A wrenching pain.    From Wordnet, Princeton University. 

They will crimp economic growth and require what he calls wrenching changes.    From Wordnik.com.  [CNN Transcript Jun 24, 2004] Reference

Museum of Art before retiring at the end of 2008, in what he called a wrenching decision.    From Wordnik.com.  [NYT > Home Page] Reference

This story while heart wrenching is probably not true.    From Wordnik.com.  [Walsmart « BuzzMachine] Reference

He made a violent effort to raise himself into a sitting position, and merely succeeded in wrenching his body painfully.    From Wordnik.com.  [Nineteen Eighty-Four] Reference

The mom dying and all that blood recalled the wrenching episode in which Dr. Greene just couldn't get that baby delievered.    From Wordnik.com. Reference

I felt a kind of wrenching in my guts at the sight.    From Wordnik.com.  [Knight of Shadows]

And felt a kind of wrenching, as if he was no longer quite there.    From Wordnik.com.  [Pet Peeve]

As Lobster is my witness, I will never wear pants while "wrenching" again.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Indignity of Commuting by Bicycle: Being On the Lookout] Reference

I was wondering if you could talk about doing those kind of wrenching emotional scenes.    From Wordnik.com.  [HOLLYWOOD INSIDER: David Blue and Elyse Levesque Talk Up Stargate Universe!] Reference

I mean, Gilda and he had -- and Lorraine, they had this kind of wrenching kind of relationship.    From Wordnik.com.  [CNN Transcript Apr 9, 2004] Reference

Forced here from his Brooklyn apartment of ten years, he calls that process "wrenching", but an unexpected blessing.    From Wordnik.com.  [Michael Henry Adams: IN PRAISE OF DIVERSITY: How Public Policy Impacts Race and Class Conflict in Today's Harlem?] Reference

Heart-wrenching is an understatement.    From Wordnik.com.  [Reader reviews of The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks.] Reference

The US military has been through these "wrenching" changes before.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks!] Reference

But it's still difficult to watch the kind of wrenching change we're seeing this entire industry go through.    From Wordnik.com.  [SeekingAlpha.com: Home Page] Reference

And as the grinning, smirking Ohaha said to a reporter recently ---- "we're going through 'wrenching' changes.".    From Wordnik.com.  [Latest Articles] Reference

The changes of yesteryear were often more wrenching.    From Wordnik.com.  [Goodbye, Mike Mulligan] Reference

The funeral was "the most wrenching day of my life.".    From Wordnik.com.  [The Story Of Her Life] Reference

The story would be a laugh if it weren't so wrenching.    From Wordnik.com.  [Wild at Heart] Reference

Mexicans can now expect less-wrenching booms and busts.    From Wordnik.com.  [A Toast To Trouble] Reference

But that didn't make the decision any less gut-wrenching for me.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Anxiety Epidemic] Reference

Gradual and modest change may avoid delayed and wrenching change.    From Wordnik.com.  [Our Great Economics Lesson] Reference

But three decades of gut-wrenching change are testing those old bonds.    From Wordnik.com.  [China’s New Empty Nest] Reference

In the play's wrenching final scenes, they end in a Cain-and-Abel clinch.    From Wordnik.com.  [Theater Review: 'Long Day's Journey Into Night'] Reference

And the struggle over wrenching cultural and economic choices is linked to politics.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Editor’s Desk] Reference

This is the heart-wrenching reality of severe age-related macular degeneration (AMD).    From Wordnik.com.  [Fading Of The Light] Reference

Over soft drinks and cookies, they began a wrenching six-hour debate about Jerusalem.    From Wordnik.com.  [Walking Off A Cliff] Reference

And so the mood had swung during the last week of Colin Powell's wrenching self-examination.    From Wordnik.com.  [Why He Got Out] Reference

Today, both the American auto industry and the middle class are facing wrenching challenges.    From Wordnik.com.  [It’s Still The Motor City] Reference

Still, it's a heart-wrenching film made all the more powerful by the stillness that infuses it.    From Wordnik.com.  [From Broadway To Boob Tube] Reference

In the past two weeks, though, the ghastly, gut-wrenching spectacle has escalated even further.    From Wordnik.com.  [Who Has The Right To Die?] Reference

It's been exciting, to say the least, with gut-wrenching anxiety attacks and a lot of what-ifs.    From Wordnik.com.  [Super-Market Days] Reference

The first move generated wrenching footage of a mother's anguish and played poorly in the polls.    From Wordnik.com.  [Must A Parent Testify?] Reference

A child's death, the most wrenching of tragedies, has little time or space to be fully absorbed.    From Wordnik.com.  [Broadway Mind-Stretchers] Reference

What is happening now is a deep, wrenching financial crisis unlike any we've seen since the 1930s.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Age of Bloomberg] Reference

The Froistads soon became caught up in a protracted -- and emotionally wrenching -- fight for Amanda.    From Wordnik.com.  [A Chilling Cyberspace Confession] Reference

No one can doubt that changes along these lines would be politically, economically, and socially wrenching.    From Wordnik.com.  [Up Against a Wall of Debt, Part II] Reference