The intersubjective experience of women with chronic primary pain

Although a universal experience, the sensorial and emotional aspects of pain have led to an emphasis on the inner and private aspects of the phenomenon, overlooking the essential aspects of the shared reality of pain. To date, there has been little research emphasising the intersubjective experience of chronic pain.

This hermeneutic-phenomenological study has been designed to provide an insight into the intersubjective experience of women with chronic primary pain.

Eight women who fit the diagnosis criteria of chronic primary pain were interviewed for this study and their transcriptions were analysed using van Manen’s (1997) hermeneutic-phenomenological approach. Three interrelated overarching themes were identified. The first theme, “I cannot”: pain and the arrested self, describes the experience of pain as an omnipotent and omnipresent force that imposes limitations that confine the pain sufferer to a place of powerlessness and separation from the world. The second theme, “I am not"; the lost self and meaning-making, describes the process of navigating through the grief for the lost self and identity, as well as the process of acceptance and resignifying one’s experience. Lastly, the third theme, “This is real”: the need to be legitimised, describes the lack of opportunities and obstacles preventing the experience of chronic pain from being validated and ultimately legitimised as real and debilitating.

The findings were integrated and discussed from a phenomenological tradition that permitted analysis of the experiences of chronic pain in women as they were lived phenomenologically – embodied and situated in the intersubjective lifeworld. Ultimately, the findings expose a general experience of not belonging and separation from the same world that the women paradoxically inhabit.

The assumption that pain is a private and subjective experience, and therefore inaccessible and ineffable, will continue to present as a barrier to the understanding of pain, as well as its approaches to treatment and care. Reconsidering pain as the product of a negotiated interrelatedness that takes place in a situated world offers a new and necessary avenue for understanding and pain care.