Why do different people handle different levels of pain?

[billo]

Pain is a strange thing. It may have been shock but when I lost my small finger on my left hand I did not feel any pain at all for about the first 30mins and then it hurt like hell.

[poppins]

A maternity nurse once told me that red heads are the worst for being able to handle pain .

[carly83]

A maternity nurse once told me that red heads are the worst for being able to handle pain .

 

oi im a red head lol

[Rupert_Baehr]

... I just preferred the pain to the side effects of the painkillers.

 

Its either that or constant painkillers with all the nasty side effects. You cant win.

 

I remember people (in the 60's ) taking panadol and codeine preparations for quite minor pain. I didn't want to do that because I thought: 'What will happen if you really need painkillers and your body has become accustomed to them?' - I suppose the habit has stuck.

 

How do you quantify pain, anyway? - I've been asked: "On a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is no pain at all and 10 is severe pain, how much does it hurt?"

 

What's 'severe pain'? - Surely it's subjective and one person's '9' might be another's '6'?

 

More recently I've had some significant pain and I was given some fairly powerful painkillers. - They take away the pain, but they seem to do so by sending me to somewhere else where the pain doesn't exist. - The side effects (the ones I experience, anyway) are nasty and apparently the painkiller is addictive. - I don't need an addiction problem.

 

... I'm the sort of person who can hold a normal conversation whilst getting a brazilian.

 

I've forgotten: How many are there in a brazilian?

 

It's even possible to "train" your brain to take less notice of the sensory nerves and not feel pain as badly. This is one way in which chronic pain sufferers (like my wife) are helped to cope with life, and it has a lot less side-effects than high strength painkillers.

 

Indeed it is. I'm out of practice now, but about 15 years ago I learnt a fair bit about 'trance' and practised putting myself into light hypnotic trance regularly. The person who taught me was my GP at the time (he was also a friend) and when he left he handed me over to a colleague of his who was the chief psychiatrist at the hospital in which they both worked. That individual told me that he had used hypnotherapy extensively and that although it isn't a 'silver bullet' it can be used for many purposes - including as an alternative to anaesthesia.

 

I hate dentistry. I'm a chicken and dentistry hurts. The injections (particularly when they stick a needle up under your nose into the back of your eyeballs) hurt and once the anaesthetic has worn off, your jaw is bruised.

 

A few weeks later I was seeing a periodontist. - I thought he was going to do 'a really good cleaning job' (doesn't hurt much) but he told me he would be doing rather more and it would involve slitting my gums with a scalpel, peeling them back then having a go at the roots of my teeth. I wasn't too impressed, but I decided to give it a go. - I asked him to let me have a couple of minutes and put myself into a light trance. He started work. A few minutes later, he said: "I've had one or two hard-asses who can 'tough it out', but the pain shows in their eyes. Your not feeling any pain, are you?" I wasn't. All I could feel was pressure and I told him so.

 

The post-procedural pain was negligible. - No sore jaw after the anaesthetic wore off, because there was no anaesthetic.

[HeadingNorth]

How do you quantify pain, anyway? - I've been asked: "On a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is no pain at all and 10 is severe pain, how much does it hurt?"

 

What's 'severe pain'? - Surely it's subjective and one person's '9' might be another's '6'?

 

It is indeed subjective, but it at least lets the doctor/nurse know how much pain the patients think they are in. My wife has sometimes responded with "15." (She has bad days...)

[medusa]

It is indeed subjective, but it at least lets the doctor/nurse know how much pain the patients think they are in. My wife has sometimes responded with "15." (She has bad days...)

 

Indeed. If my hysterectomy was a 5 then my endometriosis was a 25 for 3-5 days a month, but if my endometriosis was a 10 then my broken ankle didn't make the scale.

[donkey]

Some people obviously are born just not feeling pain as much as others, but I believe anyone can condition themselves to be able to handle more pain. Personally, I've found that the more Ive enciountered situations where I've been in bad pain but had no choice but to just get on with it, the more my ability to ignore pain has increased.

[focusedhypno]

Indeed it is. I'm out of practice now, but about 15 years ago I learnt a fair bit about 'trance' and practised putting myself into light hypnotic trance regularly. The person who taught me was my GP at the time (he was also a friend) and when he left he handed me over to a colleague of his who was the chief psychiatrist at the hospital in which they both worked. That individual told me that he had used hypnotherapy extensively and that although it isn't a 'silver bullet' it can be used for many purposes - including as an alternative to anaesthesia.

 

I agree with Rupert, hypnotherapy can be a great way to manage pain.

You get more of what you think about in my opinion....so if you are thinking about pain then you are likely to get more pain. If however you are in a light trance and focused on something completely different then it is possible to forget about a big part of the pain.

The best things to focus on are very strong memories where you can remember specific smells, sights and sounds. Try and put yourself back in that place and relive that time in your memory and the pain you were very aware of in the present can just slide from your awareness.

 

Oh and HayleyJayne, don't scream and swear when you are waxing. A midwife once told me that swearing increases the endorphine levels and actually makes you more aware of the pain. Focus on deep steady breathing instead.