I had a TENs machine. I also have endometriosis (after suffering for over 20 years found a surgeon willing to do surgery, gods bless her for giving me a chance to live). When I was still with my ex I used it as a simulator to try to show him what my pain felt like. He was on the floor screaming and couldn’t straighten his legs or stand up because of the pain and I was just standing there chilling and hadn’t even hit the lowest threshold of my normal everyday pain limit, let alone the pain I felt when I had my period. I was like now do you understand why I’m exhausted and depressed all the time and hate my life?
There is a portion of the population for whom fairly intense pain is not a “when that happened to me” but a “when that happens to me” and it just really results in developing a pain tolerance skill that I don’t think those for whom pain is understood as the occasional discrete injury really get. There are conditions that can cause that to happen to cis men, but it’s less common than for, uh, the entire rest of the population, and so fewer of them have had to develop that skill.
(Also, really glad you were finally able to get the surgery to help!)
I had a TENs machine. I also have endometriosis (after suffering for over 20 years found a surgeon willing to do surgery, gods bless her for giving me a chance to live). When I was still with my ex I used it as a simulator to try to show him what my pain felt like. He was on the floor screaming and couldn’t straighten his legs or stand up because of the pain and I was just standing there chilling and hadn’t even hit the lowest threshold of my normal everyday pain limit, let alone the pain I felt when I had my period. I was like now do you understand why I’m exhausted and depressed all the time and hate my life?
Yeah, that tracks.
There is a portion of the population for whom fairly intense pain is not a “when that happened to me” but a “when that happens to me” and it just really results in developing a pain tolerance skill that I don’t think those for whom pain is understood as the occasional discrete injury really get. There are conditions that can cause that to happen to cis men, but it’s less common than for, uh, the entire rest of the population, and so fewer of them have had to develop that skill.
(Also, really glad you were finally able to get the surgery to help!)