My pain tolerance is abnormally high.

I'm not bragging. It took me a long time to realize that things other people find excruciating barely register for me — like someone turned the volume down.

But I clearly remember how afraid of pain I used to be.

As I kept learning about neuroscience and psychology, I finally understood — this wasn't personality. This was something my brain was forced to learn.

I've been through more than twenty surgeries in my life. I went through induced labor — the kind of pain that makes you scream, pass out, then get jolted awake by the next contraction, over and over, until your body no longer feels like your own.

I also survived a serious car accident. Because it was an emergency and the ER was packed, I had to wait for the person ahead of me to finish surgery before I could get into the operating room.

I waited sixteen hours.

During those sixteen hours, I didn't dare move. The slightest shift sent a jolt of pain through my entire body — the kind that makes you cry out involuntarily. By the end, I drifted into a strange state. Not asleep. Not unconscious. It was as if my awareness floated outside my body. The pain was still there, but I couldn't quite feel it anymore.

I learned later that this state has a name in psychology.

It's called dissociation.

Dissociation isn't willpower. It isn't gritting your teeth and pushing through. It's your brain's automatic defense mechanism — when pain signals become so overwhelming that the system is about to crash, your brain steps in and temporarily disconnects your conscious awareness from your body's sensations. It keeps you from collapsing under the sheer weight of it.

This is the brain's ultimate safeguard. You don't choose it. Your body makes that decision for you, to keep you alive.

But dissociation is only the first layer.

After twenty-plus surgeries, my brain learned something even more important.

When pain reaches the brain, the first thing it does isn't "feel the pain" — it's "assess how dangerous this pain is." If the brain decides it's a life-threatening emergency, it launches a full-scale panic response — racing heart, tense muscles, emotional meltdown. But if the brain decides "I've been through this before, and it didn't kill me," it does something very different.

It sends a signal from the top down, regulating the emotional center: "I recognize this feeling. It's just a signal. It's not actually dangerous."

So you're not pain-free. You're just not panicking.

That distinction is everything.

When your pain alarm has gone off more than twenty times, your brain naturally raises the threshold. What used to make you scream, your brain now shrugs at: "Oh, this? I've had worse."

This isn't numbness. It's your nervous system recalibrating how it reads pain after repeated exposure.

I recently came across a study that genuinely excited me.

In November 2025, a research team at UC San Diego published a paper in Communications Biology. They tracked participants in Dr. Joe Dispenza's seven-day intensive meditation retreat and found that after just one week, blood levels of endogenous opioids — the body's own natural painkillers, including beta-endorphin and dynorphin — rose significantly.

In simple terms, through intensive mental training, the body activated its own pain-relief system. No drugs. No external intervention.

I should note: this study had only twenty participants, and the retreat environment itself changes people's baseline stress levels. The researchers themselves said more clinical trials are needed. This is an early finding, not a conclusion.

But what excited me wasn't the data itself.

What excited me was that this research offered a scientific explanation for something my body had already experienced passively — that the brain can be reset, and the way we perceive pain can be changed.

I was forced to learn this through twenty-plus surgeries.

Dispenza's research suggests you can train this ability intentionally, through deliberate practice.

Two different paths. Same destination.

And here's what makes this even more relevant — this doesn't only apply to physical pain.

Think about it: when your partner ignores you, that heavy ache in your chest travels along neural pathways remarkably similar to those activated by physical injury. When your boss criticizes you in front of everyone, that burning face and clenching stomach — your brain processes it almost exactly the way it processes bodily pain.

Emotional pain and physical pain activate the same regions in the brain. The heartbreak you feel can be just as intense as the pain from a car accident.

The good news is, the same "reset" logic applies to your anxiety, your fear, and those recurring trauma responses.

Next time a wave of emotional pain hits — the panic of being abandoned, the shame of being rejected, or that feeling you can't quite name but hurts deeply — try activating what I call your "CEO brain."

Step one: Awareness. Name it. "Ah, there it is — that fear of abandonment is showing up again." The simple act of naming it activates your rational brain and stops your emotional center from spiraling alone.

Step two: Separation. Tell yourself: "This is a signal, not a threat. I am safe right now. This isn't a car accident. This isn't an operating table. No one is trying to hurt me."

Step three: Regulation. Breathe. Slowly and deliberately. This isn't feel-good advice that people underestimate — when you consciously slow your breathing, you're sending a direct "all clear" signal to your nervous system, activating the parasympathetic response and pulling your body out of fight mode.

These three steps are the most fundamental practice of healing. Simple, but they require repetition.

We can't avoid the disasters and pain that life brings.

But every experience of pain is an opportunity for the brain to learn something new. You can let it break you, or you can let it become your training ground.

The road I've walked has been painful and long. But it gave me something I carry with me now — a quiet certainty when facing life's uncertainties.

Not fearlessness. Just knowing I can get through it.

That certainty isn't something you're born with. It's something you build. And you don't need twenty surgeries to start.

Join Future Healing Design as a free member and get:

✦ In-depth articles on healing and manifestation

✦ Free downloads: PDF tools including healing exercises, procrastination workbooks, and more

You might also like:

Why Other People’s Moods Feel Like Your Emergency

You didn’t cause their mood. But you’re already trying to fix it. Here’s the neuroscience behind emotional absorption — and how to stop disappearing into other people’s feelings.

未來訂製所Tingman Liu

Why Your Body Won’t Let You Heal — The Science of Body Memory

If you wake up exhausted no matter how much you sleep, or feel anxious for no reason — your body might be carrying something your mind has buried. The neuroscience behind body memory, and how to start healing it.

未來訂製所Tingman Liu