Pain Can Make You Mean. Don’t Let It
/By Crystal Lindell
As a child, I grew up hearing stories about just how viciously mean my late great-grandmother was. Her son, my late grandpa, was also described as “mean.”
Nobody wanted to be around them. Everybody wanted to be different from them.
The moral of the tale – as I was so often told as a little girl – was to make sure I didn’t grow up to be “mean.”
As I got a little older though, I started to also hear the stories about their various medical ailments.
My great grandma suffered from rheumatoid arthritis. She moved to Arizona in her later years hoping the dry desert air would bring her relief. And she started drinking a single beer every day to treat the pain, because her only other option was aspirin.
Meanwhile, my grandpa regularly spent months in the hospital because of his scoliosis. He wore a back brace, and when he was home, he was either in bed or sitting at the kitchen table chain smoking cigarettes.
As an adult, with my own medical ailments, the picture has become much clearer. My great-grandmother and grandpa probably were very mean – but it’s only because they were both in a lot of pain.
They suffered every day. And they did what millions of others before them have done in that situation – they let the pain make them mean.
The healthy adults who told me these family fables never seemed to make the connections between the pain and temperament. They saw the mean personalities as something inherent in both my great grandma and my grandpa, as though it were some wholly separate thing from the health conditions that ravaged their bodies.
To my relatives, they were mean because they were bad people.
As an adult with chronic pain myself, I have come to understand things that were impossible for me to grasp as a child: They weren’t bad people, they just had bad bodies.
When you’re dealing with chronic pain, even the nicest, kindest person will develop an insatiable urge to lose their temper on those around them. After all, you can’t waste time with fake pleasantries and patience when your body feels like it’s been through a war zone.
I don’t want to be mean though.
Even on my worst pain days, I make a specific effort to ensure that I’m not taking out my physical pain on those around me.
But I struggle. There are so many times that I want to snap at my fiancé, yell at my mom, lose my temper on my friend. Can’t they see? I’m in pain! Why are they talking to me and annoying me when I’m in pain?
I stop myself though. Or, worst case, when I don’t have enough strength to stop myself, I apologize afterwards.
Beyond that though, when I know someone is struggling with physical pain, I don’t take their meanness personally. Instead, I offer sympathy.
All of us are just a few bad pain days away from becoming mean. Knowing that can help us offer understanding to others. But more than that, it can help us fight off the urge within ourselves.
So yes, pain can make someone “mean” - and those of us with chronic pain often are. But if we’re diligent, it doesn’t have to become our whole personality.
