What enhances your pain tolerance?

The swearing thing is interesting to know. You could probably find more examples in the place you read that in the first place. ..In the mean time, I’m still googling.
waits for mod.?

I think of encountering something I absolutely hate. It excites my sympathetic nervous system, which releases pain-blocking endorphins; additionally, I can say to myself, “this is far better than having to deal with “hated individual.”

Decreasing my pain.

Swearing works, especially if you swear creatively, and make yourself laugh. Also, eating hot peppers increases your tolerance for pain over time, and since the capsaicin is also reported to help prevent certain types of cancer, eating hot peppers is a win-win situation.

So bite into a habanero and swear while you are screaming!

Good meds.

Personally I find that vomiting and crying help. Also, naps.

I do one of the following, or a combination:

— mentally isolate it or put it away from me (easiest if it is at a distance from my center of consciousnes—e.g., in my foot, not in my mouth)
— treat it with awareness, acknowledging it and telling the pain-reporting functions that they are doing a good job (works for some things)
— using the breathing I used during childbirth—a technique that has been handy many times since

I have never found that swearing helps. Just the opposite, I have thought for a long time that if you give in to a lot of swearing in some adverse situation, you tend to make more of it and it can turn into a much bigger deal. My father, for instance, never swore in his life, and my husband does, heavily. I know that if they both had the same accident—stubbing a toe, just to take an example—my husband’s reaction would last a lot longer and involve more drama.

I stick my right thumb fingernail right underneath my left thumb fingernail and push in. The small hurt from one fingernail digging into the bed of another fingernail helps me focus on some other pain. Sometimes I also bite the very tip of my tongue.

When I got my tattoos, the wall in the room was that speckled-splotched kind of thing. I looked for shapes or patterns in the design. Since my mind was occupied with something other than thinking about the pain, it seemed to hurt less.

LSD

@Clair and all: Here’s the %&!#ing article (From Scientific American, no less.)

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-do-we-swear

@gailcalled Thanks, very interesting.

When I am angry my pain tolerance is increased. If you get pissed enough, and punch a wall, you never feel it. Maybe that goes along with the swearing, I know I only really swear when I am angry too.

Anesthetics.

Anger and booze.

Sometimes misdirection helps. When the dentist is working on my teeth, I play rhythms with my feet, and piano riffs with my fingers.

Cocaine’s one he’ll of a drug!

(O, those naughty apostrophes. Hell. He’ll = he will.)

Sex

my son running off…

I went over on my ankle a few months ago…(which is now being investigated for torn ligaments!!) whilst running after my son in a supermarket…

the thought of him disappearing round any corner would make any sense of pain in me disappear…