You Don’t Really Know What Chronic Pain Is Like Until You Have It

By Crystal Lindell

I was recently talking to two people who asked me about various pain treatments. One was an older woman and the other was a young man. 

When I mentioned kratom – because I could tell that at least one of them was desperate for help – they had two very different reactions. 

One was receptive, while the other was adamantly against it. But it may not be the ones you’d expect.The older woman immediately wanted to know more, while the young man – the much more stereotypical kratom user – was immediately against the idea.

And from their reactions, I could immediately discern which of the two was actually suffering from chronic pain – the older woman.

Because when you have pain that never goes away, you will try anything to find relief. It’s one of the many truths I have come to learn first-hand as a long-time chronic pain sufferer myself.

In fact, there is a lot about living with chronic pain that’s difficult to understand unless you have been through it.

The way it wears you down and damages every aspect of your life. How expensive it is. How much it impacts your relationships.

The special type of despair that comes from the fear that you might never get better.

I have learned just how hard it is for someone with chronic pain just to get out of bed everyday. How much of an accomplishment that is.  

I know that my fellow chronic pain sufferers have likely struggled with doctors and pharmacists and health insurance companies. That they have tried every medication and treatment they could access. And that they have probably contemplated even the most extreme “solution.”

I know that they probably never feel truly rested, because of the way chronic pain even infects your sacred sleep.

And I know what it’s like when loved ones become much less helpful, as they have to keep helping you into eternity. How quickly they lose patience with the situation. 

Or, as French author and chronic pain sufferer Alphonse Daudet once wrote, "Pain is always new to the sufferer, but loses its originality for those around him.”

There’s a bond that comes from the unique experience of shared suffering. A special level of empathy. Which is why I have such a special place in my heart for anyone else enduring chronic pain. 

But it’s nearly impossible to fully grasp life with chronic pain from the outside. 

My theory is that our brains are not set up to process even the concept of chronic pain in the abstract, because recognizing that it could happen to us would be too devastating to accept.

People who have had acute pain, from an injury, accident or surgery, might assume they know what it would be like. But they can only understand so much.

A lot of people like to pretend that if they had chronic pain, they would somehow manage it better than you can. 

They’d yoga their way out of it, or simply go to a chiropractor. They’d be more stoic, and less tired. They would never get frustrated, and they would still do all the activities they did before the chronic pain started.

They’d be wrong though.

You never know how you’ll actually handle chronic pain until you’re enduring it. It has a way of humbling you faster than you expect. Opening you up to trying treatments you thought you’d never consider, like kratom. 

In the end, none of us are as strong as we like to pretend we are. But when we are forced to confront our own weaknesses, we do have the opportunity to see just how strong others have been the whole time.