How you can get your family to understand chronic pain

When your family don’t understand chronic pain, it can be frustrating, and demoralising. It can also be isolating, as we don’t tend to want to be around people who just don’t get it. Here are some ways that you can try to relate your experience of chronic pain to family members.

To help family members understand chronic pain, find a commonality that they can relate to your experience through. Metaphors and pain rating scales can help others understand how the pain feels. Explaining how it impacts your ability to do certain tasks can help them understand your experience.

In this article, I’ll go into more detail around how you can approach the topic with different family members, and discuss some ways to help describe the pain itself.

How to talk to family about chronic pain

We already communicate pain non verbally without even thinking about it, through our body language, vocal tone and facial expression. The people around us will interpret these things according to their own perception of what’s going on.

Sometimes there are misunderstandings, as family members can only get a sense from this of how we’re experiencing the physical sensations, without knowing what we might need in that moment.

Here are some things you could consider when talking to family members about pain.

Choose a time when there’s no rush
Express things in a way that doesn’t lead to defensiveness
Use humor if it helps
Help them to relate themselves to your experience through a challenge they live with
If you need help, be specific about what you need
Accept that sometimes people will struggle to understand
Don’t blame yourself if anyone doubts or dismisses your experience – that’s their issue
Show appreciation when they hear you
Give people time to process things

How do you explain chronic pain to family?

There are often no visible signs of chronic pain to the outside world, other than the signs that you are communicating.

This can mean that many people struggle to understand things that they can’t physically see or experience themselves.

Sometimes others don’t understand why your pain hasn’t gone away, so it’s just about explaining that your pain condition is chronic, which means it’s a persistent pain issue.

Some people can find the experience of chronic pain easier to understand when it’s explained in terms of how it limits your ability to do daily activities and tasks.

This this is a more tangible thing for them – they can more easily visualise what it means to not be able to always manage certain physical activities. Others can find it easier to relate through metaphor.

The variability of the pain can make it trickier for people to understand, as it depends on so many factors, which can be different for different people.

When people see you doing certain things, and assume that you’ll be able to manage to do them at other times, it can lead to misunderstandings.

Some might find that pain increases across the day, or after certain activities, while others find it more unpredictable, so how you explain this aspect of chronic pain will depend on what it’s like for you personally.

How do you describe pain to family?

It can be tough to think of how to describe physical pain, especially during moments when it’s at its most severe. Family members are less concerned with understanding precisely about the type of pain than doctors, so we’re usually looking to describe the sense of the pain for family to understand what we need to do in any particular moment.

There are many ways you can describe pain, including:

Pain rating scales to describe pain levels
Metaphors to explain how the pain feels
Describing words like dull, stabbing, throbbing, etc. to describe the type of pain
Colors assigned to different types or severities of pain

Sometimes these come to be ways to convey much more than just a number on a pain scale etc., but a shorthand for what you need to do, or what you can manage at that time.

It can be useful for family members to understand your experience. When you’re trying to convey the pain that you’re experiencing, it helps to specifically state what you might need from people in your family at any particular time,

Witnessing a loved one in severe pain can be distressing for family members. Chances are, they want to help but don’t know how.

Sometimes we just need people to understand that we need to rest for a while. Other times we might need practical help with a task we’re struggling with.

It could be that we want people to understand so they can help us with a certain issue that the pain is causing. Oftentimes, we just need empathy – just to be seen and heard and have someone be with us in those moments.

Alongside having people understand our experience of pain, being clear about what we need from them can help us have better interactions with family members.

Even when people might find it challenging to fully understand your struggle, they may be able to support you in other ways when it’s asked in a straightforward way.

But hey…

If anyone is continually being dismissive or disbelieving, you can only do so much explaining and describing. You could be as straightforward about your needs as humanly possible – but sometimes those people just won’t get it.

If, despite your best efforts, family members are being unsupportive, try to find support elsewhere, from other members of your family, friends and community, or from a dedicated chronic pain support group, either locally or online.