Distress, suffering, misery, agony, dolor, passion are comparable when denoting the state of one that is in great trouble or in pain of mind or body.
Distress commonly implies conditions or circumstances that cause physical or mental stress or strain; usually also it connotes the possibility of relief or the need of assistance.
The word is applicable to things as well as to persons; thus, a ship in distress is helpless and in peril because of some untoward circumstance (as a breakdown in machinery); a community’s distress may be the result of a disaster or of an event imposing extreme hardships on the people.
When used to designate a mental state, distress usually implies the stress or strain of fear, anxiety, or shame.
Suffering is used especially in reference to human beings; often it implies conscious awareness of pain or distress and conscious endurance.
Misery stresses the unhappy or wretched conditions attending distress or suffering; it often connotes sordidness, or dolefulness, or abjectness.
Agony suggests suffering so intense that both body and mind are involved in a struggle to endure the unbearable.
Dolor is a somewhat literary word applied chiefly to mental suffering that involves sorrow, somber depression, or grinding anxiety.
Passion is now rare in this sense except in reference to the sufferings of Jesus in the garden at Gethsemane and culminating in his crucifixion.