Living with Scoliosis and Chronic Pain: The Silent Grief No One Sees
Living with scoliosis isn’t just a physical experience—it’s an emotional and existential one. It affects how you feel in your body, how you move through the world, and how you’re seen or unseen by others. For those navigating chronic pain from scoliosis, migraines, or related conditions, the impact goes far beyond the spine. There’s a hidden grief here—one that isn’t always named or acknowledged.
The Loss That Doesn’t Have a Name
This is a kind of disenfranchised grief. The world doesn’t often recognize the weight of living in a body that hurts all the time. There are no rituals for the loss of ease. No sympathy cards for the exhaustion that builds when you can’t sleep because your back is on fire or your head is pounding.
For those who were once athletic or highly active, the grief can feel especially piercing. When movement used to be a source of freedom, strength, or identity, its loss brings a quiet heartbreak that isn’t easily explained.
Visible and Invisible All at Once
Unlike some chronic conditions, scoliosis is often visible. And yet, people don’t always understand what they’re seeing. The asymmetry, the brace beneath clothing, the shifting posture—it can create a painful mix of feeling exposed and misunderstood. There’s a particular kind of shame that can arise when a body no longer fits cultural ideals of beauty or strength.
Many people living with scoliosis also experience a deep fear: fear of progression, of more pain, of physical limitations becoming worse with age. Some consider spinal fusion and find themselves overwhelmed with questions, conflicting advice, and a very real sense of fear. It’s a major decision—and not one to be rushed.
What’s often missing in these conversations is a space to name what it’s like to live in that in-between: not well, not incapacitated, but trying to hold it all together in a body that no longer feels like home.
The Mental Health Toll of Chronic Pain
Chronic pain can lead to anxiety, depression, isolation, and even suicidal thoughts. This isn’t just about muscles and bones—it’s about identity, self-worth, and survival. Living in a body that’s unpredictable or painful can make you feel cut off from yourself, from others, from life.
Pain distorts time. It makes planning difficult. It interrupts intimacy and spontaneity. It can leave people feeling like they’re watching life rather than living it. When migraines are also part of the picture, they can act as neurological storms that steal language, clarity, and connection—leaving behind a kind of emotional wreckage that isn’t always visible.
Finding Hope Again: The Role of Depth Psychotherapy
So how do we live inside bodies that hurt?
The answer isn’t simple—but it can include depth psychotherapy. This isn’t about fixing or erasing pain. It’s about making space for it. Making meaning from it. It’s about exploring the images, emotions, and unconscious material that live inside the body’s symptoms. It’s about grieving what was lost—and honoring what still lives.
Depth therapy offers a place to bring the parts of yourself that feel ashamed, afraid, or unseen. It’s a place where your pain is not minimized. Where your story is honored. Where your worth isn’t measured by how much you can do—but by the fact that you’re here, trying.
Living Inside the Mystery
Maybe you wear a brace. Maybe you’re navigating decisions about surgery. Maybe you feel like your body has betrayed you. You’re not alone.
You’re not weak for hurting.
You’re not vain for caring how your body looks.
You’re not a failure for being in pain.
You’re human.
And being human is tender work.
A Final Word
You are allowed to long for ease.
You are allowed to grieve.
You are allowed to be both strong and struggling.
If you’re living with chronic pain—especially pain that’s tangled up in shame, a complex mix of visibility and invisibility, and fear—your experience matters. Depth psychotherapy can offer a way in. Not to cure you, but to accompany you. To make room for the whole truth of your experience. And to help you reconnect with what’s still possible.
You are learning how to live inside a body with its own story.
And you don’t have to carry that story alone. If you’d like to explore working with me, I offer grief counseling in Oakland and throughout California.