You probably know someone who seems to have a high pain tolerance — brushing off injuries like they’re nothing. You might also know people who get teary after they stub their toe.

That’s because everyone experiences pain differently.

Unfortunately, there’s no definitive lab test or x-ray-like machine that can measure pain. Instead, health care providers rely on the person in pain to describe how it feels. But describing pain is difficult. Everything people say about pain is subjective. They might say the pain is severe, but “severe” means something different to everyone.

To try to make pain assessment easier and more accurate, clinicians created pain scales. Pain scales can be a valuable tool, but when used by themselves, pain scales don’t always work as intended.

Sometimes keeping a pain log that charts the above information can be helpful. You can bring this log to your provider to see if therapies being offered are beneficial. Remember that emotions that come with pain can be challenging to deal with. It’s important to try and not let those emotions cloud the information you try to express to your care team or the information they are trying to relay back to you.

If you feel that your care team is not listening to you about your pain or taking it seriously, express your concern. However, pay attention to what they may be trying to tell you as well. Sometimes the treatments you think will be most beneficial may actually cause more harm than good.