Why It's So Hard to Talk About Our Chronic Pain With Others - Even Our Own Doctors

Pain is, by nature, a subjective experience. We know that, even with the same diagnosis, any two patients may well experience their symptoms in quite different ways. Even within the same patient experience, the perception of pain level, intensity, and quality may differ wildly from day to day.

Add to this subjective nature the sometimes-significant impacts that outside factors may have on our pain levels - diet, exercise or movement, mental stress, difficult relationships, sleep quality/quantity - and it no wonder that we have trouble expressing our pain.

But communication requires two actions - talking and listening/interpreting. As hard as it is for you to explain your pain to another person, it equally hard for the second person to interpret what you say Even using that tired old trope, the 1 to 10 pain scale (which, for many reasons, ought to be done away with completely), isn much help.

For instance, you and I may both say we feel our fibromyalgia pain at a level of 8. But who to say that your is my or equivalent to it? We can know that. All I can take from your statement that pain is at a level 8? is that, for you, at this moment in time, you about two steps away from feeling complete and total agony, and about eight steps away from feeling no pain at all - whatever that means to you.

Doctors Ought to Be Different

None of which is to say that your medical professionals should be given a pass on taking your pain seriously. Doctors can and ought to be different. With their years of medical training and hands-on experience with both acute and chronic pain, our physicians must be held to a much higher standard of communication and empathy.

Yet, too often, we all hear stories about how doctors - even those who have treated patients for years before the onset of the chronic pain condition - dismiss patients reports of chronic pain as being in your head or or worse. It no secret in the fibromyalgia community, for instance, that many MDs and nurses think that any fibro patient who asks about medication is simply drug-seeking.

You don need to walk a mile in a fibromite shoes to know that this is true. Look at any episode of just about any medical drama on television where reports of mysterious pain play a part in the patient of the week diagnosis. See how they roll their eyes, or dismiss the reports completely if the MRI is This is deeply ingrained and it insidious.

Fear of Legal Repercussions Among Physicians For Prescribing Pain Medication

Then again, doctors have a not-completely-irrational fear of prescribing medication for chronic pain. Reports of doctors losing their licenses or even facing criminal prosecution for prescription practices are all too common. Some of these prosecutions are, undoubtedly, warranted. But whether they are or aren is almost beside the point; the impact on other physicians is a definite chilling effect on the whole notion of medicating against pain.

If the war on drugs makes doctors squeamish about treating chronic pain assertively, then it only stands to reason that they be less receptive to taking pain reports seriously. Some MDs attitudes seem to be I can treat it, it isn real. Of course, that nonsense, but even so, a subjective fear can and will affect a person willingness to enter into an open dialogue about that subject. We don want to face what we can control. Perhaps this is even more true for physicians who are trained and groomed to take almost godlike control over their patients physical processes.

Our Rights as Patients

But regardless of the -- as patients, we have the right to expect our pain to be taken seriously, and to be treated with respect. If despite our best efforts at compromise and rational discussion this is not happening, it might be time to seek out a doctor who better equipped to handle our cases.