Pain that you're used to

This is just something I want to ask someone... anyone...

Do types of pain that you\'re relatively accustomed to feel less terrible than pain that you\'re not used to?

I\'m wondering because (after talking about dental stuff on another thread), I just bit into a sandwich and got a shock of pain as a bit of sandwich got stuck down in my broken back tooth. My tooth\'s been missing a filling since June and between dental phobia and (mostly) insurance issues, I\'ve just lived with it. It usually only gives me a little bit of pain, but, wow, I just got a shock, yet...

... It didn\'t hurt me nearly as much as when I got those shock upon first losing the filling. I discovered my predicament when I slugged down a glass of COLD water, you see. Anyway, just now, I know I felt just about the same amount of pain as that, and yet, I didn\'t panic and kind of mental-ed it away.

It didn\'t feel like it pained me as much as it used to, even though there was quite a little shock of agony there.

I think it\'s just because I\'ve gotten used to low-level pain as a frequent occurance in that tooth. It\'s kind of like when I got a fracture in my right arm a few years ago and moving it or jerking it suddenly would send a shock of pain through me, but it \"wasn\'t so bad\" after a while because I just got used to it.

Sometimes, I think the reason why I\'m still alive is that my depression-cycles are a thing I\'ve \"just gotten used to\" over the years / over my life, too.

I am wondering... how normal is this? It always seems like initial pain / unfamiliar pain is the worst thing ever, but when I\'ve been in pain for a while / am a frequent sufferer of a particular kind of pain, that stuff becomes \"not as bad.\"

Is it something others experience? Is it some kind of really interesting re-wiring of the brain that lets us \"bootstrap up\" a bit?

If anything, I find that I get even LESS accustomed to minor pains over time. Like, I'll bite my tongue and SCREAM BLOODY FUCKING MURDER like I've just been shot.