The Hardest Step in Chronic Pain

This past week, I had the privilege of sharing a long conversation with someone close to me about their chronic pain. The depth of it, the sincerity, the ground we covered felt too important not to share.

We tiptoed around her chronic pain in discussion in the past, and as always, offered myself as a resource for questions as she received information and explored conversations with providers. From rheumatologists to orthopedists, imaging, blood testing, you name it.

We talked about her experience. What she learned. Where she stood with everything.

We talked about her lifestyle, her routine.

It was at this point in the conversation she asked me something that I’ve been asked in many different forms over the years.

“Shouldn’t that be enough?”

This can be one of the most difficult and challenging questions to answer. Why? The answer will be compared to every choice she’s made in context to her chronic pain.

Were they correct? Were they enough? Was it all for nothing just to be in the same place?

Every choice she's made was real. Authentic. Intentional.

Each a data point of evidence, a building block for learning. None of it for nothing.

For this story and many others who share it, each choice is made with hope and aspirations, but share a common theme. Getting better at things you are already good at will only move the needle so far.

Getting better at something you are already 90% skilled at and improving to 93%, leaves you with 3% progress. Improving something your 10% skilled at and progressing to 50% gives you a 40% improvement.

The challenge, these other choices are the most difficult to make.

They come with obstacles. Interferences. Deterrents.

If they were easy, we would have done it already.

This is the moment. When you’re left with no easy choices. It can be difficult to accept this sometimes. The realization, sometimes even grief.

When the easy choices run out, you are left with something quieter and harder. The next chapter is one you have to write, slowly, intentionally.

After talking with my friend about what these choices looked like, how to implement, and traverse expected difficulties, I reminded her, no one is asking you to do this alone. 

I’ll say it again, no one is asking you to do this alone.

When it comes to chronic pain, you don’t have to know how to do it perfectly. You don’t have to know all the details.

It’s about finding a provider that meets you where you stand with your chronic pain and walks you through the difficult choices. Not to find someone who will simply push you harder, but someone who has the skills to validate your experience and history. They are honest with you that the work ahead is going to be uncomfortable in ways the previous work was not.

You didn’t fail. You did what you knew how to do, with the tools that felt available to you.

The next step is real. It exists. It will probably not feel like the steps that came before — and that is not a sign you are on the wrong path. It is the sign you are finally on a new one in overcoming your chronic pain.

Find someone to walk it with you at your pace. That is the work now.

There’s no easy choices ahead and it can be done.

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