“Please rate your pain from 1 to 10”
The problem with measuring someone else’s pain for them
Doctors often ask patients to rate their pain on a scale from 1 to 10 for at least two reasons.
Pain is relative. What might be a 9 for one person is a 6 for another.
Pain is personal. Often the past experiences, trauma, and even beliefs of an individual can drastically change the severity of their pain. Divorce might relieve one person while completely devastating someone else.
When attempting to show empathy, we can (mistakenly) measure someone else’s pain for them.
“Pneumonia isn’t that bad. You’ll get over it soon!”
“A broken leg heals — at least you don’t have a chronic illness.”
“In the grand scheme of life, nine days isn’t that long to be in the hospital.”
The key is the patient — not the doctor — has to rate the pain.
When we measure a person’s suffering ourselves, we subconsciously use our own pain threshold as the scale and often minimize their suffering.
Real empathy is withholding judgment and allowing the other person to determine the severity of their pain. It’s believing someone when they say their experience was a ten on the pain scale.
