PAIN THRESHOLD V PAIN TOLERANCE: IT HURTS WHEN I DO THIS

Pain threshold is the point at which a stimulus becomes painful, or more clearly, how much of a stimulus you need to make your brain say that something is now painful. 

 

I got that from a physical therapy site along with:

 

The point that you shifted from experiencing pressure to experiencing pain is your pain threshold.  

 

For example:

The older kid who tickled little kids until they cried.

It’s starts one way and ends in tears.

I’m thinking of good intentions gone wrong, which is one of my specialties.

I had a museum meeting that included plans to move a hand-built cabin on Sauvie Island.

So I took a crew out to the country and did just that.

 

Boss: What did you do?

Me: Moved the cabin to the front of the barn like we talked about.

Boss: I didn’t mean this year.

 

That exchange kicked in a pain threshold of foot-dragging nonsense, which I found inspiring.

A donor called about their printing press, a hand operated job from a small town in Washington which was an improvement on the presses we already had.

The press had been brought to a house in Sellwood where the owner built an addition for it and printed Christmas cards.

I made a plan, rented a lift-gate truck, and took the crew over.

We removed a door, built a plywood highway with three alternating sheets of  3/4 inch 8 X 4, and rolled out on dollies.

 

Boss: What did you do?

Me: Picked up the printing press we talked about.

Boss: We were hiring a moving company.

 

Pain Tolerance

Pain tolerance and pain threshold are 2 different things.  Pain tolerance is what you, as an individual, experience.  

For example: 3 people cut their fingers in the exact same way. 

1. Person 1 rates the pain as 4/10

2. Person 2 rates the pain as 6/10 

3. Person 3 rates the pain at 10/10

In this example, technically all 3 people have the same injury, but their experience is quite different.  

In my experience of cutting my fingers it’s not pain at first, it’s a mental note of ‘what the fuck was that?’

Whether it’s on a vegetable cutting board, a chop saw, or a mat knife carving sheetrock in the ceiling while installing a fan, the shock and surprise of the cut is bigger than the pain.

In the middle of a woodworking project I took a good sized sliver under my thumbnail, so big I wanted to show it off before I took it out.

With a neighbor who is a contractor, I went next door with it.

The wife answered the door.

 

Me: Is Larry home. I want to show him my thumb.

I held it up to her.

Wife: Yeah, my pussy hurts too. Larry, come show neighbor Dave your leg.

He’d been stabbed in the leg with a shard of 2X4 while framing a house, pulled it out, duct taped the wound, and finished the day.

It was a one-up that canceled my big sliver.

Me: You were lucky you didn’t get one under your fingernail.

Larry: Yeah, I’m just lucky like that, I guess.

 

When Pain Threshold Shrinks

How often do you see someone react in a painful way to something you think is minor.

Do you encourage them to ‘suck it up buttercup?’

‘Grow a pair?’

‘Man-up mofo?’

Or, do you say, “That looks painful. What can I do to help?”

That last one is the right one.

The other three you may keep to yourself. Save them for your interior monologue.

There are enough touchy people who cry out at the slightest, well, slight, who consider everything an insult.

Go ahead and be hard on yourself, but remember no one else is asking for it.

If you are a good example, live a good life, why ruin the impression with your nasty attitude?

Are their exceptions?