Complaining Of Chronic Pain Doesn’t Make You A Complainer

We all know what “a complainer” is: it’s a person who finds the dark side of everything, who turns a casual conversation starter—“How are you doing?”—into a somber soliloquy about all the (usually minor) problems making their life unbearable.

Too often, people with chronic pain are viewed as complainers by friends, family, and even their clinicians. That view misunderstands the neuroscience of most…