Bring invisible symptoms to life with a symptom map

What it is, why it helps, and how to make your own

The short story: we at Pictal Health made a free symptom map template in Google Slides. You can use it to communicate better with your doctors. Try it!

Read on to learn how this approach benefits doctors and patients, why drawing your symptoms can be therapeutic, and how symptom maps can help you prepare for upcoming appointments.

Explaining your symptoms can be mentally challenging, emotionally fraught, and just plain hard.

We’ve all been there. You’re waiting in a beige room staring at a poster of a pouchy GI tract, or perhaps a colorful 3D model of the ear canal, when your *doctor walks in and says “what’s going on?”

(*In this article, every use of ‘doctor’ also means clinician, medical provider, PA, nurse practitioner, and all the other people who might diagnose and treat you.)

You say whatever comes to mind first, and sometimes that’s enough — especially for simple, short-term issues like a suspected broken bone.

But for those of us with complex, chronic, ever-changing symptoms, not to mention invisible symptoms, it’s challenging to bring to life how our bodies feel.

Let’s say you have 20 different symptoms. It would be a mental feat to remember them all on the spot, and nearly impossible to have the time to describe each one in detail.

Even if you did have the time and mental capacity to detail your symptoms verbally, it would be practically impossible for your doctor to retain and make use of that information.

That’s because problems of memory and attention affect all of us, patients and doctors alike. As humans, we can only retain about the last 4 things or 30 seconds of anything we’ve heard or seen in our short-term, ‘working’ memory. So a doctor listening to a complex set of symptoms is bound to lose track of some of them; they escape the mind, like water through a sieve.

But the problem isn’t only about lack of time or limits to our cognitive capacity. People with complex and invisible symptoms are often told they are suffering from a psychological disorder; they often don’t feel heard, seen or believed. After facing repeated gaslighting, it takes a huge amount of hope, bravery and energy just to try again with another doctor.

Communicate better with a symptom map

For over a decade I’ve been using symptom diagrams — where I map my symptoms on the shape of a body — in visits with both primary care and specialists. I’ve seen how my doctors clutch this diagram and look at it many times throughout the visit. I’ve also created these for most of my Pictal Health clients over the years, and they have been well-received by doctors.

Why is a symptom map so helpful?

1. It serves as a cognitive aid. With a symptom map, doctors don’t have to remember everything I say and attempt to build a mental picture. It’s all there in front of them, and they can absorb it at-a-glance.
2. It’s more efficient. I don’t have to verbally describe each symptom, which saves time. And, the quality of symptoms is communicated through shape and color. For example, people tend to use sharp shapes for sharp sensations. Warm colors are for heat, pain, and burning. (Here’s a breakdown of these kinds of trends, if you’re interested.) When we can passively communicate the quality of our symptoms, our doctors don’t have to ask as many questions.
3. It helps doctors see patterns.It may be an important clue, for example, if symptoms affect one side of the body, or if they are clustered in an area of the body.
4. I don’t need to worry about forgetting something important.
5. It makes hard-to-see symptoms more real. In my experience, these symptom diagrams help patients be taken more seriously. They’ve taken the time, and invested precious energy, to detail how their body feels. Doctors tend to respond positively, and at least from what patients have told me, with less skepticism. This contributes toward our ultimate goal of helping patients be heard, seen and believed.

It bolsters communication when our doctors can truly ‘see’ what we’re saying.

How can you create your own symptom map?

Option 1: Draw your symptoms

For years, I drew my symptoms. There are benefits to using our hands to draw how we feel: we process and understand information in more detail, and drawing gives us freedom of expression that may be constrained in digital tools.

There is something therapeutic about sketching our symptoms on a page, using colors, shapes, and line weights to bring them to life, and seeing them all together. The act of drawing itself can reduce stress.

I would sit down to draw my symptoms whenever I felt scared by them. It always made me feel better, and later it was often helpful to look back on my drawings. (Often to help me recall: ‘yes, I have been here before.’)

Want to try drawing your symptoms? Here’s a link to a worksheet.

Option 2: use our Google Slides template to create a digital version

For myself and my Pictal Health clients, I began using digital design tools to create these kinds of maps.

Many clients had so many symptoms that it would be difficult to draw them all in a legible way. Plus, a digital symptom map is easier to update when things change.

Here is one for someone with Long Covid:

Here’s one of mine from awhile back:

Recently, I realized that Google Slides could work for this purpose. Here’s an example (not a real person, but realistic symptoms):

⇨ Try it out: here’s the link to the template.

You’ll need a Google account, and there are instructions for saving your own personal version to your Google Drive. You can do this!

We’ll also be planning group sessions where you can work on your symptom map in a more structured class — sign up for the Pictal Health email list to stay notified about upcoming events and workshops.

When is the best time to create your symptom map?

• Before doctor visits: I recommend putting one of these together before every doctor visit, especially if it’s a new doctor visit or your symptoms tend to fluctuate. Print and bring 2 copies, one for you and one for them. (See also: Prep for your next doctor visit)
• Anytime you feel anxious about your symptoms or if you want to get a handle on symptoms that feel overwhelming.

Let us know what you think!

Pictal Health helps patients tell their complex stories visually, so they can be heard, seen and believed. Join us!

Further reading:

Prep for your next doctor visit

Visualizing the Long Covid experience