Pain: Attitudes

**Likely to become the first part of a series of articles about multiple posts about pain, pain management, and whatever related issues stay in my head long enough to write about them. I thank you for your indulgence! On another note, this post is rather more stream-of-consciousness that I would like, but I decided non-linear writing was better than none at all. It may take a while before I really find a voice and style for me.**

Pain is a complicated issue. Depending on what you are dealing with, and your own personal tolerances, almost anything can cause pain. It cannot be objectively observed or measured. It is difficult to categorize, although we have tried: intensity, duration, origination, any sense of cause, and various descriptors (shooting, throbbing, stabbing, etc…). What I want to discuss here is attitudes about pain.

Often, before I even mention pain to others, I have to overcome classic attitudes I have internalized, the largest being “is this important enough to bother someone els with it?” followed by “am I being a wimp?” I have found that the fear of wimp-dom keeps many people from talking about their pain at all, or at the very least only to those people that are trusted. If I do not trust you, I will never bring it up at all, or I will bypass a pain related issue by making a weak overall health generalization, if forced (which I hate, thank you very much).

Having discussed this with other people in person, frequent reading about pain issues (particularly involving health care professionals), and my own personal experience, I find one major impediment to the acceptance of a personal declaration of pain. In the US, acknowledging pain is a de facto admission of lack of personal fortitude.*

Pain is pain, and if you have it, you already know that. If you have chronic pain, then you know that there is nothing in your life that it does not touch: emotional health, relationships with others, concepts of self and the ability to function at all to varying degrees. External responses to pain can vary from case to case. If you are screaming in pain with part of your tibia sticking out of your leg, the people around you will have two goals: one is to seek help for you, and the second will be to get you to quiet down. This quieting is multifold; to keep you coherent and avoid shock, and to comfort the unease other people feel at you displaying your pain. If you have chronic, invisible pain, you will likely be dismissed altogether, and experience a very uncomfortable social atmosphere as people (both internally and maybe even externally) wonder if your pain is ‘legitimate.’ If you talk about pain, people often seem uneasy and hurry to change the subject.

USians seem to have a Puritanical view of admitting to feeling pain, or having the audacity to *gasp* complain about it. This admission is seen as a lack of fortitude, or of character. Let me unequivocally state that there is no moral failing in feeling pain, nor in seeking help to alleviate it. None. Nada. Zero. You do not have to take any flak/guff/grief from anyone, including health care professionals, about insisting that you are in pain and need help. With the exception of medical professionals, you should not ever have to prove to anyone that you are experiencing pain. The health care system is more likely to take your pain seriously if they can find an underlying cause. Otherwise, you may be out of luck until they do. Be insistent, and do not let others negate your analysis of your own body and situation. You do not have to justify the use of any pain aid; not OTC analgesics, not opiates, not woo. Whatever works for you works for you, and may you have luck in finding that quickly, with a minimum of backlash.

Chronic pain =/= less of a person.

I have been in chronic pain for over a decade, from various and numerous causes, and have seen these attitudes consistently. So consistently, in fact, that when I do not see them, I tend to ask if the person in question has themselves has experience with (or with someone else with) chronic, unrelenting pain. Only a very few have acquired any sort of understanding without such experience.

I cannot begin to measure how much pain and misery I put myself and by extension, my family, through due to my own unwillingness to acknowledge that I needed help. Then I had to spend months convincing my health network of the truth of this. I think that talking to docs and whatnot about pain will probably be another post.

*I know I am both generalizing and specifying in ways that may be problematic, and I am interested in knowing how this plays out in other areas.