Unhealthy Tolerance to Pain?

[Zach]

To give ourselves a break, I think one origin of this attitude is developed in childhood, when some of us had very difficult situations to handle in dysfunctional families. And children are survivors—so they learn to push through the pain to survive.

yes, I definitely think there is that aspect as well.  Just trying to 'survive', given some very unsupportive environmental factors.

Sometimes the time/conditions are not conducive to healing, and re-examining the causative factors of pain.

For example, it's only just recently I've been able to go back and look at some of the trauma I've had around the concept of 'death'.  One of my favourite aunts died when I was aged 6 or 7, and it's only some three decades later that I've truly realised how shocking that was to me (it was a very sudden loss - car accident).  No real sense of closure, and it's like someone I loved dearly just up and departed from my life with no explanation (to a child's mind).

So painful stuff gets buried ... for a very good reason.

So I think we are talking about a few different things here that may or may not be (depending on the person) tied together in a more complex way than they seem at first sight.

yes, I would definitely make the distinction between true pain, and something which one might consider as just discomfort/uncomfortable.

Being uncomfortable or being discomforted by something is part of the learning experience - to use a cliche, it takes us beyond our 'comfort zone'.  We need to be stimulated to grow and expand, and face new and unfamiliar things.  The comfort zone is definitely something that can become something restrictive to our higher purpose.  Even avoiding pain can become habitual in our comfort zone.

I think the issue that I personally had was that I started mixing these two concepts, so that they started becoming undiscernable for me.

That is, I developed a tolerance for 'pain' - pain here being something that leads towards injury, self-damage - and just writing that off as discomfort/being uncomfortable.

The example that comes to mind is that about 3 years ago, I started getting back into physical fitness and running.  I hadn't run in quite a long time, and so I was really pushing myself in the first couple of weeks.  During one run I was ignoring the strong signals of pain in my right foot, and it got stronger and stronger as I kept going.  I didn't stop.  Eventually it became excruciating, and I couldn't continue.  I think I gave myself a foot fracture from that experience (I didn't get it checked out by a doctor, but it did heal after 5-6 weeks of strong discomfort).  I had never had a foot injury before, and I just wrote off my pain during running as discomfort, and pushed myself through it to the point of injury.

Anyway, I do agree with you that it's a more complex issue.  I think you've fleshed out many of the other related points.

ah, that helps me understand your OP a little bit better. I figured you were speaking of muscle fatigue because all you mentioned running and the result being pain.