Pain Tolerance Quotes

“The experience of childhood sexual abuse leaves some survivors with a high tolerance for pain. Dysfunctional environments require endurance and thick skin. Child survivors sometimes have to commit to sticking things out in order to survive. This pattern of tolerance follows you into adulthood. Instead of using pain as a signal to evaluate and change direction, you may use pain as a signal to try harder. Try harder to please someone. Try harder to control your children. Try harder to be a good friend. Try harder to be successful at a job that you hate. You remain in survival mode that you picked up as a child. Your high tolerance for pain keeps you committed to dysfunctional experiences and relationships that recycle pain from the past. Sometimes, the only way out of this cycle is time in isolation to learn what peace feels like. Sometimes you have to be willing to let go of everything in order to learn how to hold onto anything.”
― Rosenna Bakari

“Since we all have varying degrees of tolerance for pain, and have equally varied experiences with different types of pain, it makes the scale feel kind of meaningless -- especially when you consider that the person trying to ascertain how much pain the patient is in has his or her own experiences with pain that are thrown into the mix, too. A doctor trying to figure out how much pain a patient is in, when she says it's 'worse than a broken leg,' but 'not as bad as childbirth,' is still only going to be able to guess what that means based on his or her own experiences -- and perceptions -- of pain.”
― Abby Norman, Ask Me About My Uterus: A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women's Pain

“CrossFit Games athletes are renowned for their ability to suffer, but this event tested everyone’s limits of endurance, stamina, fortitude, and pain tolerance.”
― Ben Bergeron, Chasing Excellence: A Story About Building the World’s Fittest Athletes