This artwork represents the complexity of physical pain rooted in trauma.

The patient who inspired this artwork was suffering from back pain linked to confirmed medical conditions but my GP believed their pain was not going to improve without first treating their underlying post-traumatic stress syndrome.

The thorn running up the spine is representative of how this patient’s pain developed as she grew up through childhood sexual abuse. The thorn embodies the curvature of the spine because it has become a part of her and she cannot separate herself from the trauma.

The patient had taken many pain killers to try and help her back pain, but their effect was minimal. I made a purposeful decision to include real thorns but represent the pills as two-dimensional drawings to emphasise the fact that the trauma is painfully prominent in this patient’s life and the pain is too complex to be fixed by a simple pill.

People underestimate the impact severe trauma can have on the body as well as the mind, and this patient’s entire life was affected by her trauma. She described to me how even showering was painful – the water feeling as if it were puncturing her skin.

Most of us will, fortunately, never be able to understand just how much trauma shapes a person, nor the extent of the mental and physical pain it creates, but I wanted to use my artwork to try and capture the complex relationship between trauma and chronic pain syndromes.