8 Aug 2018 How Much Pain Tolerance Do You Have?

How Much Pain Tolerance Do You Have?

Or, should I title it How Much Discomfort Can You Tolerate?  Though pain does have levels of severity, nobody can tolerate once it gets to a certain point, nobody.  However, discomfort is a different stressor.  Maybe discomfort is the low levels of pain?  A lot of people can go years in discomfort.  Sooner or later that discomfort ups the level of stress on the body which in turn increases pain.  

To me, the emotional discomforts are more damaging than the physical ones. There are many pain medications for the physical side.  Although, those can have their own negative consequences.   However, on the emotional side the “pain relief” is not something you pick up at the pharmacy.  The relief is in the form of conversations you need to have.  Asking or answering uncomfortable questions.  Some of these have to be done with yourself which is hard enough.  But when you have to do it with another person, then it gets even more difficult.

I was a master at avoiding having those conservations with people.  In that avoidance I was hurting myself but more than that I was hurting the other person.  Brutal honesty and telling what I really feel I kept that inside.  Even worse, I would lie and say things the other person wanted to hear.  In my mixed-up way of thinking, I did not want to hurt that person.  So, I avoided the short-term discomfort to solve the issues and continued on with long term discomfort.  That’s a great strategy for success. 

I have the ability to withstand discomfort for a long time if it meant avoidance of needed conversations.   I am working on fixing this.  It will improve my life as well as those around me.