Chronic Pain Stigam Quotes

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

There is no great reward for being emotionally withdrawn, no pity prize for bottling your frustration.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

The stigma of chronic pain is one of the most difficult aspects of living with chronic pain. If you have chronic pain, people can sometimes judge you for it. Specifically, they can sometimes disapprovingly judge you for how you are coping with it. If you rest or nap because of the pain, they think you rest or nap too much. If they catch you crying, they become impatient and think you cry too much. If you don't work because of the pain, you face scrutiny over why you don't. If you go to your healthcare provider, they ask, "Are you going to the doctor again?" Maybe, they think that you take too many medications. In any of these ways, they disapprove of how you are coping with pain. These disapproving judgments are the stigma of living with chronic pain. ~ Murray J. McAlister

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

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

It's so hard to watch the person you love be in pain. It's a natural impulse to want to fix it, and not being able to is uncomfortable. Remaining in that state of discomfort over time is even harder. Being in a relationship with someone in chronic pain is like a chronic pain condition in and of itself. ~ Karen Havelin

Somatic Symptoms:
People with Complex PTSD often have medical unexplained physical symptoms such as abdominal pains, headaches, joint and muscle pain, stomach problems, and elimination problems. These people are sometimes most unfortunately mislabeled as hypochondriacs or as exaggerating their physical problems. But these problems are real, even though they may not be related to a specific physical diagnosis. Some dissociative parts are stuck in the past experiences that involved pain may intrude such that a person experiences unexplained pain or other physical symptoms. And more generally, chronic stress affects the body in all kinds of ways, just as it does the mind. In fact, the mind and body cannot be separated. Unfortunately, the connection between current physical symptoms and past traumatizing events is not always so clear to either the individual or the physician, at least for a while. At the same time we know that people who have suffered from serious medical, problems. It is therefore very important that you have physical problems checked out, to make sure you do not have a problem from which you need medical help. ~ Suzette Boon

In his books, Dr. Alexander Lowen put into words the anguish I could not describe. He explained how a repressed experience was converted into a physical symptom. Intense sexual energy that had not been resolved or discharged would be forced into muscles, causing chronic muscular tensions. Finally, someone understood my pain…at least that one. Chronic muscular tension may not sound like a big deal but I have lived in a body primed for lifting a car. The muscles never let go. Even when I awaken, they are flexed to the max. It's called "muscular armoring. ~ Marilyn Van Derbur

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

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

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

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

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

Even the littlest things were now a challenge, one I didn't understand. ~ Sarah Todd Hammer

I wondered if there was anything [the doctor] could do to to make the pain disappear and my arms work again. I wondered if I was going to get any worse than I already was. If so, I wondered if he could fix that, too. ~ Jennifer Starzec

The strong, ferocious wind just made the chill worse, and as it blew around me, electric bursts of pain shot through my body. ~ Jennifer Starzec

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

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

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

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

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

Surrender is an incredibly difficult topic in light of chronic illness, because loss is often continued and sustained. ~ Cindee Snider Re

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Living with long-term suffering in American culture feels like being off-key. Suffering quiets and slows, but our culture prefers a crescendo. ~ K.J. Ramsey