Do you have trouble tolerating physical discomfort?

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Examples:

-Colds
-Post nasal drip
-allergies
etc??

I do not know if this is an Asperger trait or not, but I get extremely aggravated / depressed / angry, if there is a physical symptom (even minor), that I cannot shake off.

I am really susceptible to colds, they hang on for months followed by a lingering bronchitis / excessive production of mucus. I CAN'T STAND IT! I get severely depressed and say things to myself like, "I hate this ******* body", "I have a piece of sh** immune system" -- "Can't even fight off a ******* cold", I rant and rave until kingdom come. It's insane

During this time, I get into an inconsolable despair. A little post-nasal drip will send me over the edge. I absolutely cannot tolerate bodily discomfort. My body becomes a punching bag when it happens, I get so angry when it is unable to fight things off. I'm also unable to concentrate on anything and cannot enjoy anything because I want the symptoms to go away.

Just wondering if any of you can relate......

I don't don't have such trouble with with that but i do hate being too hot or walking into a building where someone's got all the radiators on. I hate being hot so much. I seem to be bothered by cold weather slightly less than most ppl though. I don't think that's an aspie trait though.

^^ Actually, disliking heat just MIGHT be "an Aspie thing". I put-up a thread on here once, regarding disliking being hot, and maybe, 90 percent of the people who posted, said they hated being hot.

As for "physical discomfort": I'm only bothered by certain things----backache, headache, and stomachache----pretty much anything else, I don't have much problem with.

Post nasal drip is verry merry berry uncomfortable.
I hate physical discomfort, but I find that focusing on things that I like to do seems to take my focus off physical discomfort.
I hate heat too, but sometimes it can be pleasant to be in the heat, like yesterday I went to the beach when it was 90 degrees, but I only stayed there briefly, before the burning started.
I think I had more tolerance of heat when I was a child, I don't remember having any problem running around on hot summer days.

I have little pain tolerance. I also hate being hot, but luckily I live in a cooler climate.

Good topic. Do you feel frustrated about the difficulty in taking action when you're in discomfort or when you have something you can't shake off? Or is it more like 'my body is betraying me again'?

I'm autistic and I have challenges in processing physical feeling - including being sick or in pain. It's not that I don't have them, it's that I have a truly hard time putting how I'm feeling into words or taking action based on not feeling well. So I get into huge internal fights about 'do I feel sick enough to see the doctor' or go to the ER or have some physical problem looked at. When I was in my 30s, I remember angrily pounding my leg with my fist, and cursing at myself for having constant physical problems. And it's a really charged issue for me - I tend to let conditions go on, not knowing if they merit taking action, and eventually I end up flat-on-my-back sick. I nearly died from TB in my late 30s, collapsing, not realizing I was even sick. I can feel hopeless about it, because the problem is within me. I've never been that well integrated with my body to start with and irritating things like allergies or burning eyes drive me up the wall, make me really irritable. But finally being aware that I have his issue, I'm hoping I can take steps to better take care of my health.

Interesting about the immune system - in my case, I have an over-reactive immune system, so I don't get colds or flu, but I get inflammation and really painful crap.

^^^ I have difficulty measuring the severity of my illnesses. For me, mental distress feels worse than physical illness so I actually feel relieved when I am actually sick. I have difficulty differentiating the two.

Yes I have trouble tolerating minor physical discomfort, unless I'm strongly focussed on something else, when even fairly intense pain has been known to vanish. My worst time is when I'm trying to sleep, when there's nothing to focus on.

Yes, I do find physical discomfort hard to tolerate. Even when I have the tiniest headache, it bothers me a lot. I also find being cold extremely unpleasant, maybe more so than most people. I don't have a very high pain threshold.

What's the worst for me, though, is actually being sick and being unable to eat. I've gone through phases where I feel sick after eating and can't eat normally because of anxiety, and for me that's the worst feeling in the world. I actually worried that I'd never get better and be able to eat normally again.

I tolerate it pretty much all the time. I can't remember a time anymore when I felt "good" physically.

But I guess because I feel low-mid level discomfort most of the time...it only takes a small thing to really set me off, like getting a little overheated, or my clothes pulling the wrong way.

As someone with a chronic case of allergy rhinitis (possibly IDIOPATHIC) for most of my life HELL YES IT MAKES ME MISERABLE. I NEVER 'GET USED TO IT'.
It was NEVER good. It's making me break my focus and concentration on daily basis. It also makes other people judge me for being rude because of it. It makes me resort to something really inappropriate due to having multiple handkerchiefs being completely soaked by mucus. It makes my breathing difficult and if I resort breathing from my mouth, I'll get cough and eventually get fever because of sore throat.
And especially if it's cold; I can't tolerate cold well no matter what I try if I kept sneezing all over again. I cannot 'avoid' cold temperature either.

Yes, this post sounds like whining.

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I am hyper-sensitive to the 5 senses and pretty much miserable. The worst is my skin, I think. Heat drives me nuts.

For those of you with post-nasal drip and colds etc., please try a neti pot - it solved my problem completely. Actually, if you snort warm water out of your cupped hands, you'll know if it works.

The thing I have a lot of trouble with is deciding whether I'm having physical pain, or is it caused by emotion, or is it really there at all - whether to ignore it or not.

.. And even I have tolerance to heat, noise, unpleasant odors, wounds, lights, and harmless texture (At 5 senses, I'm sensitive)... I could never get over cold temperature, unpleasant taste, and allergy reactions.

But physical pain, that varies. I might be fine with injuries and physical discomfort. But when it's bothering me enough not to ignore it, that's when I lose tolerance to other senses and everything around me.

existentialterror wrote:

Examples:

-Colds
-Post nasal drip
-allergies
etc??

I do not know if this is an Asperger trait or not, but I get extremely aggravated / depressed / angry, if there is a physical symptom (even minor), that I cannot shake off.

I am really susceptible to colds, they hang on for months followed by a lingering bronchitis / excessive production of mucus. I CAN'T STAND IT! I get severely depressed and say things to myself like, "I hate this ******* body", "I have a piece of sh** immune system" -- "Can't even fight off a ******* cold", I rant and rave until kingdom come. It's insane

During this time, I get into an inconsolable despair. A little post-nasal drip will send me over the edge. I absolutely cannot tolerate bodily discomfort. My body becomes a punching bag when it happens, I get so angry when it is unable to fight things off. I'm also unable to concentrate on anything and cannot enjoy anything because I want the symptoms to go away.

Just wondering if any of you can relate......

Are you sure those are "colds" and not allergies? I used to get that crap as a kid, pretty much the same symptoms.... the unending day after day after day for freaking weeks and months of nonstop mucus-related idiocy, and no amount of cold medication does anything to it.... because it wasnt a cold to begin with. I'm on proper allergy medication nowadays, which has saved my sanity, really, because I just cannot stand that crap any more than you can. Most of the time now, I dont have to deal with it anymore, really. Just normal anti-cold medication though doesnt seem to have any effect whatsoever on allergy-caused symptoms.

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