Reframing Pain

For younger people, pain is usually sudden and galvanizing. Your body is supposed to "just work", so pain is aberrational. A danger sign. But, being young, you heal fast and the pain goes away. So pain is rarely a big deal, yet always feels like one.

Around late middle age, your body begins to carry a rich palette—a portfolio, if you will—of pains, like a bunch of progress thermometers. Doctors and physical therapists do not find this aberrational, so they're usually trying to help with pain management rather than elimination. And when I was explained this in younger days, it terrified me, because I figured old age was a hell of non-stop galvanizing pain.

It's not, though. It's something you can mostly just reframe.

Two questions are always front-of-mind: 1. Is something horribly wrong? and 2. Will this pain keep getting worse?

Neither is unknown to youngsters, but age makes you more more prone to serious conditions, leaving you skittish about scary diagnoses and downward trajectories.

However, the moment you understand what’s paining you—how it behaves, what to expect, and assurance it won't climb to infinity—even substantial pain becomes easier to bear. Young people don't often have chronic pain. It sounds ghastly, but only if you're imagining galvanizing pain that never goes away.

When you reach the age where pain becomes informational rather than existential, it becomes viable to carry a pain portfolio without suffering much if you understand the situation, and know the upper limit, and have some fixes (however partial) close at hand.

For example, I have a sensitive tooth occasionally delivering toothache-level pain with no possible fix (my dentist generously offers root canal it if it gets unbearable, which is not an enticing prospect). But it's not jaw cancer, and I know the pain curve, and I have three creams, one of which usually fades it into the cosmic background pain radiation. Interestingly, I rarely find myself applying the cream, even when it hurts. My knowledge and self-stewardship make it so bearable that I don't usually need to do the thing. I know the bout will be short-lived, intensity-capped, and medicable. And that's usually enough. It's essentially sandboxed.

I know it's hard to understand. 20 or 40 year old me would have been bewildered by this explanation. But my point is this: while old age does indeed mean soreness and pain, it's not the galvanizing pain you feared while young. It's informational, not existential.

At least, for the most part. But when some fresh hell ignites, I scramble not for solution so much as understanding, collecting countermeasures and support to trim the crisis to a more realistic size for pragmatic management—at which point that management might become strictly optional.