Maybe it briefly reached excruciating when you had to stop, but it wasn’t excruciating most of the time or immediately excruciating when you started again and you didn’t expect it to be?
Also, you had a better (faster and more accessible) option than to take your life: just ask them to stop. I’m not sure the fact that you started again means it wasn’t excruciating, because you weren’t in (nearly as intense) pain when you asked them to continue, and you expected to be able to bear it again, at least for a while.
I think a pain of constant sensory intensity and quality can vary in how bad, urgent and tolerable it feels depending on how long you’ve been subjected to it. How bad it feels depends on your psychological reaction to it, e.g. whether you can distract yourself from it, but your ability to control your attention might wear out. A similar point is made here, with respect to stimulus intensity instead of sensory intensity: https://centerforreducingsuffering.org/research/clarifying-lexical-thresholds/
Maybe it briefly reached excruciating when you had to stop, but it wasn’t excruciating most of the time or immediately excruciating when you started again and you didn’t expect it to be?
Also, you had a better (faster and more accessible) option than to take your life: just ask them to stop. I’m not sure the fact that you started again means it wasn’t excruciating, because you weren’t in (nearly as intense) pain when you asked them to continue, and you expected to be able to bear it again, at least for a while.
I think a pain of constant sensory intensity and quality can vary in how bad, urgent and tolerable it feels depending on how long you’ve been subjected to it. How bad it feels depends on your psychological reaction to it, e.g. whether you can distract yourself from it, but your ability to control your attention might wear out. A similar point is made here, with respect to stimulus intensity instead of sensory intensity: https://centerforreducingsuffering.org/research/clarifying-lexical-thresholds/