Episode 14: Understanding Chronic Pain – Beyond Hurt

The Support & Kindness Podcast
The Support & Kindness Podcast
Episode 14: Understanding Chronic Pain - Beyond Hurt
Loading
/

The Support & Kindness Podcast – Episode 14

Title: Understanding Chronic Pain: Beyond Hurt
Recording date: December 6, 2025
Hosts: Greg (host), Rich, Jay, Derek, Sam

Important Disclaimer

None of the hosts are medical professionals. This episode offers education, validation, and peer support. It is not medical advice.

Always consult your healthcare provider before starting, stopping, or changing any treatment or medication.

Episode Overview

Chronic pain is much more than “something hurts.” It can change:

  • Your body
  • Your brain
  • Your relationships
  • Your work and finances
  • The way you see yourself and the world

In this episode, Greg and co‑hosts Rich, Jay, Derek, and Sam sit down for an honest, vulnerable conversation about:

  • What it’s really like to live with ongoing pain
  • What helps them keep going

What Is Chronic Pain?

Greg opens with a simple grounding definition:

  • Chronic pain = pain that lasts longer than normal healing time
  • Usually 3–6 months or more

It’s different from acute pain, which is your body’s early warning system that something is wrong.

When pain persists, the nervous system can become overly sensitive, so:

  • Ordinary sensations or minor activities can feel disproportionately painful.

Chronic pain doesn’t stay in one box. It can:

Impact on the Body

  • Weaken the immune system

    • Easier to get sick
    • Harder to recover

  • Affect heart and circulation

    • Higher blood pressure
    • Fatigue
    • Changes in heart rate

  • Disrupt digestion

    • Nausea
    • Appetite changes
    • Stomach issues

  • Change weight

    • Weight loss or weight gain
    • Often tied to changes in activity, appetite, and medication side effects

  • Affect breathing

    • Shallow, tight breathing
    • Especially when pain and anxiety show up together

  • Turn everyday tasks into major challenges

    • Walking, standing, cleaning, cooking, showering
    • On the worst days, even brushing your teeth or taking a shower can feel impossible

  • Force changes in hobbies and movement

    • Sports, crafts, music, and exercise may need to be:
      • Reduced
      • Adapted
      • Paused or stopped

How Chronic Pain Affects the Mind

Chronic pain doesn’t just live in the body. It also changes how the mind works.

Brain Fog & Concentration

  • Losing words mid‑sentence
  • Forgetting things
  • Struggling to focus on simple tasks

Decision Fatigue

  • Even small choices feel huge:
    • What to do next
    • Whether to go out
    • Whether to cook or order in

It can feel like climbing a mountain when you’re already exhausted.

Motivation Shifts

  • You may still want things
  • But feel too drained or overwhelmed to start

This often feeds:

  • Guilt
  • Shame
  • Self‑criticism

Especially in a world that celebrates “pushing through” pain instead of respecting limits.

Emotional & Social Impact

Greg and the co‑hosts talk about how chronic pain affects:

  • Emotions
  • Identity
  • Relationships

Common emotional and social impacts:

Anxiety & Stress

  • Fear of flare‑ups
  • Worries about the future, work, and money
  • Feeling like life is shrinking

Self‑Image & Self‑Esteem

  • Feeling “broken,” “lazy,” or “not enough”
  • Especially when people don’t understand or don’t believe you

Coping with Substances

  • Some people turn to alcohol or drugs trying to get relief
  • It’s completely understandable—and can still create serious problems later

Isolation

  • Canceling plans at the last minute
  • Missing family events
  • Leaving early to lie down
  • Withdrawing because you don’t want to disappoint people

Family Roles

When a partner, parent, or caregiver lives with pain, roles at home often shift.

  • This can be stressful for everyone involved

Intimacy

Physical closeness and sex can become:

  • Painful
  • Complicated
  • Hard to talk about

Even in loving relationships.

Work & Money

  • Missed days
  • Reduced hours
  • Losing a job entirely
  • Ongoing medical bills and treatment costs

The Invisible Side of Chronic Pain

One of the hardest parts, as Greg puts it, is that chronic pain is often invisible.

People around you might say:

  • “You don’t look sick.”
  • “You were fine yesterday.”
  • “It’s probably stress.”

Scans and blood tests may come back “normal” even when the pain is intense.

Pain is complex: it involves both body and brain, and current tests don’t capture everything.

Greg emphasizes:

“If you live with chronic pain, even if tests show nothing, your pain is still real. Your experience is valid and it matters. Not seeing anything on a scan doesn’t mean you’re imagining it or making it up.”

Co‑Host Stories & Key Insights

Greg invites each co‑host to share three things:

  1. How their pain began
  2. One emotional or social challenge
  3. One practical strategy that helps them get through the day

Rich – Migraines, TBI, Missing Milestones

How it began:

  • Multiple car accidents as a teen
  • Layered on top of earlier sports concussions
  • Led to traumatic brain injuries, headaches, and migraines that still affect him decades later

Social/emotional impact:

  • Avoided concerts, sporting events, noisy environments
  • Light and sound could turn a headache into a full migraine
  • Missed holidays, left gatherings early, skipped “fun times” to lie down with a washcloth on his head

Rich shares:

“I missed a lot of memories and a lot of quality time with people, so I could sit back with a washcloth on my forehead… socially it takes a toll.”

Later in the episode, echoing something Sam said about people not wanting to hear about pain anymore, Rich adds:

“You say ‘my back hurts, my legs hurt, my joints hurt’ so many times that loved ones tune out… It’s isolating. It’s lonely.”

What helps Rich:

  • Staying hopeful and looking toward new treatments and medications
  • Reminding himself that advances in migraine and head injury care are happening all the time

Jay – Stomach Illness, Misdiagnosis, Stigma

How it began:

  • Lives with cyclical vomiting syndrome and cannabinoid hyperemesis
  • A condition where cannabis use can trigger severe vomiting episodes and hospitalizations

At 18, he went from an “iron stomach” (drinking beers, eating wings with friends) to his first episode, which he thought was the flu.

  • The vomiting wouldn’t stop → repeated ER visits → misdiagnoses
  • Eventually had a healthy gallbladder removed before doctors realized what was really happening

Social/emotional impact:

  • Frequent hospitalizations every few months
  • Dramatic weight loss and constant nausea

Because cannabinoid hyperemesis is triggered by cannabis use, he faced:

  • Stigma
  • Judgment

Even a doctor telling him not to come back to the ER for his condition.

This affected relationships, including his engagement:

  • Ongoing cannabis use plus repeated hospitalizations contributed to a breakup

Jay recalls:

“They even brought a security guard to escort me out… You wear out your welcome with medical professionals.”

What helps Jay:

  • Stopping cannabis use (several months at the time of the episode)
    • Significantly reduced preventable episodes
  • Hydrotherapy (warm baths) when his stomach flares
  • Breathing exercises and meditation, especially during the worst times
  • Peer support groups, including the podcast community and online support groups

Jay shares:

“Since I’ve had the groups with you fellas and the podcasts, I’ve really found the emotional pain has gotten a lot better. I feel included, loved… Support groups are there. They help a lot.”

Derek – TBI, Gait Changes, Finding Perspective

How it began:

  • Serious fall down a flight of stairs while drunk
  • Resulted in a traumatic brain injury
  • Months blurred by coma and heavy sedation

Physical impact:

  • Nerve damage near the hip
  • Affects gait and balance
  • Causes muscle compensation and persistent dull lower‑back pain
  • Sometimes avoids physical activities and games when he doesn’t feel “up to snuff”

Emotional impact:

After the injury:

  • Strong emotional volatility
  • Everything felt either extremely positive or extremely negative

Over time, he learned to:

  • “Simmer down”
  • Step back
  • Notice emotional swings instead of being swept away by them

What helps Derek:

  • An “amalgam of stretches,” combining:

    • Vinyasa yoga
    • Old cross‑country running routines

  • Walking, breathing, and listening to what his body says, including:

    • “Rest” when needed
    • Trusting his gut and second‑guessing himself less

Derek offers a powerful reframe of pain:

“Sometimes, even in the worst moods and the worst pain I’ve ever felt… I get solace from the ability to experience pain, considering how close I came to dying… At least you’re able to feel this. At least you’re not dead from the brain injury.”

Sam – Broken Back, Joint Damage, Addiction, Recovery

How it began:

  • Broke his back in his twenties when a roof caved in at work
  • Developed avascular necrosis (long‑bone joints not getting enough blood and starting to collapse)

Physical & medical journey:

  • Multiple joint replacements, including hips
  • Surgeries and long‑term pain led to:
    • Heavy opioid use
    • Later, heroin addiction

Now:

  • In recovery for 12 years
  • Learning to live with chronic pain without traditional pain medication
  • Supported by Suboxone for addiction recovery and some pain relief

Social/emotional impact:

  • At first, chronic pain consumed every conversation
  • People got tired of hearing how miserable he felt
  • He withdrew

He describes his body as feeling like it’s in “mutiny”:

  • Unpredictable
  • Unreliable

He spent time on the streets in active addiction before entering recovery.

What helps Sam:

  • Breathing and meditation
  • Jokes that he’s “late” to understanding how his brain works
  • Learning how the brain, chronic pain, and addiction intersect

Accepting that:

  • No amount of pain medication will erase everything
  • The focus is on management, not total elimination of pain

Sam sums it up:

“You don’t really ‘get over it.’ You learn to live with it and learn different coping strategies.”

Greg – Back Injury, Weight, Depression, Service

How it began:

  • Used to be the person at work who would lift anything heavy:

    “If you can’t move it, go get Greg.”

  • Years of poor lifting technique
  • Larger body size
  • Pushing past pain with a “no pain, no gain” mindset
  • Eventually led to back injuries that never fully went away

Impact on life:

  • Cancelled plans → growing isolation
  • Worsening depression
  • Weight gain connected to:
    • Medication changes
    • Reduced activity
    • Feeling stuck in a vicious cycle:
      • Pain → inactivity → low mood → isolation → more pain

What helps Greg:

  • Distraction and purpose, like:

    • A daily “Creative Work Hour”—a virtual coworking group that became a “second family”

  • Gratitude pr