Is it really depressing? Really living with chronic pain

Someone responded to my post Unpalatable truths about pain saying it was depressing. For a moment I thought – yeah, it is really. And then I reflected on my life living with, and working with people dealing daily with chronic, ongoing, persistent pain. It’s not inevitably miserable. Is there something wrong with me? This, of course, set me to thinking maybe my pain isn’t as intense as others. Well – how would I know? I can’t give my pain a number out of 10. It’s just there and I can’t remember a time without any pain, so I can’t compare a 0 = no pain at all with anything I’ve experienced in the last 30-odd years. I do have times when a painful area is especially intense, but because I don’t know how intense ‘most intense pain imaginable’ could be (tell me who can?), and because I can’t remember a time with ‘no pain at all’, I really don’t know what number I’d give it. I could turn to how much my pain gets in the way of what I want to do instead. This, too, is vexed. Given that I know my pain isn’t about tissue damage (no, I am not burning my tongue on that cup of tepid coffee, look it is only 40 degrees celcius! That bucket I’m carrying weighs only 2 kg, so no it’s not doing my hands any harm…), the real test of whether a pain is interfering with my life depends on how much I’m prepared to put up with it (and how long it’s going to ...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - Category: Anesthesiology Authors: Tags: Chronic pain Clinical reasoning Pain conditions Psychology Research Resilience/Health Science in practice Wellness pain management Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs