The Role of Religion & Spirituality in Chronic Pain

Chronic pain and disease are often discussed in the context of how to manage, mitigate, and eradicate it. Doctors discuss various procedures and drugs to help ease and limit symptoms, physical therapists assist in rehabilitation of acute injury, and alternative pain management specialists such as acupuncturists and chiropractors offer treatments to manage symptoms. All of these approaches can be helpful in the right context and offer relief to many suffering with their health. However, where do we turn when we want to understand and make meaning out of our pain? We are often encouraged to view the body as a problem to be solved rather than an internal wisdom to be heard.

You might ask, “why do we need to make meaning out of our pain? Why isn’t treating it enough?” It has been reported that “one in six chronic pain patients say their pain sometimes causes them to want to die” (Lysne and Wachholtz 2). A study published by the CDC found that in 2023, 24.3% of adults in the United States had chronic pain (Lucas and Sohi), which amounts to over 60 million individuals. Thinking about these two statistics together leads to the conclusion that at least 10 million people in the U.S. have pain severe enough that it causes them to want to die. In my mind, this is a national crisis. Medical interventions can help individuals practically cope with chronic pain, but they aren’t enough on their own to restore the will to live through it. This is where turning to meaning-making comes in.

Research shows that meaning-making, whether through religion, spirituality, or any other belief system, is pivotal to coping with and healing from chronic pain. A 2002 Canadian Community Health Survey found that “worship attendance was associated with a lower level of chronic pain and fatigue and with better psychological well being” (Lysne and Wachholtz 6). Another study reviewed by Lysne and Wachholtz found that “pain unpleasantness was lower” in the most experienced Buddhist mindfulness meditators leading the two review authors to posit that “spiritual practices that promote the non-judgmental acceptance of life events appear to promote pain tolerance” (Lysne and Wacholtz 8). Yet a third study in their review found that participants who practiced spiritual meditation, over other forms of secular meditation and relaxation, “reported a significantly greater reduction in headaches and greater pain tolerance” and “an increase in existential well-being” (Lysne and Wacholtz 9).

While not tangible or logical topics, spirituality and religion do have a demonstrable effect on pain tolerance and mental wellbeing. To me, this effect is quite logical. If you wake up every day in pain, but believe there is a higher power, reason, or consciousness holding you through it, of course your body is going to feel calmer and slow the pain-fear cycle. If you undertake spiritual practices such as prayer or meditation, you are listening to the symptoms as a message from the body, rather than as an invader. You are working in harmony with your body. If you wake up in pain and have no desire or ability to find meaning in it, and thereby do not undertake any ritual or practice, you are more likely to feel that something is being done to you and that you have no control over it. From personal experience and from working with many people experiencing chronic pain and illness, the two feelings of hopelessness and a lack of agency lead to a steady deterioration.

I can quote the research all day (and trust me, I will do so happily to anyone willing to listen) but let’s make it personal for a minute. I truly believe it is most helpful to hear this information presented by someone actually dealing with active chronic pain; I know how hopeless it can feel and I also know how crucial it is to believe in something larger than yourself in order to survive it. The latest development in my journey with chronic pain has been one of the more terrifying. Two times now, I have experienced a sudden paralyzing of my left leg. And when I say paralyzing, I truly mean that the connection between my brain and leg goes completely offline. I look down at my leg, willing it to move, but it feels disconnected from my body as it stays frozen in place. My left foot then begins to burn and go completely numb, cold, and tense. An MRI of my spinal cord as well as in-depth bloodwork has all come back normal, after which I was offered no further medical advice or insight. In these moments, the familiar feeling of being at the end of the road arrives like a dark cloud suffocating me in its embrace. No explanation can yet be found (although I have hypotheses and next steps) as to why this is happening but it is happening. So many times when reaching this “end of the road” feeling, I question if it will ever be truly possible for me to live a full life. I can’t say I’ve ever truly lost the will to live due to the pain and symptoms which is actually something I have a hard time understanding. Ever since my most traumatic life event occurred at age 18, I found that I have an unbreakable spirit. It sounds like a dark thing to say, but I often feel that the adversity I have faced could have reasonably caused me to lose the will to live, but it never happened. To bring it back to meaning-making, one of my personal explanations for this is that I feel my late Grandma Rose living inside of me; an unbreakable woman herself who faced unimaginable adversity, she has served as one of my greatest inspirations of how to pick yourself back up to create something beautiful from the darkness. I once asked her, “how do you keep going?” to which she answered, “every day you just wake up and put one foot in front of the other.” It sounds so simple, but it implies a crucial truth which is that we have a choice to make in the face of adversity. This choice can include a belief system, whether spiritual or religious, that keeps your hope alive. We can never truly lose our agency.

In addition to the felt sense that my soul is indestructible, religion and spirituality have helped me make meaning of my suffering. Ever since spending two years in college as a World Religions major and Philosophy minor, I fell in love with Buddhism as well as observing and making meaning out of the world around me. In The Four Noble Truths, a foundational teaching of Buddhism, it is stated that pain is inevitable, but suffering is not. It is our craving associated with, and attachment to, the pain that causes us to suffer and there is a way out. We assign stories to our pain that cause us to suffer. This must also mean we can ease suffering by assigning a more hopeful story. I saw a popular social media quote that says something along the lines of “maybe your suffering is greater because your calling is higher.” Another in the same vein says, “the healer suffers first, then returns with the medicine” which refers to renowned psychotherapist Carl Jung’s concept of the “Wounded Healer” wherein he states “it is our own hurt that gives the measure of our power to heal” (Hankir, et al.). I truly believe that I have been called to suffer so that I can help others with chronic pain and illness on their journeys. I have become someone I never could have imagined through this journey. I have learned to listen to my body, move with it instead of against it, rest, and strip away all of the false masks of productivity, perfectionism, and control that were driving my life. What’s more is that I have been able to help countless clients move better with their pain and disease both through my extensive research and feeling into my own body for the answer. Is it a coincidence that I work with clients with Parkinson’s Disease and who are post-stroke and have myself experienced temporary leg paralysis? There is no way to factually confirm whether my suffering is part of a soul contract or higher calling, but does that really matter? We can believe anything we want to believe, and whatever we believe is not only true to us but shapes our perceived reality, so my best recommendation is to choose to believe in a story that gives you agency, purpose, hope, and meaning.

Sources

"Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta: Setting in Motion the Wheel of Truth" (SN 56.11), translated from the Pali by Piyadassi Thera. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn56/sn56.011.piya.html

Hankir A, Zaman R, Carrick F. Trauma and the role of the wounded healer. Eur Psychiatry. 2021 Aug 13;64(Suppl 1):S67. doi: 10.1192/j.eurpsy.2021.209. PMCID: PMC9471124.

Lucas, Jacqueline W., and Inderbir Sohi. “Chronic Pain and High-Impact Chronic Pain in U.S. Adults, 2023.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 21 Nov. 2024, www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db518.htm#Key_finding

Lysne, C. J., & Wachholtz, A. B. (2011). Pain, Spirituality, and Meaning Making: What Can We Learn from the Literature? Religions, 2(1), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel2010001

Robbins, Mel. Have you ever considered that your path in life is harder because your calling in life is higher? Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1BqNKBUtAe/