Perceptions in Pain

"Deborah is a remarkable person and so is her book. She is an artist as well as a patient who attends a pain clinic in London. One day she came up with this brilliant idea. If patients like her were having trouble speaking about pain, maybe they could show their pain instead. Maybe what was needed was a visual language of pain. So she decided to work with other patients, taking and manipulating photographic images that would show how they felt inside. Now remember, this was a chronic pain facility, full of patients who had been suffering for years without relief and who were extremely frustrated. Many felt that that their doctors and families didn’t believe how much pain they were in and eventually they too began to doubt. So Padfield comes along and says, since our words are not convincing enough, let’s try to make pictures. All sorts of images. Many use the weapon metaphor – images of knives piercing skin for example. But there are also other kinds of images. Some depict the loneliness of pain. Others are examples of what I call anatomic metaphors because they depict what is happening inside the body that is causing pain. But regardless of what type, Padfield’s images are so arresting that they really achieve something not possible with words alone. An enormous effect. It gave them something concrete to grab on to when they thought about their pain instead of the blurriness that they saw before. Even more importantly, when they shared the pictures with their doctors, the patients felt that finally the doctors understood what they had been experiencing. Even if this didn’t lead to a radical change in treatment, it made patients feel that the doctors were listening, that they now could see and therefore believe their pain, and that they were more invested in helping to alleviate it. Extremely so. We know from placebo studies how important belief and expectation is when it comes to pain. So any way to enhance these feelings is important. That’s why I think this book is so valuable. Because of the challenges of pain, we have to keep thinking of novel ways to deal with it more effectively."