You might be interested in this post that went into some attitudes I’d encountered towards pain that I couldn’t describe as pain, and my reactions to it.

As for something not hurting when it looks like it should, in my experience an episiotomy experienced without benefit of anesthesia doesn’t hurt after the initial “pinch” feeling. (I’ve discussed this with someone else who felt her episiotomy, and she had a very similar experience. Then again, she’s been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, and she has odd pain responses, so her experience matching mine might not mean anything at all about what a “normal” person would experience.)

“Those who have real problems are the ones who don’t talk about it/show it/whatever.”

Then… “But how were we supposed to know you had problems? You didn’t talk about it/show it/whatever, therefore you didn’t really have any.”

These are both false generalizations, and both lead to the exact same conclusion (“we don’t have to deal with this problem because we can explain it away as not existing and/or not being serious”).

(For example, a father of a young kidnapped and brutally murdered child, I think named Adam Walsh, turned his personal tragedy into a crusade to get various child protection legislation passed so what happened to his son won’t happen to others. He doesn’t avoid talking about what happened (at least not now, I don’t know about at first), but his problems aren’t any less (or more) real. His son is still just as dead as the son of other parents who happen to deal with their grief and anger differently, and the resulting pain and grief of the loved ones left behind are pretty much the same for all that they’re expressed so very differently.)

You may also to some extent simply be seeing people in different STAGES of dealing with problems. If you haven’t already read a little something of the basic concept of the five stages of grieving, you may find it worthwhile to google it (denial, bargaining, acceptance etc). It can be a useful concept to understand as long as you keep in mind that, in practice, the distinction between one stage and the next may not always be as hard and fast as the theory sounds on paper, and the progression is rarely as neat as one two three four five either — people can and generally do go back and forth between stages or stages can overlap. (ANY theory of human behavior is inevitably going to be neater than reality, which is always going to be messy and complex … It doesn’t make the theories useless. Sometimes humans need to learn to “see” certain things in a simplified model before they learn to see them in real life. That’s all many, if not all, theories are really intended to do.)

One thing’s for sure: nobody seems able to tell if I’m in pain unless it’s serious and I’m rolling on the floor or passed-out. Wierdness.

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BTW, if I’m on my feet my shoulders & back start to ache after about 30 minutes (I have mild fibromyalgia, I should mention). After about 2-3 hours (varies a lot) I pass out.

I had a cardiological(sp?) test (“tilt table test”) done, and it showed that when I stood up my blood pressure would slowly drop & drop and then suddenly plunge.

So, for myself at least, I think that lack of blood flow to the brain is probably why causes the thinking fuzziness when I’m on my feet too long. Also, the body apparently tries to keep blood pressure up by pumping out lots of adrenaline & other things; hence the cold-hot sweat, racing heart, etc..

Don’t know if that’s related, but thought I’d toss that out there. I’m not female, BTW.

Maybe there’s just some sort of nerve deficiency when you’re on the spectrum. I’ve noticed I have some problems around a guy I know with Tourette’s. He has a similar vulnerability to sounds and the environment that’s kind of electrical in nature. ?