Chronic Pain Quotes

“Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop. Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain. In the face of pain there are no heroes.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Mental illness

People assume you aren’t sick
unless they see the sickness on your skin
like scars forming a map of all the ways you’re hurting.

My heart is a prison of Have you tried?s
Have you tried exercising? Have you tried eating better?
Have you tried not being sad, not being sick?
Have you tried being more like me?
Have you tried shutting up?

Yes, I have tried. Yes, I am still trying,
and yes, I am still sick.

Sometimes monsters are invisible, and
sometimes demons attack you from the inside.
Just because you cannot see the claws and the teeth
does not mean they aren’t ripping through me.
Pain does not need to be seen to be felt.

Telling me there is no problem
won’t solve the problem.

This is not how miracles are born.
This is not how sickness works.”
― Emm Roy, The First Step

“Having a chronic illness, Molly thought, was like being invaded. Her grandmother back in Michigan used to tell about the day one of their cows got loose and wandered into the parlor, and the awful time they had getting her out. That was exactly what Molly's arthritis was like: as if some big old cow had got into her house and wouldn't go away. It just sat there, taking up space in her life and making everything more difficult, mooing loudly from time to time and making cow pies, and all she could do really was edge around it and put up with it.

When other people first became aware of the cow, they expressed concern and anxiety. They suggested strategies for getting the animal out of Molly's parlor: remedies and doctors and procedures, some mainstream and some New Age. They related anecdotes of friends who had removed their own cows in one way or another. But after a while they had exhausted their suggestions. Then they usually began to pretend that the cow wasn't there, and they preferred for Molly to go along with the pretense.”
― Alison Lurie, The Last Resort

“I often wished that more people understood the invisible side of things. Even the people who seemed to understand, didn't really.”
― Jennifer Starzec, Determination

“Few things a doctor does are more important than relieving pain. . . pain is soul destroying. No patient should have to endure intense pain unnecessarily. The quality of mercy is essential to the practice of medicine; here, of all places, it should not be strained.”
― Marcia Angell

“If I only could explain
How much I miss
that precious moment
when I was free
from the shackles of chronic pain.”
― Jenni Johanna Toivonen

“The trouble with chronic pain is that it is so easy to become accustomed to it, both mentally and physically. At first it's absolutely agonizing; it's the only thing you think about, like a rock in your shoe that rubs your foot raw with every step. Then the constant rubbing, the pain and the limp all become part of the status quo, the occasional stabbing pain just a reminder.
You are so set to endure, hunched against it - and when it starts to ease, you don't really notice, until the absence washes over you like a balm.”
― Robert J. Wiersema

“People who don't see you every day have a hard time understanding how on some days--good days--you can run three miles, but can barely walk across the parking lot on other days,' [my mom] said quietly.”
― Jennifer Starzec, Determination

“If your body is screaming in pain, whether the pain is muscular contractions, anxiety, depression, asthma or arthritis, a first step in releasing the pain may be making the connection between your body pain and the cause. “Beliefs are physical. A thought held long enough and repeated enough becomes a belief. The belief then becomes biology.”
― Marilyn Van M. Derbur, Miss America By Day: Lessons Learned From Ultimate Betrayals And Unconditional Love

“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

“Surrender is an incredibly difficult topic in light of chronic illness, because loss is often continued and sustained.”
― Cindee Snider Re, Finding Purpose: Rediscovering Meaning in a Life with Chronic Illness

“The erosion of an effective patient-physician relationship has no place when dealing with chronic pain. Worst of all, dismissing the patient's pain is as devastating as crushing a patient's hope.”
― Melissa Cady, Paindemic: A Practical and Holistic Look at Chronic Pain, the Medical System, and the antiPAIN Lifestyle

“Sometimes, this disapproval of how you are managing your pain crosses over to disbelief that you are in as much pain as you say you are. They don’t believe that your pain is a legitimate enough reason to rest or nap or cry or take narcotic medications or not go to work or to go to the doctor. They might think that you are making too big of a deal out of it. They doubt the legitimacy of the pain itself.

This kind of stigma is the source of the dreaded accusation that chronic pain is “all in your head.” It’s as if to say that you are making a mountain out of a molehill.”
― Murray J. McAlister

“Lily had lived with the same pain for so long it felt like a part of her. The worst days, though, were when the pain was different. When it came faster, or harsher, or fiercer than she was used to. When it prickled instead of throbbed. When it attacked her right ankle instead of her left knee. When it woke her up at night instead of aching dully first thing in the morning. On those days, her standard-issue pain was replaced by something different and frightening, something that took over her body and left her without the slightest clue of when, or even if, it would release her.

Those times, her pain wasn’t a part of her anymore. Those times, she was a part of it.”
― Robin Talley, As I Descended

“I'm in pain all the time,' I said, 'and if I gave into it then I'd do nothing.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Empty Throne

“What a person did when they were in pain said a lot about them.”
― Veronica Roth

“A common misconception is that some people are only in pain because they are weak, anxious, depressed, or do not deal well with stress. This is not correct.
Every experience you have — touch, warmth, itch, pain — is created by the brain and thus is all in your head, but it does not mean they are not real.

Things like fear, anxiety, or depression can increase pain levels and can increase the chance of persistent pain. But often, these feelings only develop after a person already has chronic pain.”
― Tasha Stanton

“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

“Under what conditions is life endurable? She ought to know. Ask her. Don't.”
― Sally Rooney, Intermezzo

“I’d trade every last dollar, every shred of dignity, for one damn Klonopin—just to silence the nerves screaming that I’m still alive. High, drunk, broken—whatever it takes to fake peace in a body that won’t stop lying.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia

“Some days I survive by accident, not hope. The pain never stops—it just changes costume. And still, somewhere in the static, there’s a flicker of magic: not in healing, but in enduring. That’s the human condition—staying alive with no good reason, except that part of you refuses to vanish quietly.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia

“It’s that I am the prison. I’m the cell, the bars, the locked door, and the scream no one hears.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia

“I exist inside a living hell — not a nightmare, but an unrelenting, screaming abyss with no exit. I am cursed beyond redemption, haunted by horrors that claw at my soul, and possessed by something monstrous that wears my face and mocks my every scream. Every second is torture — not pain, but a divine punishment etched into my bones, burning through my nerves, flooding my skull with fire. I am not alive. I am a condemned vessel, dragged through a waking exorcism that never ends.”
― Jonathan Harnisch

“Existence, for me, is not merely suffering — it is a meticulous form of torture disguised as life. I move through a world that calls itself shared, yet what I carry is mine alone: a private apocalypse, constant and precise. Others ache, yes — but not like this. Not like me.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia

“I am possessed—not by devils from hell, but by nerves that scream louder than sin. Every breath is a betrayal. To fake calm in a corpse that still moves is the cruelest joke. The devil wears my skin now. And he lies.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia

“This isn’t life. It’s unimaginable, torturous hell- ugly, endless & godless.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia

“It’s not that I’m suffering inside a prison. It’s that I am the prison. I’m the cell, the bars, the locked door, and the scream no one hears.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia

“so much of it is invisible — the pain, the tension, the storm beneath the skin. it’s a trap made of body and mind and spirit all at once. stress becomes an echo chamber where even meaning itself hurts. but to name it, to see it clearly, is to begin freeing it. that’s the start of healing — turning survival into understanding.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Living Colorful Beauty

“Hope is the medicine when there isn't any cure.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Living Colorful Beauty

“Maybe I was just used to it by then, this idea that pain is meant to be endured quietly.”
― Natalia Sylvester, Breathe and Count Back from Ten