29 Pains You’ll Never Grasp The Extent Of Until You’ve Experienced Them

There’s research and building evidence that losing your dog, cat, rabbit, ferret…whatever loved creature, hurts just as bad as losing a child. Stop apologizing to the world for caring for your pets over children if you chose not to have children. Love is love, stop treating it as a quantifiable resource!

I just lost my cat this past January after 15 years with her. She was suffering a lot from thyroid disease and treatment wasn't helping, so it was better to let her go. It still hurts to not see her running around the house anymore.

It’s not minor. Loss is loss

We are rescuers, and the Goddess sends us the cats and dogs that need the most love and usually money. In the past 25 years, I have had to euthanize six dogs and three cats and every d**n time it takes a piece of my heart. I truly feel I was meant to take them in and love them for whatever time they have, but s**t, it hurts so much sometimes. And we just found out our 7-year-old has diabetes and she's losing her eyesight and hearing, she's on the spectrum, and we can't seem to get her sugar right. She was our sunshine, always happy and playful, now she's depressed, and it just kills me. But I put on a good show and lavish her with love and will do so for however long we have her.

Having to put my dog down was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I cried for 2 days.

The worst thing about this kind of pain is the lack of compassion. It's not as visible as most causes for physical pain. There are no wounds, there's no screaming, yet it hurts so much it almost k*lls you (and in many cases sadly does)

What makes it worse is when people tell you to "cheer up", "smile", "snap out of it", "stop wallowing in self pity" or "pull yourself together" If only it were that easy. Then there's the, "what have YOU got to be depressed about?" or, "there's people far worse off than you, you know" like you have complete control over it and phrases like that will instantly cure you.

I've described depression as spiritual cancer. Not spiritual as in, some sort of religious thing, but spiritual as in what makes you uniquely you. It eats away and poisons all the things you may have enjoyed about yourself, about life, living...until you just feel like an empty husk with no capacity for feeling anything but despair. It is t*rture.

I had PTSD and postnatal depression, I became chronically depressed. I had a child with severe health issues so I had to fuction for him. I didn't sleep anymore, I was just taking care of my child and overloading myself with work,so I didn't find the time to overthink things. The doctors didn't take my depression serious because I was still functioning. After a few years I chrashed totally and became ill for months. Now 14years later I have still chronical fatigue but my depression is better. I went through all this for my kids, my life had no value anymore, but I wanted to give them a chance to become happy.

I have hormonal induced depression every month for a few days when I'm not on hormonal birth control. It. Really. Sucks. Rationally I know that it's just a few days, and it'll pass. But ooo boy, the hellhole I'm being sucked into... its like there never will be an ounce of light again. Like a heavy blanket thrown over me. Life just becomes so incredibly heavy.... every little thing becomes a drag, and everything takes an incredible effort because of this blanket. Thank the gods for modern medicin.

So horribly sad.

My mom has trigeminal neuralgia, nerve pain on one side of her face. It affected every single aspect of her life. The pain was constant along with what she calls "twinges of lightening" going through her face. The pain can be managed but hers got so bad that she has had 2 brain surgeries since she was diagnosed 15 years ago. Last surgery was 2.5 years ago and so far she's doing amazing :)

Nerve pain every second of every day from head to toe for 9 years now

Every time I've given birth it's been unmedicated, by myself and in residence.

💔

Yes. Today is my son's death date. It's been 21 years. It never gets easier.

I hear you. 54 years ago........

I read recently losing a child is way much worse for women than it is for men. They feel the pain far much longer than men.

Pain is always real no matter what the cause. Chronic primary pain eg fibromyalgia is a nociplastic pain. Unfortunately, due to the different mechanism causing it, it doesn’t respond well to medication unlike acute (short term) pain. It is however possible to mange this and for it to reduce. A great resource is https://rethinkingpain.org/ Having had pain for over 20 hrs, I’ve gone from struggling with getting dressed & remaining in employment & being on fentanyl for several years to being successful in work & only taking a few paracetamol a week. There is absolutely nothing special about me to do that. Understanding my pain, pacing myself, psychological support around the impact of pain and very gradually becoming more active (motion is lotion as my physio said!) helped. Am I cured? No, of course not, I still have pain that I have to work to keep under control. Has my pain severity reduced? Massively. Hugs to everyone living with pain.

I have had pain from the middle of my back to my left foot nonstop 24/7 since March 2003.

To know that the pain will end - or will not end - makes all the difference IMHO.

My doctors words were "This is something you're going to die with, not of" Being in my early 40s and already suffering for over 20 years, I can't imagine living my entire life over again in this pain before I die, the thought of living till my 80s terrifies me!

I've had chronic migraines for decades. With aura, phantom smells, the whole shebang XD One time, about 15 years ago, I did actually have one so bad that I had a pinpoint stroke (or the pinpoint stroke caused a migraine, not actually sure) and it affected my hearing and vision on my left side. I still haven't recovered fully - I lost maybe 15% of my peripheral vision in my left eye, and sounds still sound weirdly muffled when hearing through my left ear. I usually take sumatriptan when I feel a migraine coming on, but sometimes the meds don't work at all, and I can only just sit completely still in a dark room - I will be so dizzy that I will fall over (and then puke) if I try to get up. Good times. It also really doesn't help that my mom doesn't "believe" that migraines are "real" XD

I, very unfortunately, suffer from debilitating migraines and very debilitating they are.

Mine feel like there is a heavy brick wall pressing into my forehead and the pressure is hitting really hard at the place in my. Mind that reasons and thinks, I can't string a coherent thought together, I forget the names of people and objects I'm trying to talk about and I can't articulate a real description of what I'm trying to communicate, it's terrifying and embarrassing.

Sometimes my migraine makes me bang my head against the wall to relieve the pain... And I keep womiting until the pain gets lower... you just can't explain the pain - it just run away with you...

The first migraine I ever had, I lost the ability to say what I wanted. The doctor asked me what the problem was and in my head, what I said made perfect sense - turns out I just kept repeating the word 'jelly'. Never happened since.

Imagine your insides ripping apart once a month because cells from your womb navigated outside your womb and now parts of you act the same way as your uterus. Periods can be painful enough on their own but when it’s your ovaries and intestines it’s a whole other level of pain. I could literally feel my insides tearing apart. Once upon a time, migraine was my 10. Then I developed Endo. I knew the very second my period started. I didn’t just turn white, my face/body turned grey and the best I could manage was crawling back to bed. Standing? Walking? Not an option. Going to work? Powering through it? Not a fůcking option. It feels like I imagine someone shoved a dagger into my abdomen and starts twisting it about. Thank fůck I’m beyond menopausal because I wasn’t sure how much more I could endure.

I am so glad this one is on the list. Endo freaking sucks! I had surgery to remove it but it came back worse. Thankfully my boss has it and understands if I need to take a day off because of it.

Unfortunately, another example of womens pain being dismissed or minimised by medics. A book exploring the history of this is Unwell Women by Elinor Cleghorn, definitely worth a read and considers why the male bias persists in medicine.

My daughter was diagnosed with endo at 14, she went to the hospital so many times because the pain was horrific. She started an oral contraceptive and just like that, the pain was gone. Im so grateful that after over a year of pain my insane persistance paid off, three gyno's, 6 specialists and 4 ER doctors later she finally had a doctor who actually listened to her

Roni Stone

Roni Stone

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I am so so sorry you had to endure that. Seriously my worst fear. Hoping you are recovered or recovering.

And then the itch.... I had 2nd degree from a sunburn - I didn't try to get a tan, I was outside and fell asleep, just bad luck. Doctor treated me like s**t because since I am a woman, clearly I must have tried something stupid to get a tan, right? So he didn't tell me about the itch that was to come. I spent a night crying in the bathtub, letting cold water run over my raw skin, that was the only thing that helped. Next day the GP just said "oh yes, about that, here's some medication". He knew it was coming. I was just a stupid woman that needed to be "punished". Sexism in medicine is harmful.

So sorry you went through that