Anger: A Call to Attention
The relentless frustration of yet another ineffective pain management option; why is it so hard to find treatments that help? The bubbling, boiling resentment about how unjust our pain is; why us? The fury of feeling invisible to others; why is it so hard for them to listen and understand what we’re going through? Living […]
Learning to Trust Your Inner Knowing
When a toddler skins his knee, his mother reassures him: “You’re okay!” When the same child tells his teacher he doesn’t need a jacket during recess, his teacher insists: “But you’ll be cold!” When he grows up and says he needs to take a break on the hike, his friends respond: “It’s easy, you’ll be […]
The Pain Identity: Finding Balance In Our Relationship With Pain
Living with chronic pain can feel like being forced to wear glasses that distort the way that we experience life. Looking through the lens of pain for long enough, we may forget that we’re wearing glasses and that we live with our pain, rather than living as our pain. It’s also possible that we dislike […]
Why Should I Embrace My Pain?
It’s the end of another long day, and you’re stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, with chores and people waiting for you at home. You blast the horn and squeeze the steering wheel until your knuckles are white, but none of it makes the car in front of you move faster. In fact, your rage doesn’t make […]
The Illusion of the Magic Cure
Created by Kat Woods, an artist and chef who shares her journey about healing from Lyme disease on her blog, HopeHealCook, this cartoon is just one snapshot from life with chronic pain. Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts or magic fixes for chronic pain, and even when we don’t know what to do, we have no […]
Fear: A Spotlight On What Matters To Us Most
“Everyone is afraid of something. We fear things because we value them. We fear losing people because we love them. We fear dying because we value being alive. Don’t wish you didn’t fear anything. All that would mean is that you didn’t feel anything. (Cassandra Clare)” Fear, in the right proportions, is perhaps the greatest […]
Chronic Pain & Repressed Emotions: A Conversation That Demands Sensitivity
By now, the correlation between repressed emotions, childhood trauma, and chronic pain is a well researched and documented phenomena. Doctors like the late Dr. John Sarno, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, and Dr. Peter A. Levine, have all done revolutionary work in establishing how repressed emotions, and trauma can manifest in the body and create […]
Chronic Pain & Sex: The Myth And Shame Of Sexual Normativity
You know that scene in what seems like every movie of all time? The one where the main character and their love interest start passionately making out, knocking over glasses, bumping into walls, and frantically discarding their clothing as they head for the bedroom? Then, with literally zero foreplay, they’re suddenly having sex and within […]
Chronic Pain & Sex: Reclaiming Our Sexuality
“Treat cultural messages about sex and your body like a salad bar. Take only the things that appeal to you and ignore the rest. We’ll all end up with a different collection of stuff on our plates, but that’s how it’s supposed to work. It goes wrong only when you try to apply what you […]
Why Starting Therapy is So Hard
My friend decided to run her first marathon in a city more than an hour away from her home. She spent the night at a hotel, so she could simply hop on one of the city’s electric scooters and glide over to the race – well-rested and stress-free. However, on marathon morning, she discovered that […]