25/08/2026
There’s a reason I as a practitioner talk about it and this page, about Complex Chronic Pain, reflects it…
Because pain is pain whether it’s emotional or physical and it’s our job to hear the alarm and act accordingly.
I’m going to reflect on my own pain for a moment…because this week already has been profound in the conversations I’ve had and I need to demonstrate the faults and fears I have too. I’m just a human doing my best.
I struggle with The Common Denominator Fallacy.
I take everything that I have been present for in my life that has been negative and make myself the cause of it because I am the common theme, the consistent factor.
It’s like saying “I’ve witnessed 5 car accidents and because I was an observer of them, I caused them. My presence was the reason they happened.”
Every failed relationship involved me
Every friendship challenge involved me
Every family conflict involved me
Every bad decision involved me
I am what goes wrong.
But I also talk a lot about data and evidence and because I am me and I live my life I am the common dataset…so I take each individual experience and rather than examine its own causality, I lump it all together as one failed experiment at life.
This is often what happens with people who have chronic pain…each flare up, and each experience, isn’t felt through the lense of the moment itself, it’s lumped together with every other piece of evidence that ‘proves’ recovery isn’t possible.
But when you conduct an individual ‘causal analysis’ you can see more clearly that flares ups pass, pain lessens, normality returns, pleasure becomes possible again, life is available again.
And guess what?
We are also the common denominator in that too!!!
And the joy, peace, moments of calm and clarity…they are also real, also you, just as much as whatever pain you’re feeling, however you’re feeling it for whatever reason!
