As an Autistic person, my experience of pain is quite different to that of non-Autistic people. This happens for a number of reasons
Interoceptive Differences: my interoception, the sense of what is happening inside my body, is interpreted differently by my brain meaning that I can be hypersensitive to some pains and hypo sensitive to others
Monotropic Attention Style: Monotropism means that my body mind tends to apply all of it's attentional resources to a narrower range of things, like a laser rather than a flashlight. Because of this, I may not notice pain immediately, or it may be all I can think about.
Gaslighting and Invalidation: Doctors and other healthcare professionals have constantly told me I am wrong about my experience, and so I now ignore my own feelings.
All of this means that when I experience pain, I often don't appear the way that medical textbooks have taught people to expect. As a result, I am often ignores or told I am exaggerating.
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