Pain Makes You a Liar

Pain makes you a liar.

When you’re in physical pain, you brain lies to you.

Not because you’re irrational.
Not because you’re dramatic.
Not because you’re “too sensitive.”

But because pain hijacks perspective.

Beyond Sensation

Pain is not just sensation; it’s a state that changes your entire cognitive process.

Pain makes everything feel like an attack.

It distorts interpretation.
It amplifies threat.
It pushes you into false memories and old narratives.
It creates false certainty about worst-case conclusions.
It impairs executive function, attention, and decision-making. It turns everything into a referendum on your identity or your relationships.

Pain narrows your aperture. It collapses your ability to hold nuance.

It pulls you down into the tunnel where everything looks sharper, darker, more threatening, more personal, more catastrophic.

Without the perspective of the wider lens, you are more likely to believe your thoughts. They feel true, so you believe them to be true.

All Pain is Equal in the Body

It doesn’t matter whether the pain is physical, emotional, social, or spiritual; whether caused by an acute injury, or a chronic condition; whether the result of perceived snub or a blatant rejection.

It doesn’t matter whether the pain comes from your body being overloaded, your morning being hijacked, or your nervous system being shoved into fight-or-flight mode before you’ve had breakfast.

The pain of a metaphorical “stabbing in the back” can feel just as real as the pain caused by a physical knife.

Your nervous system actually doesn’t know the difference, and one can manifest as another.

Social rejection creates physical pain.

Pain dysregulates the nervous system.

When the system is dysregulated, the story your brain tells is almost never the full truth — even if there are kernels of truth to the story.

None of this means the stories you tell yourself when you’re in pain aren’t valid.

It means you need to timestamp them and recognize them as pain thoughts.

Remind yourself that thoughts formed in pain are not reliable narrators.

And revisit them when you’re in a more regulated state.

Regulation makes everything feel more manageable.

When you notice you’re caught in a pain cycle, interrupt the pattern. Make sure you regulate your system: eat something nutritious, hydrate, move your body, take a nap, or take a walk in nature. Distract from your pain through routine tasks.

When the system gets even 10% more regulated, the aperture widens again. Perspective returns.

This doesn’t magically erase any real underlying issues.

Instead, it brings your emotional and cognitive bandwidth back online.

With a little bit of distance, you’ll have a greater capacity to address what’s real and true.