Dealing with my children's pain

My son came in from playing outside with his hand rolled up in his t-shirt, a look of pain on his face. When I questioned him, he told me that he had gotten a splinter in his fingers, ripped it out with his teeth and ripped the skin off, too. Yuck, I thought to myself. Once we got the dirt cleaned off, he did have a nice little gash in his finger but it wasn't bleeding. We cleaned it, put Neosporin (which fixes everything, doesn't it) on it and a fresh bandaid. Splinters hurt, ripped skin hurts, but neither is life threatening. So why does he act like it is the end of the world and he is dying? It is a low tolerance for pain? Or is it my resistance to his pain that causes him to overreact? Does he need more of a reaction than I am offering?

My son tends to be very dramatic even for small injuries like this one. He was actually much calmer the one time he had to get stitches for putting his teeth through his chin. Anyway, my long-winded point is really not about Conner, it's about my reaction to his pain. I don't know if it is the exaggeration that bugs me or if I just want to distance myself from his pain. Seeing my children hurt is not fun, it is painful for me too. The worse the injury, the harder it is for me to handle. I don't mind cleaning the wounds, bandaging and kissing the hurts and scrapes. It is seeing them in physical pain that I find challenging because I can't fix it. I can talk through an emotional hurt, I can't talk away physical pain.

I am not sure how to support them in their pain without letting my own fears and feelings overwhelm them or me. I tend to err on the side of showing no feelings for these small injuries and brushing them off rather than going bananas at the sight of blood. This for me is one of the biggest challenges of being a mother, putting aside my own feelings so that I can support my child's in the way that he needs. I don't know where the balance is but I keep working at it.