Collocations for painful - adj.

be, look, seem
become, get
find sth
She found it unbearably painful to speak.

extremely, fairly, very, etc.
acutely, excruciatingly, horribly, incredibly, intensely, terribly, unbearably
particularly
increasingly
almost
a little, slightly, etc.
potentially
emotionally, physically

to
The subject of his failed marriage was quite painful to him.

Painful is used with these nouns:
blow, breakup, clarity, compromise, cramp, death, divorce, emotion, experience, feeling, grimace, grip, humiliation, illness, inflammation, joint, lesson, lump, memory, past, process, reality, realization, recollection, reminder, sensation, shock, slap, spasm, sting, swelling, transition, truth