believes I’m stoic. I refuse local anesthetic–because I hate the taste–for things that other people apparently consider quite painful. I also walk around for long periods of time on blisters without noticing.
In point of fact, though, I am a wimp. The instant I feel any pain, I whine like mad. In my case, physical insensitivity to pain and emotional wimpiness cancel out, and I end up seeming relatively normal.
I think a person’s situation has a lot to do with how they react to an injury, take forced labor, marches or POW situations for example. People tend not to cry about non-life threatening injuries if they know it will get them killed.
In my case, I thought I was pretty tolerant of pain until I had salmonella.
I’ve broken every toe, some of them multiple times. Snapped my ankle and didn’t even know it, I thought it was twisted. Had (still have) lower back pain and the surgeries to go with it. I lopped a finger off and had it reattached. It was more frighteneing than painful.
But the horrible internal, me hitting the walls, throb of a wicked case of samonella made me wish for a merciful death.
I get all wimpy just thinking about it!
When I was a kid, I used to be such a wimp. I’d cry for anything, hurt or not. Hehe. I guess when a child gets hurt, and their parents come running to them, the kid is thinking, “Oh wow, I really am hurt I guess…”
Now though, pain doesn’t affect me. Especially needles. I have peircings on me, none of them hurt at all (I even have a giant bar going through the top of my ear). I’ve also had a tattoo, and I barely felt a thing.
As for good ol’ fashioned pain, I ripped cartledge and tendon in my knee and I was just like, “Wow, that f**king hurts” As for my friend on the other hand, who had the same injury, was screaming bloody murder.
The one thing that does get to me though, is having a sore throat. I’ve had tonsil infections more then anyone I know, so you’d think I’d be used to be by now. Not a chance in hell.