Pain threshold

[Solveig]

I am wondering if anyone has a personal threshold for the amount of pain you can manage before it is too much? Everyone and everything in life has a breaking point. How much can we manage and still continue the fight? And is it cruel to keep telling a person who reached their maximum pain threshold that it will get better?

 

[Movingforward10]

Is this in relation to living with chronic pain?

 

[Solveig]

Is this in relation to living with chronic pain?

Not necessarily, but that is one level of pain that could be a part of a persons threshold. Personally, I thinking of the emotional pain of always being depressed and anxious and always afraid and always experiencing life alone and day-in and day-out you see how I are a mistake and people telling you it.

 

[Movingforward10]

Not necessarily, but that is one level of pain that could be a part of a persons threshold. Personally, I thinking of the emotional pain of always being depressed and anxious and always afraid and always experiencing life alone and day-in and day-out you see how I are a mistake and people telling you it.

Everyone has their limits.
And I think your question is very hard to answer as it's a very personal thing. We might all assess it differently for a whole host of reasons.

What I'm hearing is a lack of hope because of the chronic nature of being alone and trauma. And maybe it's the lack of hope that is the limit? Idk.

I know for me: things can feel overwhelming and my mind then goes to 'i can't live'. But then things get better, and I remember that feelings pass. But I also have people in my life, and I think that makes a difference.

But: having worked through a number of things and being a different person now to one I was before: things can get better. I can see things differently now in a way that I never ever thought possible. And that's through years of therapy.


Are you asking because the emotional pain you are in is unrelenting and things you have tried to get better haven't worked?

 

[Solveig]

Are you asking because the emotional pain you are in is unrelenting and things you have tried to get better haven't worked?

I have been suffering from C-PTSD since I was 8 and traumas have kept coming over the years, very consistently. One of my traumas was being abandoned by my parents. I have been alone in life for about 45 of my 50 years of my life, either alone or bullied. I have been to so many therapists over the years, tried medications, tried fresh starts. It also is hard when one of your therapists becomes a big part of your trauma and your ability to trust is smashed, because you worked with that therapist for 3-years, being very vulnerable and open with them, only to be unceremoniously abandoned by that therapist, dropped without explanation. I can't escape where I am now either. I'm trapped with no way to get away from the pain.

 

[Friday]

My physical pain threshold is easy... I have a heart attack... as I'm not one of those lucky people who pass out, in pain, but am more present.

8:10 screaming, even if my voice is gone, and posturing. Even if I can unerstand a question? I cannot answer (as I'm screaming). Most of the time I cannot even see, much less hear, so there's nothing to understand. Some of that are the ruptured vessels in my eyes/ears, but mostly it's because nothing but the pain really registers. People, vehicles, walls, all just blurred shapes and color and noise, at best. The posturing, meanwhile, means I cannot walk, sit, or control my body in any meaningful way. Just thrashing, flailing, arching, grabbing.

9:10 loss of control over my bladder & bowels. (Still screaming & fishing).

10:10 my heart stops.

***

My emotional pain threshold is tricky, because when I reach my limit? One of two things happen:

EITHER I get euphoric
OR my emotions shut off, entirely.

Either way? I. Feel. Great.

1. If my emotions shut off? I'm suddenly clear headed, calm, & pain free... which I interprete as "great". As I can't actually feel anything. In the moment it's more of an ...exhale... FFS FINALLY. OKAY! What needs doing and in what order? And then I start working up a list and accomplishing it, which is surprisingly easy once all those stupid emotions are out of the way.

2. Euphoria... is when I go to the ER / A&E, as it means I've stopped fighting and AM going to kill my self. The first time? It was an accident. There was a hospital between where I was, and where I was going, so I figured? Why not? Either they'll fix me or they won't. So I took my huge grin inside... and was nearly sent on my way by the triage nurse, but one of the doctors overheard my bubbly explanation of why I was there, kind of blanched... and brought me immediately back... and gave me a shot of something that SHOULD have knocked me out. It didn't. What it DID do was immediately clear my head. I don't think I was as sober as I thought I was, as I didn't bother checking out, or checking with anyone. I just thought: "Awesome! They DID fix me." And walked out. No longer suicidal (nor euphoric)... just... me. So I went home and went about living my life, grateful as all hell. It was years later that it finally occurred to me that doc must have thought I escaped & offed myself. I feel really badly I never let him know I was aces. It just didn't occur to me, in the moment.

***

So those are my LIMITS.

My limits? Aren't the hard part, for me. It's the middling bits where I can still think & feel, consumed by pain & despair, that are the hardest, most brutal, dangerous, & dark.

 

[Movingforward10]

I have been suffering from C-PTSD since I was 8 and traumas have kept coming over the years, very consistently. One of my traumas was being abandoned by my parents. I have been alone in life for about 45 of my 50 years of my life, either alone or bullied. I have been to so many therapists over the years, tried medications, tried fresh starts. It also is hard when one of your therapists becomes a big part of your trauma and your ability to trust is smashed, because you worked with that therapist for 3-years, being very vulnerable and open with them, only to be unceremoniously abandoned by that therapist, dropped without explanation. I can't escape where I am now either. I'm trapped with no way to get away from the pain.

I'm wondering what you want from this thread?

Do you want the stories from people here about their pain threshold? Or do you want hope from our stories that things can get better for you? Or do you want somehow to confirm that it won't get better for you, given what you have been through?

A lot of people on here have similar stories. Or sometimes very different stories. Some have success with talking therapy. Some don't. Some find success and change in various ways.

From your posts, I come back to: hope. It sounds like you don't have any as the past has proven to you, again and again, that hopes gets taken away. And I wonder about how you're able to regain hope to help think things can be slightly or vastly different.

 

[Solveig]

I'm looking for people to share their personal thresholds or breaking points. Can they identify their breaking point? I feel like I have a threshold or breaking point and I've been close to it in the past 3 years. I'm trying to "normalize" these things or acknowledge that if I reach my breaking point, the devastation of that being met will be heavily felt.

I don't know what I'm saying. I have never really known how to interact in the world. No one has to respond at all. I just put down some thoughts and questions I was having and posted it.

 

[Dynamic]

I feel this post a lot because I often wondered how much more can I actually take? Especially since idk how much more is inside me sometimes.

My pain threshold is bizarre. Technically it’s 9/10 times super high. Been told I’m strong for a female and it’s true my Dad is crazy strong (compared to other men lol)

But then fibromyalgia …changes everything. One time I pet my dog and my hand hurt. Shooting pains up my arm I was like ???

So I think pain threshold definitely relative and goes along with how full my stress cup is. How shut down I am etc. not sure if any of this is helping

Eating plenty of nutritious foods, and staying hydrated “makes me stronger” but enough to note and remember to do every day

Rest = strength which sounds obvious but means something different after trauma

Once I click out though - I’m like completely unstoppable I feel no pain nothing. Nothing matters and I’m ready to die.

However to live I’ve had to also learn how to not be destructive of my own life while in pain

I joke I’m allergic to stress but it’s not funny actually. I’m under fire right now and thankfully all the work I’ve put in in the past years has brought me a foundation to stand on and not fall apart.

Lastly I believe all humans are stronger than they know. But everyone has different breaking points.

 

[Movingforward10]

I'm looking for people to share their personal thresholds or breaking points. Can they identify their breaking point? I feel like I have a threshold or breaking point and I've been close to it in the past 3 years. I'm trying to "normalize" these things or acknowledge that if I reach my breaking point, the devastation of that being met will be heavily felt.

I don't know what I'm saying. I have never really known how to interact in the world. No one has to respond at all. I just put down some thoughts and questions I was having and posted it.

Thanks for explaining that to me.


It's a tough one. I don't know, or maybe I haven't got to that point, if there is a single breaking point? It's a steady steady drip and a decline over time? Idk. .but at the same time: there are moments of overwhelm that last for moments or weeks. Are those times breaking points? Idk.
Mental breaking points are hard to know I think. As I have to assess everything around me. But I have to know that I have to assess everything around me. Not sure if I am making any sense at all!

Thinking it through, I think my mind might have broken in one of the sexual assaults/rapes. Because the memory of that is shattered into a million tiny pieces that are impossible to put together. I can only describe it as "my mind shattered". So maybe that was a breaking point? More than the other rapes/assaults.
But what broke , other than my mind. And I had no idea that it did. As I carried on as 'normal'.
So it's hard to know really.

 

[Weemie]

Every human has a breaking point. It's just biology. After a certain amount of external force, you will be unable to adapt or overcome. You will be broken. There's nothing meaningful about breaking, anymore than if an object breaks and you have to repair it.

When you break it's not the end. Emotional stimulus is still physical circuitry, and yes at some points you will experience via interoception, sensations that are beyond your capacity to endure. There's nothing to do but continue to exist, maintain homeostasis as long as you can.

Human beings are extraordinary. We are so resilient. We can, and I think this is true, overcome anything. Not every person will, but people can. I've been broken, twisted inside out, mangled, desecrated, dehumanized. And I've been loved, nurtured, supported. Put back together.

Breaking isn't linear, neither is healing. It's all human.

 

[Dynamic]

I love what you said @Weemie of course not that you were hurt