The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Our Pain

Pain rarely comes without a story. And sometimes, the story hurts more than the pain itself.

At Televero Health, we often notice how the narratives people create around their suffering can either amplify or reduce its impact. When something painful happens – rejection, failure, loss, disappointment – the experience itself is just one part of the equation. Equally important is the meaning we make of that experience – the story we tell ourselves about what it means about us, others, and what’s possible for our future.

Maybe you’ve noticed this in your own life. Maybe after a relationship ended, you told yourself, “I’ll never find connection again” or “I’m not worthy of love.” Maybe after a professional setback, your story became, “I don’t have what it takes” or “Nothing ever works out for me.” Maybe after experiencing anxiety or depression, you concluded, “Something is fundamentally wrong with me” or “I’ll always feel this way.”

These stories aren’t just reflections on pain – they shape how we experience it, how long it affects us, and what possibilities we can imagine beyond it. Understanding and potentially revising these narratives can transform our relationship with difficult experiences without minimizing or denying the real pain they involve.

How Stories Shape Our Experience of Pain

The human mind naturally creates stories to make sense of experience. When something painful happens, we don’t just feel the immediate impact – we try to understand it, to place it in a meaningful context, to extract lessons that might protect us from similar pain in the future.

This meaning-making is valuable. It helps us integrate difficult experiences and potentially learn from them. But the specific stories we create have enormous influence on how we move through pain:

Stories about permanence. “This feeling will never end.” “I’ll always be alone.” “Nothing will ever change.” These narratives transform temporary pain into a seemingly permanent state, creating hopelessness that can be more debilitating than the original hurt.

Stories about identity. “This proves I’m unlovable.” “I’m a failure.” “I’m broken.” When painful experiences become statements about who we fundamentally are, they affect our sense of self far beyond the specific situation that triggered them.

Stories about others. “No one can be trusted.” “People will always leave.” “Everyone is judging me.” These narratives about other people often emerge from specific painful interactions but get generalized to all relationships, creating isolation and suspicion.

Stories about meaning. “This happened because I’m being punished.” “There’s no point in trying again.” “Life is just suffering.” These broader meaning-making narratives shape our fundamental orientation toward life itself, influencing motivation, hope, and engagement.

These stories don’t form randomly. They’re shaped by many factors – previous experiences, messages from family and culture, personal temperament, and the specific nature of the painful experience itself. Some people naturally create more flexible, hopeful narratives, while others tend toward more rigid, pessimistic stories. But regardless of these tendencies, the stories we tell ourselves remain significant shapers of how we experience and move through pain.

Common Pain Narratives and Their Impact

Certain stories about pain appear frequently in therapy – narratives that tend to amplify suffering rather than support healing:

The Permanence Story: “This will never change.” This narrative transforms temporary states into seemingly fixed realities. The person experiencing grief believes the pain will never lessen. The person with depression sees no possibility of feeling different. The person after a breakup cannot imagine ever connecting again. This story creates a foreclosed future where relief or change seems impossible.

The Personalization Story: “This is all my fault.” When painful events are interpreted as entirely self-caused, regardless of other contributing factors, it creates excessive self-blame and shame. While taking appropriate responsibility is healthy, this narrative ignores the complex reality that most difficult situations involve multiple factors beyond any individual’s complete control.

The Catastrophe Story: “This is the worst thing that could happen.” This narrative magnifies the significance of painful events, seeing them as ultimate disasters rather than difficult but survivable experiences. It creates a sense of exceptionality around suffering – “no one has ever hurt this badly” – that can intensify isolation and hopelessness.

The Punishment Story: “I deserve this pain.” This narrative interprets suffering as warranted punishment for real or imagined transgressions. It can connect to deeper beliefs about worthiness and often makes seeking support or relief feel unjustified, as if pain were a necessary atonement.

The Broken Story: “This pain proves something is fundamentally wrong with me.” Rather than seeing pain as a normal human experience, this narrative interprets suffering as evidence of inherent defectiveness. It creates shame around experiences like anxiety, depression, or relationship difficulties that are actually common aspects of human life.

These narratives aren’t chosen consciously. They typically emerge automatically based on previous experiences, core beliefs, and emotional patterns. But despite their automatic nature, they significantly influence how painful experiences affect us – often transforming manageable suffering into more persistent and pervasive distress.

How Therapy Helps Reshape Pain Narratives

One of the most powerful aspects of therapy is its ability to help people recognize and potentially revise the stories they tell themselves about painful experiences. This isn’t about denying real hurt or forcing artificial positivity. It’s about finding narratives that acknowledge genuine pain while also allowing for healing, growth, and continued engagement with life.

This process typically involves several elements:

Bringing stories into awareness. Many pain narratives operate automatically, outside conscious recognition. Therapy helps identify these underlying stories – not to judge them as wrong, but to recognize their presence and influence.

Understanding their origins. Pain narratives don’t develop randomly. They’re shaped by previous experiences, cultural messages, family patterns, and other influences. Understanding where your typical stories come from creates compassion for why you make meaning in particular ways.

Examining their accuracy and helpfulness. Once pain narratives are recognized, they can be gently examined. Are they factually accurate? Do they account for the full complexity of situations? Do they support healing or intensify suffering? This examination isn’t about forcing positive thinking, but about assessing whether your stories reflect reality and serve your wellbeing.

Exploring alternative narratives. When existing stories are recognized as incomplete or unhelpful, therapy creates space to consider other possible meanings. What other ways might you interpret this experience? What different stories might be equally true but more supportive of healing?

Practicing narrative flexibility. The goal isn’t to replace one rigid story with another, but to develop greater flexibility in meaning-making – the ability to hold multiple perspectives and adapt your narratives as new information or experiences emerge.

This narrative work happens gradually, often beginning with small shifts in language or perspective that open space for new possibilities. “I’ll never recover from this” might soften to “I can’t imagine recovery right now, but I know feelings change over time.” “I’m broken” might transform to “I’m struggling with specific challenges that many people face.”

Finding Narratives That Honor Pain and Support Healing

The most helpful pain narratives typically share certain qualities. They:

Acknowledge real suffering without exaggeration or minimization. Healing narratives don’t deny or trivialize pain. They recognize genuine hurt while avoiding catastrophizing or unnecessary amplification.

Include temporality rather than permanence. They recognize that feelings and circumstances change over time, even when that change can’t be felt or imagined in the moment.

Maintain context rather than globalizing. They keep painful experiences in their specific context rather than generalizing to all situations or relationships.

Preserve complexity rather than simplifying. They acknowledge the multiple factors that contribute to difficult situations rather than reducing them to simple narratives of blame or victimhood.

Allow for agency alongside acceptance. They balance recognition of what can’t be changed with awareness of choices that remain available even amid difficult circumstances.

Connect to shared humanity rather than isolating exceptionality. They recognize painful experiences as part of our common humanity rather than evidence of personal defectiveness or unique misfortune.

These qualities don’t create a specific narrative that works for everyone. The stories that support healing are highly individual, shaped by personal values, cultural context, and the specific nature of painful experiences. What matters is finding narratives that feel true while creating space for possibility beyond current pain.

We’ve witnessed this process of narrative revision transform how people relate to their suffering. The person whose story after job loss shifts from “I’m a failure” to “I experienced a setback in a difficult economy.” The individual living with chronic illness whose narrative changes from “My life is over” to “My life is different than I expected, with real limitations but also possibilities.” The person recovering from trauma who moves from “I’m permanently damaged” to “I’ve been deeply affected by what happened AND I’m more than my traumatic experiences.”

These narrative shifts don’t erase pain or create magical solutions to difficult circumstances. But they do change how pain is experienced and what seems possible beyond it. They create space for healing without denying hurt, for growth without minimizing struggle, for engagement with life alongside acknowledgment of its difficulties.

If you find yourself caught in stories about pain that amplify suffering – narratives of permanence, personal defectiveness, or foreclosed possibilities – know that these stories, while powerful, aren’t fixed truths. With awareness and support, you can develop narratives that honor your real pain while also supporting your healing and growth. Not through forced positivity or denial of difficulty, but through stories that reflect the full complexity of human experience – including both suffering and resilience, both pain and possibility.

Ready to explore the stories you tell yourself about difficult experiences? Start here.