On a Scale of 0-10: Grieving Deeply

If you have ever been to a healthcare professional for a condition that involved physical pain, you were likely asked, “On a scale of 0-10, zero being no pain and 10 being the worst pain you can imagine, how do you rate your pain?” This method of identifying the degree of physical pain someone is experiencing was founded in the 1970s because pain is subjective to the person experiencing it. There are other relatively objective, clinical, and visual indicators of the severity of physical pain, such as grimacing, posture changes, mobility, heart rate, blood pressure, perspiration, etc. Still, the degree of physical pain that someone is experiencing is entirely subjective to their tolerance for it.

We also know that when we have a painful physical injury, the pain may come and go either for seemingly no reason or perhaps because the injured place was touched. In other words, sometimes the pain happens out of the blue, and sometimes there is an observable trigger.

Perhaps it would be helpful to look at emotional pain, specifically grief, in a similar way. For one person, the grief following the death of a beloved pet may be a nine on the 0-10 scale, while the emotional pain of losing a parent may be a 6. For someone else, it might be unimaginable that pain following the death of a pet could feel greater than grief following the death of a parent or other person. I can tell you that the most acute grief I experienced following the death of my father was probably a 7, while with my husband, it was 10+ at its most intense. I know that for many others, the loss of a parent is 10+ at its worst.

Recognizing the subjectivity of emotional pain and grief in the same way we do physical pain – one person’s eight may be my 2, and that does not make their eight any less valid – requires additional and distinct thought and mindfulness.

For starters, there are not as many objective, outward, or visual indications of emotional pain. People smile when they feel like crying. People fib, “I’m fine,” when asked how they are because they know sharing truthfully might cause discomfort for others. Albeit cumbersome, I suppose you could ask, like the ER doctor does, “On a scale of 0-10, zero being perfectly content and 10 being the worst emotional pain you can imagine, how would you rate your grief?” If you use this method, recognize that the response will likely be a lower number than how they really feel, the numeric equivalent of “I’m fine.” Also, a momentary rating can change in an instant.

More conversational and perhaps beneficial is to ask, “How is today for you?” Then, most importantly, slow down, listen to the answer, and observe the body language while understanding that the answer may change tomorrow or even later the same day.

Anyway, I think it is useful to consider the 0-10 physical pain scale when thinking about grief because the capacity for emotional pain is highly subjective from person to person. What do you think?