If its your player object colliding with countless other objects, you can run a check with the object they collide with to see if its the player object, and then react appropriately.
eg: on collision with other object.
for each instance (ordered)
if object = player -> cause damage
there might be a lot of un nessesary collisions that take place that it will calculate though. like if a pile of boulders were colliding with each other all the time.