Quotes & Sayings About Chronic Pain

The agony of this chronic stage of being cannot be endured for long. At the deepest level, toxic shame triggers our basic automatic defensive cover-ups. Freud called these automatic cover-ups our primary ego defenses. Once these defenses are in place they function automatically and unconsciously, sending our true and authentic selves into hiding. We develop a false identity out of this basic core. We become master impersonators. We avoid our core agony and pain and over a period of years, we avoid our avoidance. — John Bradshaw

Pain is always emotional. Fear and depression keep constant company with chronic hurting. — Siri Hustvedt

God uses chronic pain and weakness, along with other afflictions, as his chisel for sculpting our lives. Felt weakness deepens dependence on Christ for strength each day. The weaker we feel, the harder we lean. And the harder we lean, the stronger we grow spiritually, even while our bodies waste away. To live with your 'thorn' uncomplainingly - that is, sweet, patient, and free in heart to love and help others, even though every day you feel weak - is true sanctification. It is true healing for the spirit. It is a supreme victory of grace. — J.I. Packer

Too much profit is being made at the expense of unsuspecting patients. — Melissa Cady

My mom's in jail right now for assault with a deadly weapon, which was pretty stupid of her, I admit. But she took good care of us growing up. She worked her ass off before she blew out her back and started drinking. Chronic pain, you know? But she never would have tried to run over that cop if she'd stuck it out in the anger management program. I'm still not sure why she went after that second guy, he's not the one who wrote the parking ticket ... . Horse burst out laughing, biting it back quick. — Joanna Wylde

We define boredom as the pain a person feels when he's doing nothing or something irrelevant, instead of something he wants to do but won't, can't, or doesn't dare. Boredom is acute when he knows the other thing and inhibits his action, e.g., out of politeness, embarrassment, fear of punishment or shame. Boredom is chronic if he has repressed the thought of it and no longer is aware of it. A large part of stupidity is just the chronic boredom, for a person can't learn, or be intelligent about, what he's not interested in, when his repressed thoughts are elsewhere. — Paul Goodman

He awoke each morning with familiar shapes at the edges of his vision, could feel memories nearby, but by the time breakfast came, they were already fading. By dinner, they were lost. It left Troy with a sadness, a cold sensation, and a feeling like a hollow stomach
different from hunger
like rainy days as a child when he didn't know how to fill his time. It was the pain of a chronic boredom mixed with the discomfort of time wasted. — Hugh Howey

Tell me, what kind of functions does pain have when one is convicted to 100 whippings in Saudie Arabia? You claim pain has a function, I claim that's scientific rubbish. The only thing pain really does is cause an instant reaction that is not rational and usually quite erratic. The famous example of the hand in boiling water, for example. You say it proves pain has a function. But exactly because of the spasmic reaction lots and lots of people will drop the bowl with boiling water over their entire bodies causing serious burns. So what was the 'function' of this pain? Pain and fear cause confusion and trauma. If pain actually did have a rational function, chronic pain would not exist. — Martijn Benders

I take opioids to treat chronic pain. Stigmatizing them will harm me. — Sonya Huber

Everyone has a story. I see many clients suffering from chronic diseases such as Lyme disease, fibromyalgia, and generalized pain. Especially in these clients, I always look for the emotional component. And there is always an emotional component. Either there's a recent divorce, death in the family, trouble with a child or parent, or financial strife that's led to excessive stress. To reemphasize this point: you cannot heal if you don't heal your emotions. — Michelle S. Fondin

Lily had lived with the same pain for so long it felt like a part of her. The worst days, though, were when the pain was different. When it came faster, or harsher, or fiercer than she was used to. When it prickled instead of throbbed. When it attacked her right ankle instead of her left knee. When it woke her up at night instead of aching dully first thing in the morning. On those days, her standard-issue pain was replaced by something different and frightening, something that took over her body and left her without the slightest clue of when, or even if, it would release her.

Those times, her pain wasn't a part of her anymore. Those times, she was a part of it. — Robin Talley

It's not easy to diagnose because depending where the endometrial deposits are, the symptoms can be quite different. It's an unrecognized problem among teenage girls, and it's something that every young woman who has painful menstruation should be aware of ... it's a condition that is curable if it's caught early. If not, if it's allowed to run on, it can cause infertility, and it can really mess up your life.
[Author Hilary Mantel on being asked about being a writer with endometriosis, Nov 2012 NPR interview] — Hilary Mantel

Now that I am conscious of the world of chronic pain, when I see somebody walking down the street who's having trouble, I feel a sadness for them. I notice. — Lynne Tillman

Chronic pain can be very lonely. It can have a shame-based quality. — Jennifer Grey

It's so important for those living with chronic pain to establish good communication with both their healthcare professionals and caregivers. Clear communication about pain is vital to receiving proper diagnosis and effective treatment. — Naomi Judd

Wall and Melzack showed how a chronic injury not only makes the cells in the pain system fire more easily but can also cause our pain maps to enlarge their "receptive field" (the area of the body's surface that they map for), so that we begin to feel pain over a larger area of our body's surface. This was happening to Moskowitz, whose neck pain was spreading to both sides of his neck. Wall and Melzack also showed that as maps enlarge, pain signals in one map can "spill" into adjacent pain maps. Then we may develop referred pain, when we are hurt in one body part but feel the pain in another, some distance away. — Norman Doidge

I've always loved animals. I've never lived without them. As long as I can remember, I was bringing home strays. When I was five, I brought home a stray kitten I named Tiger. This was my first rescued animal. It wasn't until I became an actor, and then injured my spine, that I discovered that these animals were actually very therapeutic and helped me to cope with my chronic pain. — Ken Wahl

Personalized medicine is an art that advocates for the patient, not the pocket or convenience of the medical system. — Melissa Cady

There's a saying that goes something like: 'We are all one drink or pill away from addiction,' and I know this is meant to destigmatize what addicts go through, but I feel like I've been seeing variations on this 'common knowledge' more and more lately being used (on social media) as a cudgel to remind patients to not overdo it," Anna says, speaking to the dual-edged sword of awareness. A motto designed to humanize the experience of addiction has been turned into a weapon that targets people who rely on opioids for pain management, and that translates to real-world stigma. — S. E. Smith

Medical thinking usually sees stress as highly disturbing but isolated events such as, for example, sudden unemployment, a marriage breakup, or the death of a loved one. These major events are potent sources of stress for many, but there are chronic daily stresses in people's lives that are more insidious and more harmful in their long-term biological consequences. Internally generated stresses take their toll without in any way seeming out of the ordinary. — Gabor Mate

This course is designed for physicians, nurses, physician assistants, and allied care providers in the primary care setting who may identify and treat patients with chronic pain syndromes. — Mark Rose

What is rational in the practice of thoughtful medicine is impractical for the system. — Melissa Cady

If you get operated, something can go wrong and you can just say bye-bye to tennis. That's what happened to a lot of soccer players in Europe. They get operated, some things, it's not the mistake of the doctor. It's just some surgeries, they just don't go the right way ... My injury will never go away. It's already become so chronic there's no chance to fix it so I can play without pain. — Marat Safin

I guess it's human nature to question yourself, to question why all the pain has had to happen? sometimes there isn't any answers it just is what it is and how we make ourselves feel and see through that, is what will determine how we move forward. — Nikki Rowe

In my work on injuries, I'm very interested in the lag time between when a person first suspects that something is too intense or painful for them in practice, and when they actually stop or alter practice. In between those two points comes a litany of things they are told and learn to tell themselves - "pain is an opening", "practice requires commitment" etc. - about the necessity of continuing. It's also in this period that repetitive strain can evolve into chronic injury. — Anonymous

Chronic illness is hard. Pain is hard. Isolation is hard. The financial cost is hard. Grieving is hard and necessary and sometimes takes far longer than we every imagined. — Cindee Snider Re

The pains in my heart don't go away these days. The heartaches are chronic; they layer on top of each other from one day to the next, thickening like a callus. — Eva Lesko Natiello

Those who become mentally ill often have a history of chronic pain. — Gene Tierney

The proliferation of support groups suggests to me that too many Americans are growing up in homes that do not contain a grandmother. A home without a grandmother is like an egg without salt ... The emotionally satisfying discussions that take place in Chronic Pain Outreach and Depression Resources are simply updated versions of the grandmotherly practice of hanging crepe. We could eliminate much of the isolation that support groups exist to fill and save the "traditional family" that everybody is so worried about if more couples took their aging parents to live with them. — Florence King

The number one cause of PTSD in the United States is motor vehicle accidents.14 As many as 25 to 33 percent of people show signs of PTSD - such as sleep disturbances, heightened anxiety, hypervigilance, nightmares, and avoidant behavior - 30 days after an accident. It's so common that 2.5 million to 7 million people in the United States suffer from it. Their risk of substance abuse is five times greater than normal. And well over half of people in car accidents (60 to 66 percent) have chronic pain, just like Emily did.15 — Gary Kaplan

Sometimes ... we find that even when we do our best to serve the Lord, we still suffer. You may know someone who faces these most challenging of circumstances: consider the parent whose child becomes ill, for whom everyone prays and fasts with all their heart and soul, but who ultimately dies. Or the missionary who sacrifices to go on a mission, then develops a terrible illness that leaves him or her severely disabled or in chronic pain. — David E. Sorensen

I surmise that later generations will likely scoff at the means by which we are currently addressing pain as well. — Melissa Cady

I will be living with chronic pain for the rest of my life. I don't have the mobility, energy or life options I used to have. I work hard to manage the pain, and I want the medical system to be a respectful and effective partner, not a jailer. The opioid crisis is not my doing. — Sonya Huber

There are a lot of victims when it comes to addiction. I know there's an overdose epidemic. We see those faces. But then I see these other faces - the ones who commit suicide because they can't handle the pain. Those faces mean just as much to me. — Donna Marsh

Mild depression is a gradual and sometimes permanent thing that undermines people the way rust weakens iron. It is too much grief at too slight a cause, pain that takes over from the other emotions and crowds them out. Such depression takes up bodily occupancy in the eyelids and in the muscles that keep the spine erect. It hurts your heart and lungs, making the contraction of involuntary muscles harder than it needs to be. Like physical pain that becomes chronic, it is miserable not so much because it is intolerable in the moment as because it is intolerable to have known it in the moments gone and to look forward only to knowing it in the moments to come. The present tense of mild depression envisages no alleviation because it feels like knowledge. — Andrew Solomon

You can only exist as far as your mind will allow you to exist, and I think chronic pain will stop time dead in its tracks. You feel like you're the only one, and how unfair it is, and a million different feel-sorry-for-yourself type feelings. — Phil Anselmo

The lesion is in the area of my brain that is responsible for motor function, so I have continual chronic pain in my left arm from elbow to fingertips and the right side of my body from my ear to my breast area. — Karen Duffy

The majority of people living with chronic pain have the symptoms attributed to conditions that are not fully understood, including Spinal Stenosis, Fibromyalgia, Diabetic Neuropathy, Arthritis, and Restless Leg Syndrome. These diagnoses provide a label allowing the patient to be classified and guiding physicians to treat, but often do not reflect the true cause of symptoms. Using approaches presented in Walking Well Again, both patients and clinicians are guided to recognizing and treating the hidden causes of pain, which often results in relief in just one or two days. — Stuart M. Goldman

The trouble with chronic pain is that it is so easy to become accustomed to it, both mentally and physically. At first it's absolutely agonizing; it's the only thing you think about, like a rock in your shoe that rubs your foot raw with every step. Then the constant rubbing, the pain and the limp all become part of the status quo, the occasional stabbing pain just a reminder.
You are so set to endure, hunched against it - and when it starts to ease, you don't really notice, until the absence washes over you like a balm. — Robert J. Wiersema

I have lived most my life with chronic inflammation and constant pain with immediate diarrhea. — Mike McCready

Chronic or long-term pain affects sleep for weeks to months, even years, causing you to awaken frequently at night and experience daytime sleepiness. This long-term back pain can cause appetite loss, muscle weakness, irritability, and depression. You might have difficulty dealing with others, including family members, friends, and people at work. — Harris H. McIlwain

Our dogs relieve chronic pain, lift our spirits, sniff out cancer, detect impending heart attacks, seizures and migraines, lower our blood pressure and cholesterol levels, help us recover from devastating illness, and even improve our children's IQ, as well as lowering their risk for adult allergies and asthma. Just think - the unconditional love, limitless affection and to-die-for loyalty of a well-chosen, well-trained, well-cared-for dog could be just what the doctor ordered! — Jack Canfield

Chronic pain shatters productive lives. Chronic pain almost always is accompanied by depression, anxiety, frustration, fatigue, isolation, and lowered self-esteem. — Jed Diamond

I felt an attack of my most chronic illness - the pain of missing out. — Steve Toltz

I have tremendous empathy for people who are faced with any kind of a chronic problem. Sometimes when we're in this situation, it's as though our mind has us believe that if we ruminate about the pain we'll find a way out. — Cheryl Richardson

There is no great reward for being emotionally withdrawn, no pity prize for bottling your frustration. No one is coming to congratulate your chronic self-repression. By opening up, maybe you will inconvenience some people. Maybe you will trigger some conflict. Maybe you will be rejected, criticized, judged. Everything comes with a price and everything has its compensation. Authenticity may require pain, but it also opens the doors to joy, creativity, self-respect, empathy. Self-repression, on the other hand, costs you all the beauty of the world in exchange for a prison of comfort. Is it really worth it? Isn't it time to break free? — Vironika Tugaleva

In that instant, I realized that if I focused on the pain and misery, it would take me longer to heal. When chronic pain is my most often companion, it can be challenging to keep looking for the good. I needed to figure out a way to focus on the positive moments of each day. I needed to see where I was improving and healing. — Sharon E. Rainey

Few things a doctor does are more important than relieving pain ... pain is soul destroying. No patient should have to endure intense pain unnecessarily. The quality of mercy is essential to the practice of medicine; here, of all places, it should not be strained. — Marcia Angell

Stress does not cause pain, but it can exacerbate it and make it worse. Much of chronic pain is 'remembered' pain. It's the constant firing of brain cells leading to a memory of pain that lasts, even though the bodily symptoms causing the pain are no longer there. The pain is residing because of the neurological connections in the brain itself. — Herbert Benson

I've never experienced chronic pain myself, but I have known many people over the years who have. — Naomi Judd

There are millions of Americans who are suffering from chronic pain. — Jennifer Grey

Chronic pain patients like me are not the cause of the opioid crisis; only 22% of those who misuse opioids are prescribed them by a doctor, and only 13% of ER visits for opiate overdoses were chronic pain patients. Most chronic pain patients are rule-followers who just want to function. — Sonya Huber

So, more times than not, but not every time, it can be linked to a medical problem, such as menopause, cancer, chronic pain, it can be linked to anxiety and depression. Those are the more common causes. — Shelby Harris

Consciousness is the chronic pain of life, and all higher organisms suffer it every waking moment. — David Marusek

I realized that even in a world of proliferating media venues, online and in print, and on TV and on countless cable channels, the idea that I could be considered an expert on chronic knee pain was I think troubling for society, but very exciting for me. — John Hodgman

One of the most popular genital surgeries is labia minora reduction. When a similar procedure is performed on healthy girls in some African countries as a coming-of-age rite to control their sexuality, Westerners denounce it as genital mutilation; in the U.S. of A., it's called cosmetic enhancement. But both procedures are based on misogynist notions of female genitalia as ugly, dirty, and shameful. And though American procedures are generally performed under vastly better conditions (with the benefit of, say, anesthesia and antibiotics), the postsurgical results can be similarly horrific, involving loss of sensation, chronic pain, and infection. — Julia Scheeres

the media, at least in the U.S., tends to focus on pain pill use, abuse, and addiction by people who do not have chronic pain.
Even if these stories offhandedly mention that these pills are used to treat pain in people whose physical pain does not go away, however, the stories of those who use pain medicine responsibly -- or, worse, accused of drug-seeking behavior because they need certain types of pills for chronic pain -- are usually overshadowed by the "How can we prevent pain pill addiction?" concern, instead of asking, "How can we treat chronic pain more effectively? — Anna Hamilton

Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. I have known so many sick women all my life. Women with chronic pain, with ever-gestating diseases. Women with conditions. Men, sure, they have bone snaps, they have backaches, they have a surgery or two, yank out a tonsil, insert a shiny plastic hip. Women get consumed. — Gillian Flynn

Chronic pain or other challenges are invitations; gifts that challenge us to learn how to manage the mind. — Cheryl Richardson

So if somebody has chronic pain, we want to manage the pain, but we still want to treat the insomnia separately. So what we'll tend to do in our sleep lab is we'll do a thorough evaluation and we usually have myself, who is a Psychologist and a Sleep Behavioral Sleep Specialist, I treat the patients first. — Shelby Harris

Given the ... multidisciplinary philosophy, I was surprised by the absence of alternative pain approaches - the whole spectrum of cranial-sacral massage, healing-touch therapy, and other hands-on skills that are a lifeline to many people with chronic pain. Alternative therapie are hard to evaluate, but that's no reason not to explore them. — Marni Jackson

For some reason the word "chronic" often has to be explained. It does not mean severe, though many chronic conditions can be exceptionally serious and indeed life-threatening. No, "chronic" means persistent over time, enduring, constant. Diabetes is a chronic condition, but measles is not. With measles, you contract it and then it is gone. It can sometimes be fatal, but is never chronic. Manic depression, in other words, is something you have to learn to live with. There are therapies which may help some people to function and function for the most part happily and well. Sometimes a talking therapy, sometimes pharmaceutical intervention helps. — Stephen Fry

The erosion of an effective patient-physician relationship has no place when dealing with chronic pain. Worst of all, dismissing the patient's pain is as devastating as crushing a patient's hope. — Melissa Cady

One in six people suffer depression or a chronic anxiety disorder. These are not the worried well but those in severe mental pain with conditions crippling enough to prevent them living normal lives. — Polly Toynbee

We all know that as we form thoughts, they form deep channels in our minds and in our brains. Chronic pain is an example. If you burn yourself, you pull your hand away. But if you're still in pain in six months' or six years' time, it's because these circuits are producing pain that's no longer helping you. — Christopher DeCharms

If I were somebody dealing with chronic pain, I would see it as a challenge to manage my mind; even knowing that the effect of my thoughts is not only affecting my experience, but it is absolutely affecting the state of my health. — Cheryl Richardson

In the debate over opioid addiction, there's one group we aren't hearing from: chronic pain patients, many of whom need to use the drugs on a long-term basis. — S. E. Smith

I think anyone who suffers from chronic pain can agree with this - you feel this great significance. What I wanted to capture was that significance, and as a matter of fact I think that's one of the lyrics on 'Conflict,' on the split. I touch on the significance, and really it's a selfish thing, in an offbeat way. — Phil Anselmo

No doubt about it, allopathic medicine (the term used to describe conventional Western medicine) is superb at dealing with trauma and bacterial infections, but it is not nearly as effective as natural medicine at managing chronic pain, autoimmune disease, and degenerative conditions. — Marcellus A. Walker

As he analyzed the areas that fire in chronic pain, he observed that many of those areas also process thoughts, sensations, images, memories, movements, emotions, and beliefs - when they are not processing pain. That observation explained why, when we are in pain, we can't concentrate or think well; why we have sensory problems and often can't tolerate certain sounds or light; why we can't move more gracefully; and why we can't control our emotions very well and become irritable and have emotional outbursts. The areas that regulate these activities have been hijacked to process the pain signal. — Norman Doidge

Terry recalled far better days when she'd risen bright and early every morning.... Days before darkness had closed in and refused to leave.... — Dawn M. Turner

Sometimes I wonder how I could have been so oblivious to the fact that proper treatment for pain is, well, not a bad thing. — Anna Hamilton

I currently take Lortab, which is a combination of acetaminophen and hydrocodone. I'd rather not take this medication, or any medication for that matter, but it is the only one that controls my pain adequately enough to allow me to function on a daily basis... I take the smallest dose possible to enable me to remain as clear-headed as possible to do what I need to do each day...

Even with the minimal opioids I take, I still have pain all the time, 24 hours a day; without opioids, life would be torture. — Alison Moore

Which would give her an ulcer first? All the aspirin and prescription pain medication she took, or Jack Carlton? Then again, that left only one cause, since he was the reason she needed the drugs to begin with. — Dawn M. Turner

Mental illness

People assume you aren't sick
unless they see the sickness on your skin
like scars forming a map of all the ways you're hurting.

My heart is a prison of Have you tried?s
Have you tried exercising? Have you tried eating better?
Have you tried not being sad, not being sick?
Have you tried being more like me?
Have you tried shutting up?

Yes, I have tried. Yes, I am still trying,
and yes, I am still sick.

Sometimes monsters are invisible, and
sometimes demons attack you from the inside.
Just because you cannot see the claws and the teeth
does not mean they aren't ripping through me.
Pain does not need to be seen to be felt.

Telling me there is no problem
won't solve the problem.

This is not how miracles are born.
This is not how sickness works. — Emm Roy

But I had to think to myself that this was normal, because that was the attitude. I was 19 when I went to see my doctor and I was told it was all in the mind.
[Author Hilary Mantel on being told her endometriosis was imagined pain, From Oct 2009 Daily Mail interview] — Hilary Mantel

You see, it is so hard for these creatures to persevere. The routine of adversity, the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes, the quiet despair (hardly felt as pain) of ever overcoming the chronic temptations with which we have again and again defeated them, the drabness which we create in their lives and the inarticulate resentment with which we teach them to respond to it--all this provides admirable opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition. — C.S. Lewis

Healing severe or chronic pain, I believe, includes transforming our relationship to the pain, and, ultimately, it is about transforming our relationship to who we are and to life. — Sarah Anne Shockley

Even if the body's inflammatory response is a necessary part of its physiology to heal wounds, fight infection, and rebuild the muscles. However, too much inflammation leads to a number of conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, atherosclerosis, arthritis, autonomous disorders, cancer, chronic pain, eczema, premature aging, and yeast infection. Sugar is an inflammatory food and having too much sugar in the body exposes it to a continuously inflamed state. Sugar detox helps prevent the foretasted conditions which put sugar addicts at a higher risk of contracting these conditions. — Samantha Michaels

The beautiful thing is that, when someone who has chronic pain reaches the point of acceptance, it doesn't merely bring a new sense of peace. Acceptance also creates a floor to build upon. It marks the beginning of an uphill climb, not to the old life, but to a new one that may be just as satisfying. Hal — Lynn R. Webster

Deepening awareness and nonjudgmental acceptance of one's thoughts fosters a new relationship with them, creating the space to purposefully shift mental focus away from the ruminative thought patterns that pave the road to suffering. — Dan Mager

What I mean is sometimes, for an artist, chronic pain can be a gift. — Chuck Palahniuk

Several medical professional organizations acknowledge the utility of opioid therapy and many case series and large surveys report satisfactory reductions in pain, improvement in function and minimal risk of addiction. — Andrew Rosenblum

Recently God asked me the same question in a new way, "And if I don't allow you to heal, if I never remove the pain, will you still trust Me? — Cindee Snider Re