Chronic pain comes in many terrible flavors. Mine is fibromyalgia, an ache that lives in most of my body, most of the time.
As a student, I’ve had to learn how to balance getting my degree and getting through the day. Fibromyalgia has changed the way I dress (business-comfy), the way I eat (vegetable-forward) and the way I move (slowly, for the most part).
In 2022, I started experiencing a singeing, red-hot pain that seemed to snake through my entire body. It did not go away, instead ebbing and flowing through the whole of my form, transforming my relationship with my body.
A permanent ache began to settle in my hands, feet and thighs, making it challenging to perform the physical labor required for my position at the Outback Farm. As the pain continued to spread, so did a sense of shame around the loss of my abilities.
I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in 2023 after numerous tests came back “normal.” My care team concluded that a number of traumatic experiences the year before had pushed my body’s nervous system to the brink, triggering the onset of fibromyalgia.
For people with chronic pain, it can take years to find an official diagnosis and many people struggle to find compassionate healthcare at all.
The experience has been isolating. I rarely hear other people talk about daily pain. Often, it feels as if there’s a hazy, electric layer between my body and the rest of the world.
But I know chronic pain is everywhere — including college campuses.
The prevalence of chronic pain experiences
Pain does not discriminate on the basis of age.
Imagine a typical lecture hall on Western Washington University’s campus — filled with rows and rows of beanies, backpacks and laptops. Say there are one hundred students in all.
Statistically, about eleven of them have experienced chronic pain — and all the stigma that goes with it — according to a 2022 meta-analysis. The study looked at data from 22 countries assessing chronic pain levels in young adults ranging from 15 to 34 years old.
One in nine; that’s the same rate as kids diagnosed with ADHD.
In the United States, chronic pain is more common than diabetes or depression. A 2023 cohort study found that, for every 1,000 Americans, approximately seven are diabetic, 27 are clinically depressed and 52 live with baseline chronic pain.
Of course, the exact count varies based on how you classify chronic pain. In 2023, the CDC reported that 24% of adults experienced chronic pain, with 8.4% reporting high-impact chronic pain frequently interfering with work and life activities.
These statistics show that many of the people around us experience chronic pain — and yet, their struggles are often invisible.
There are a lot of reasons why people don’t talk about their chronic pain.
It may come and go. It may be of mysterious origin. It may be invisible to others, even through the lenses of empathy and clinical testing.
Morgan Pentel originally moved to Bellingham to attend Western Washington University, but her plans changed after she was hospitalized with COVID-19 in Feb. 2020. Chronic health problems — and chronic pain — followed.
Despite blood tests and scans indicating inflammation and an overactive immune system, Pentel’s doctors didn’t investigate further. Over the course of three years, Pentel estimates that they saw over 30 different medical professionals before finding one who listened.
“That was a really difficult thing — when you are trying so hard to get someone to help you, but they just can't or won't or aren't interested,” Pentel said.
Dr. Jonathan Mayer is a pain epidemiologist and emeritus professor at the University of Washington. He also knows a thing or two about living with chronic pain.
In 1987, Dr. Mayer underwent a “minimally invasive” spinal surgery to address existing pain that ended up damaging his lumbar nerve root, causing excruciating pain in his left leg and foot that lingers to this day.
In an article published in the journal Health Affairs, he described how doctors dismissed his suffering, telling him it was “only pain.”
“Even among people who say that they don't stigmatize it … there is a certain stigma,” Dr. Mayer said. “I've heard pain experts say to one another that the only people who get chronic pain are people who don't have anything better to do.”
Of course, that kind of mindset is not evidence-based.
“The major reason for [stigma around chronic pain] is that clinicians at all levels don't have an understanding and have not been exposed to understanding chronic pain,” Dr. Mayer said.
For the last 15 years, Dr. Mayer has taught an undergraduate course on chronic pain — what he describes as the only course of its kind in the U.S. and Canada.
“It's not particularly aimed at pre-med, pre-nursing, pre-PT, whatever, but rather as part of a broad kind of undergrad, so-called ‘liberal education,’ because pain is such a universal experience,” Dr. Mayer said.
The course approaches pain from an interdisciplinary standpoint, covering psychology, neurology, policy and treatment.
“We have a whole week on non-medical treatments for pain, such as movement and various psychotherapies and meditation, mindfulness — that kind of thing,” Dr. Mayer said.
According to Dr. Mayer, these more holistic treatments receive less traction because they aren’t as profitable.
“Unfortunately, so many things in medicine are driven by profit in our country,” Dr. Mayer said. “The only profitable stuff are these invasive treatments, whether it's surgery or spinal injections or spinal cord stimulators. Everything else loses money.”
In Dr. Mayer’s opinion, there are better, safer routes for treating chronic pain. Going abroad and collaborating with researchers in Norway showed him just how different pain treatment can be.
“The bottom line, I think, is that for things to function well, we really need to have fundamental change in healthcare in the United States so that profit doesn't become the main motivation behind medical practice,” Dr. Mayer said.
Pentel also found that healthcare abroad was more effective — and affordable — than finding treatment in the U.S..
“I went to a doctor in Thailand in June of 2024, and it literally took two hours for them to figure out what was wrong,” Pentel said. “Two hours.”
Destigmatizing a common experience by attending to ourselves
Many of us have been taught to hide our pain. Whether as a result of external or internal stigma, young people especially feel pressured to “conceal” their suffering, as detailed in a 2021 study from Frontiers in Psychology.
Adolescents in the study reported hiding or downplaying their pain to avoid judgment, dismissal or being a burden on others.
“In addition to feeling like talking about their pain symptoms would be too much for others to manage initially, participants also described the perception that others might stop supporting them over time. The anticipation of reduced support from others motivated participants to conceal their pain,” the study’s authors wrote.
Those of us who live with high-impact chronic pain often have to build our lives around coping with it. We shouldn’t be afraid to ask for support.
On Western’s campus, there are resources for students trying to cope with chronic pain.
While it has no pain-specific programming, the Student Health Center can help diagnose and treat students with chronic pain.
From Toradol shots and blood tests to short-term counseling and specialty referrals, I personally found Western’s health center to be a safe and compassionate resource in my journey with fibromyalgia.
Social support may also help reduce chronic pain, though existing studies acknowledge that more research is necessary.
At Western, The Spoons and Knives Club, facilitated by the Disability Outreach Center, is a place for students with chronic pain, chronic illness and chronic fatigue to connect and build community.
Spaces like these can play a big role in destigmatizing pain. Being around others with similar experiences allows us to normalize our experiences and the things we need to do to cope.
And bringing those coping mechanisms out into the greater world, Dr. Mayer said, can help normalize the chronic pain experience.
“You kind of learn to shrug and say, you know, this is what I have to do. If you don't like it, tough,” Dr. Mayer said.
Making that part of our lives visible can help to normalize an experience we are so accustomed to hiding.
For me, that sometimes means sitting on the floor during class instead of those miserable, inflexible chair-desks. After my conversation with Dr. Mayer, I’ve even considered bringing a hot water bottle or electric heat pad to class the next time I’m dealing with an especially gruesome flare.
Because why not? Every accommodation I make for myself could become a social permission for someone else to do the same.
We all know what it’s like to experience pain. It’s a universal part of the human experience. When that pain becomes chronic, however, it is a heavy burden to bear alone. We can lift that burden together by supporting individuals and advocating for systemic change.
There are organizations working to advance the rights of people with chronic pain. The National Pain Advocacy Center advocates for access to pain treatment as a human right and educates about the disabling impacts of chronic pain. For those interested in learning more about chronic pain, they offer a variety of resources.
We need more education, more research and better training for healthcare professionals. We need to create a culture where pain is not stigmatized, but rather acknowledged and addressed with compassion and understanding.
By sharing our stories, perhaps we can shift towards a world where pain does not isolate us, but connects us through our efforts to find better ways to live and thrive.
[The Front wants to hear your story. You can send a submission or a letter to the editor by emailing westernfront.opeditor@gmail.com.]
Oren Roberts (they/them) is the opinions editor for The Front this fall. Previously, they wrote for The Front as a City News reporter. They are a senior studying news/editorial journalism. When not writing or editing, they enjoy brewing kombucha, taking long walks and photographing the beauty of Bellingham. You can reach them at westernfront.opeditor@gmail.com
