Autism and Pain Sensitivity

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Study suggests link between autism, pain sensitivity

(moved from News & Current Events to General Autism discussion)

As mentioned before and what i have discussed , a self defense mechanism. as a result of feeling TOO MUCH not too little! Also backed up with recent MRI testing that was discussed by Simon Baron Cohan who admitted many on the spectrum actually feel TOO MUCH empathy.. Not sure if it was the same experiments or a separate peer review.

My tattooist has stated on a number of occasions that I have a very high tolerance for pain.

^ Yup, tattoos are no problems for me either. Can sit and get tattooed all day.
I'm partially insensitive to pain. I got told that when I felt basically nothing after major abdominal surgery a few years ago. I was doing yard work three days later, when I was told to expect six weeks of recovery.
But weirdly, they mentioned this when I was freaking out trying to get the unused morphine drip off me because I couldn't stand the sensory feeling of it taped to my skin, tethering and pulling at me, and I did not need pain relief.
Instead of saying autistics are hypersensitive to pain, perhaps more accurate would be we can have an atypical response to pain stimuli, either hypersensitive or hyopsensitive.

Wow, that study is very interesting! I feel like it's about time somebody realized that sensory issues play a huge role in most autistic people's lives. We are not just cold and unfeeling.

Why the f**k do they bring the "lack of empathy" BS into it? What's that got to do with how sensitive one is to pain?

Most descriptions of autism discuss hypo as well as hyper sensitvity. Hypo pain sensitivity was ignored here. I think in a self report survey pain survey sensitivity would be skewed towerds hyper. If you are hypo sensitive you are usually going about your life without thinking about what you do not have. Plus it is almost impossible to compare your pain sensitivity to others. If you have pain sensitivity as a special interest and are constantantly comparing yourself to others it might be possible to get a general idea.

They bring the "lack of empathy" garbage into every "study". I'm so sick of it. And I happen to be quite sensitive to pain. Any unusual changes to my body, or just thinking about it, can be downright terrifying. I'm worried that by the time I'm in my 50's I'll be crippled with osteoarthritis and won't be able to walk anymore. If I don't die of a heart attack first.

I have a very high sensitivity to pain and chronic pain disorders like headaches and vulvodynia.

I'm not sure if I'm more or less sensitive than most people but I definitely have a hard time expressing that I'm in pain. I don't emote well on my face and so I tend not to visibly react or yell out or anything even when I am hurting. Even when I was 6 and I broke my foot, I decided to just hide it and I never told anyone. I broke it again last year at the very beginning of a soccer match and I proceeded to play the whole game on it in severe pain before driving myself to a doctor. Nobody even knew I had hurt myself until a week later when I was in a boot.

So I guess I'm mostly just miserable at knowing how to tell people when I'm hurting. Because if you don't react typically at the time that the painful thing happened, it's kind of weird to go up to someone later and say, "Hey I wanted to tell you that I actually broke my foot 30 minutes ago and nobody noticed since I didn't yell or fall down or do anything to signal any kind of obvious distress at the time!"

Would be interested to see the actual results, sample size etc. I've had a physiotherapist and a dental hygienist both comment on my high pain threshold, obviously independently.

I'm very sensitive to pain, actually.

Especially in the teeth, tongue, sexual organs, and the area around a nail that I've just bitten.

I am somewhat prone to tension headaches---and I don't really handle them well.