The Emotional Pain: The Definition Of Pain

Pain is something that should not be taken lightly. Whenever someone says “I am in pain” or something along those lines people are so quick to assume that they are in physical pain. Then when they expect someone to say my leg or my arm hurts, and someone says they are facing emotional pain, they do not know how to react. Pain is so much more than breaking a bone or getting stitches. The dictionary definition claims that pain is “physical suffering or discomfort caused by illness or injury.” The dictionary is right to an extent but the dictionary is also the reason people get the definition of pain so twisted. You can not just put a definition on emotional pain. It is different for everyone and for me pain is emotional turmoil to the point of

I stare at my bedroom wall while simultaneously chewing on my lip. Something I do a lot when I get anxious. Today was yet another hard day at school with my school counselor telling me I was not going to graduate with my class. It is now 3 in the morning and I am trying with all my might to not break into sobs as I do not want to wake everyone else in the house. I cover my mouth with one hand to stifle the sob I can feel coming and take my other hand and hold my chest. The pain is so much I can feel it inside. For the past few nights I have gotten little to no sleep just hoping everything works out. Senior year was a very hard year for me because everyone was convinced I was not going to graduate. With every appointment I had with the school counselor the pain I felt just grew worse. I would find myself staying up into the late hours of the night just hoping that this would pass and things would end up working out. This is a common trend when people are feeling extreme emotional pain. It is easier for them to cry and let their pain out by themselves and most times that happens to be at night when everyone around them is asleep. Someone experiencing emotional pain can appear to look exhausted all of the time because of

It’s 4 hours after my surgery. The pain block was supposed to last 24-48 hours and I have already fallen with my crutches. Everyone is getting tired of hearing the sobs coming from my mouth. I stand up and hobble my way to my bedroom and collapse on the bed. I prop my leg, with the gigantic splint running all the way up to my knee, on the pillows that have been stacked. After a few more hours of agony and pain pills that do not work, I take some benadryl and sleep the pain off for the next 3 days. This all happened to me 2 years ago when I had ankle surgery. The amount of pain I felt the hours after surgery was unbearable. We all know what pain is. We fall and bump our head then we feel pain. We have surgery then we feel pain. No one is a stranger to pain. Physical pain that is. There is a whole other level of pain that we feel. One that in my opinion is worse than any physical pain a person can endure. We often try to hide this pain because it is such a taboo thing to talk about what we are feeling. Pain is staying up into the late hours of the night praying for it all to get better, hurting oneself on the outside to match what they are feeling on the inside, and wondering if it is even worth it to go on another