Pain has a thousand faces.

Posted on by Kelly

I had to go to a doctor recently. The why of it doesn’t matter so much as some of the questions that I was asked while I was there. I don’t recall ever having a health care professional ask me questions about my emotional well being as much as they did that day. I was asked if I was feeling OK. I was asked if I was experiencing heightened anxiety. I was asked if I had any feelings of despondency or hopelessness.

I know logically that these questions are now part of the patient interview because of the quarantines for Covid19 and how it is affecting people’s mental state. I must admit that I found it rather reassuring. I felt completely listened to, and cared for in a way that I don’t often feel when speaking to someone other than my husband.

I answered candidly and perhaps even a bit flippantly. Afterwards, I also found it left me somewhat unsettled because it made me do another level of self evaluation. How am I feeling? How am I dealing with heightened anxiety? Have I been feeling despondent or stretched thin? It made me uneasy because I realized I am actually struggling with these things.

I had jokingly said that I turn to my painting to help me with anxiety, and that is partially true. In fact, painting does help me sometimes but when I am feeling at my worst I can’t seem to paint at all. I feel frozen, and the panic escalates. Looking at me, however, you wouldn’t know I am struggling.

Just like when someone has an underlying illness that others don’t know about, emotional illness can also be very invisible. A person can seem calm and solid with a smiling face and yet be consumed with pain. We make misasumptions every single day of our lives. We look at the faces around us and make assumptions of their state of affairs based on the appearance they present. We assume they are happy, calm, confident, well, or any one of a hundred other human conditions based on the mask of that face. Inside, however, the person may be suffering undescribable pain for any number of reasons.

We must never make those assumptions. We need to ask, and we need to listen to the responses. As you look around at the people you encounter every day, remember any of them could truly be the face of someone in pain.

This painting is a 5″ x 7″ study, oil on canvas board titled, “Pain”.