What We Talk About When We Talk About Pain By Katrina Overland

Published Apr 8, 2014

Chronic pain is hard to talk about in part because it’s so hard to explain what chronic pain is and what it isn’t.

People want to empathize, and since everyone has hurt themselves at least once in their life, they think this a point

of comparison.

“Oh, exercise makes me sore, too,” or “I sprained my

ankle last year and walking was hard,” and other experiences that make people feel like they have had a

similar experience.

In a way, it’s similar to depression — everyone knows

what it’s like to be sad, but not everyone knows what it

means to be clinically depressed. This attempt at empathy can actually feel like your lived experiences are being

dismissed — chronic pain isn’t like an acute injury and the fatigue that accompanies it isn’t like the day after an a ll-

nighter.

The difference is that injuries will heal, broken bones tend

to mend, and a good night’s sleep will energize you the next morning. Chronic pain is there at all times, in various

intensities. It doesn’t get better in a traditional sense, although obviously treatments are being developed and

refined. There are few, if any, days off.

I find describing my daily pain difficult at best. Analogies

only go so far and can sound over-dramatic to my own ears.

“Have you ever had the flu? Like, a flu so bad that wearing clothes hurts?” That’s not an abnormal occurrence, and

with that familiarity it becomes more livable, if not any less

painful, than actually getting the flu. Life goes on, whether

you’re a 4, 5, or 6 on a 1 through 10 pain scale.

That scale is something that gets used for chronic pain

treatment a lot, and I think it shows what a linguistic barrier there is for chronic pain patients. A smiley face to a

crying face, a 1 through 10 scale, and other measurements are meant to give a glimpse into your

overall pain level. But pain is a personal thing, and it’s hard to rate pain on a scale when these numbers feel

arbitrary. If you hurt every day, the idea of “debilitating” pain is much different than if you aren’t used to tolerating

it.

Keeping a pain diary can help put things into perspective

because at least then you can compare your pain over time, and pair it with activities. When you live with

pain every day, it becomes normalized in a way that

makes it even harder to describe. What could be a 6 becomes a 1 because you’re used to it. It’s not even close

the worst pain you’ve felt because you have to push through it and continue to live your life.

But I think there are better ways to talk about how chronic pain affects your life. I want to share this other scale that

I’ve found more useful in explaining my issues with fibromyalgia. Pain is so subjective, that a 10 or a crying

face can mean something different to me and the 10 other people in the waiting room. This scale goes from 1 to

100 and describes activity levels and symptoms rather than “severe” or “moderate” pain. This holistic look at how

my life is affected, rather than an arbitrary measurement of how much pain I’m in, helps me figure out whether or

not my treatment needs to be adjusted. While decreasing pain is the obvious goal of my treatment, living a life as

uninhibited by it as possible is an easier marker of

success.

Posted in: Pain Management