Pain

My recent experience with cracking my radius (ever so slightly) has gotten me to thinking about the odd disparities I've noticed in how different people react to pain. I'm not talking about strictly physical pain, either.

Some of the pain-management strategies I've noticed:

1. Medication. Personally, I am not too thrilled with this strategy because painkillers are generally not very good for you. Medications for emotional pain are often even worse, plus they don't work. Self-medication is a BIG no-no.

2. Stoicism. Popular with men. Seems to work best in conjunction with:

3. Displacement activity. This tends to be my strategy, and my favorite displacement activity is a lengthy conversation about all the things that are currently causing me pain. I can understand why people find me obnoxious when I'm not feeling so hot. If it gets really bad I revert to number 2, in which case I don't want to have anything to do with anyone under any circumstances. They distract me.

4. Hysterics and/or freaking out. Small children do this. If you're 40 and you do this, you need to snap out of it.

5. Fainting. Only works in emergencies. Since I've never fainted in my life, I can't attest as to its effectiveness.

Almost everything I've read contributes to the same idea: toughness is mostly a thing of the mind. Meaning, ultimately, you can gain control over your reactions and not panic. It's an important skill to cultivate, believe it or not. Pain happens when something in your life is going wrong. The only effective tool you have for correcting the problem is your mind, and it doesn't function if you've fainted, gone into hysterics, or medicated it out of reality.