The Story Shapes the Experience

Your pain doesn’t just live in your tissues—it lives in your narrative.

What we believe about our pain—what caused it, what it means, and what it says about us—does more than color our experience.

It can shape the experience itself.

Narratives Drive Sensation

The brain doesn’t wait for data—it predicts. And those predictions are shaped by the stories we’ve learned to tell about pain (Sullivan et al., 2001).

“This pain means I’m broken.”

“I’m probably going to make this worse.”

“My body can’t be trusted.”

These thoughts aren’t just background noise. They are instructions to the nervous system.

And the more rehearsed the story, the more automatic the response.

Where the Stories Come From

Pain stories don’t just come from within. They’re inherited from:

• Clinician language (“Your spine is unstable.”)

• Family beliefs (“We all have bad knees.”)

• Cultural messaging (“No pain, no gain.”)

Each story becomes part of a personal operating system. And like any OS, it influences every decision—consciously or not (Main & George, 2011).

Editing the Pain Script

To shift pain, we don’t always need new interventions. We often need new interpretations.

This starts by:

• Identifying unhelpful or outdated narratives

• Offering alternative metaphors and frames

• Reinforcing the body’s capacity, not just its limits

Even subtle changes in language can reshape perception (Darlow et al., 2013).

Final Thought

We don’t get to choose whether pain has a story.

But we do get to choose whether we keep repeating the old one—or start writing a better one.

Because when the story changes, the pain often does too.

References

1. Sullivan, M. J. L., Thorn, B., Haythornthwaite, J. A., et al. (2001). Theoretical perspectives on the relation between catastrophizing and pain. Clinical Journal of Pain, 17(1), 52–64.

2. Main, C. J., & George, S. Z. (2011). Psychologically informed practice for management of low back pain: future directions in practice and research. Physical Therapy, 91(5), 820–824.

3. Darlow, B., et al. (2013). The enduring impact of what clinicians say to people with low back pain. Annals of Family Medicine, 11(6), 527–534.