Both practically and legally speaking, the root cause for pain and suffering is that of inconvenience. Prior to an accident, you made breakfast for your kids, spent an hour at the gym, and never missed a day of work. But after an accident, you struggled to lift a pan for grilling bacon, you had to limit your number and range of exercises, and you started missing several days of work to recover from the last several. Perhaps you got rear-ended at a stop light. Perhaps you fell from a ladder at a construction site. Perhaps you even slipped on an office floor that had no sign. The reason "pain and suffering" often gets thrown around is because each case is a little bit different, but in the end, it simply means that after an accident, you were inconvenienced by the consequences of that accident, whether the individual or business that caused it intended harm or not.