Readers of medieval romance were all too familiar with a common trope of modern romance novels: love is pain. Andreas Capellanus opens his famous twelfth-century treatise on romantic love by calling love “a certain inborn suffering,” a malady most commonly afflicting young noble-born men for whom the sight of (and subsequent meditation upon) his beloved’s…
Tag: pain
The importance of social connection for well-being: Insights from patients, the science of pain, and a “Remarkably Bright” octopus
It seems intuitive that connecting with others is a valued part of life. Still, in periods of challenge, in grief, in illness, in the universal experience of aging, the ease of social connection naturally ebbs and flows. How much, then, should we prioritize the pursuit of consistent social connectedness, in order to thrive? How important…
The Geographic Self
The Communication of Pain In her book The Body in Pain, Scarry discusses the way that pain “shatters language” and threatens to be “unsharable” (4,5). She describes how pain belongs to an internal geography, when one hears about another person’s physical pain, the events happening within the interior of that person’s body may seem to…
The Performance of Pain
You cannot breathe; the world slows down around you; your chest tightens as you walk to your car. Once again, you feel as though you have failed to convince a doctor of your pain, and once again, you must face it alone. This is, unfortunately, the experience of far too many female patients, but the…
An Advent Meditation: Acknowledge Pain, Nurture Hope
I found myself tearing up at a church service on the first Sunday of the Advent season because a choir was onstage. The small choir, harmonious voices, and dedicated conductor prompted thoughts of my own father, who for years had led the choir at our small, Asian-American community church where I grew up. He now…
Representing Women’s Pain: “The Pain Scale” and “The Retrievals”
In her 2005 poetic essay “The Pain Scale,” author Eula Biss challenges the conception of medicalized pain rating systems. She describes how pain ranked at “0” or “10” seems unfathomable, given the impossibility of representing pain’s absolute absence or its “worst imaginable” presence (Biss 30). She also critiques how patients often succumb to the “tyranny…
Not a Pinch, but a Burn: Validating Pain in Reproductive Health Settings
“I would say it’s just a pinch, but that’s not true. You’ll feel a prick when I insert the needle, and then a burning sensation. It’ll last for about thirty seconds and it will be unpleasant, but then it’ll be over.” I am not used to having my pain acknowledged in clinical settings when it…
Pain is complex. We should treat it that way.
Steve Server// “What sort of pain is it?” Often, when health care providers inquire after patients’ pain, we get a sort of flummoxed look. In response, we sometimes get a confused chuckle. As first year medical students, we are trained to differentiate sorts of pain: crampy vs. electrical/burning; dull vs. sharp; localized vs. radiating. As our medical…
You Will Hear. On the Shareability of Physical and Psychological Suffering in Academia
As a French PhD candidate, I would like to question the shareability of pain in the particular context of academia. Indeed, physical and mental suffering among PhD students is a widely but unofficially admitted fact in the French academic milieu. Consequently, I decided to find out how things stood for my fellow PhD candidates.
Waiting for Laughter, Part 2: Finding Empathy for Pain Through Humor
James Belarde // AUTHOR’S NOTE: Both this article and Part 1 discuss a short play written by the author that can be found in its entirety here. “I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t laugh.” -Maya Angelou In my last article, I discussed a comedic (and tragic) play I wrote that was produced by my fellow…