Quiet Battles
Undoing the Silence Inside My Bones
January 18, 2025 my working life came to a grinding halt. My car needed repair, went into the shop… Then, figuratively—so did I, in a way I did not see coming.
I received a diagnosis today.
For so very long, whenever I’ve struggled physically or otherwise, I often catch myself feeling shame for my struggle. This happens across the board in my lifetime of experiences.
Perhaps it is time to begin emerging from that kind of cave.
Today, I was diagnosed with something called Chronic Pain Syndrome (CPS).
At first glance, that might sound vague or even dismissible.
Chronic pain? Who doesn't have aches and pains these days?
But it's so much more complicated — and it’s incredibly real.
For years I've carried around not just physical pain, but the weight of being misunderstood about it — even by my own self, sometimes.
Chronic Pain Syndrome is what happens when pain becomes a habit wired into the body and brain. Not imagined pain… but a real, physical, measurable change in the nervous system.
Learning this today doesn’t cure me. In fact, there is a lot of hard work ahead to prevent certain conditions from progressing into something even more painful and dangerous at too young of an age.
Understanding this diagnosis gives me something I’ve needed for a very long time: a deeper acknowledgment of my life experience… as well as a reminder of how unexpressed, pent-up energies can hide in the body and exacerbate pre-existing conditions to a tipping point.
Chronic Pain Syndrome (CPS) means long-term pain (typically lasting longer than 3-6 months) that affects a person’s daily functioning and often their emotions, sleep, and mood as well.
It’s different from just having chronic pain.
Chronic pain = simply pain that persists beyond normal healing.
Chronic Pain Syndrome = pain plus significant emotional, psychological, or social impact — it becomes its own condition.
Key features of Chronic Pain Syndrome:
Persistent pain (anywhere in the body)
Depression or anxiety (common)
Trouble sleeping (insomnia)
Fatigue
Decreased physical activity
Sometimes associated with memory and concentration problems ("brain fog")
What "Syndrome" Really Means
When I first read the words in black and white on a print-out, today, for an order of physical therapy, I slowed on the last part: syndrome.
Not just chronic pain, but a syndrome.
In Western medicine, a syndrome refers to a distinct collection of symptoms that tend to appear together in a recognizable pattern. Chronic Pain Syndrome, for instance, is not just “pain that won’t go away,” but a deeper disruption that touches the nervous system, mood, and the way the body processes discomfort.
But the idea of a “syndrome,” —many symptoms pointing to a shared root — isn’t unique to Western thought.
Traditional systems like Chinese Medicine speak in terms of pattern diagnoses, where emotional and physical symptoms are understood as expressions of internal imbalance.
Ayurveda does this too, interpreting pain, fatigue, or mental fog through the lens of constitutional forces like Vata or Pitta.
Even Indigenous healing often recognizes when the body is echoing something unspoken — emotionally, spiritually, ancestrally.
What Western medicine calls a “syndrome,” other traditions might call a pattern, an imbalance, or a signal from the soul. In every case, it's the body’s way of speaking up when something deeper needs tending.
Chronic Pain Syndrome, though, is different.
It’s when the pain becomes its own disorder — no longer just a symptom of something else, but a condition that has reshaped how the brain and body operate every day.
It’s as if my nervous system never got the memo that the original threat(s) had passed.
Instead, it stayed on high alert, amplifying not just pain, but all the emotional and physical warning signals tied to survival.
I can allow this understanding to shift everything for me. It can whisper to me, “Your body isn’t betraying you. It’s been trying to protect you for a long, long time.”
Finally, I can listen.
How the Brain Changes
Chronic Pain Syndrome doesn't just affect the body. It rewires the brain.
In CPS, pain signals keep firing even when there’s no new injury.
Over time, parts of the brain responsible for sensing pain grow more sensitive, while the parts that regulate emotions like anxiety and depression get pulled into the same overactive loop.
The nervous system becomes hypersensitive to normal stimuli — making fatigue heavier, moods harder to manage, and the smallest stressors feel enormous.
The longer this cycle goes on, the deeper it grooves into the body’s wiring until living with pain, anxiety, and exhaustion feels like a second skin.
It’s all in the nervous system, which connects the head and the body in one endless feedback loop.
Reclaiming My Story
In my life, whenever struggle comes along, I felt shame for my struggle in tandem.
It’s looked like guilting myself for every migraine, every morning recently it had been increasingly more difficult to transition out of bed, every moment glimpsed I couldn’t keep up with the revolving door of my financial responsibilities.
And now, I get to meet myself in a different way — with understanding instead of blame.
Healing from Chronic Pain Syndrome isn’t about “fixing” myself or willing the conditions bringing pain and discomfort away. It’s about listening differently.
The arthritis in my spine and hip are real. The straightening (or loss of lordosis) in my cervical spine (my neck) is real. The osteopenia there which easily could progress into osteoporosis if I don’t take steps to manage the condition… is the reality being presented to me. The fact that my vertebrae, there, are not just nearly—but perhaps completely—bone on bone is real.
The muscle spasms, the radiculopathy, the shooting pain sensations, the numbness in my hands when I wake up—it’s all happening, and it’s been happening. The fact that some days I can’t turn my head left without turning my entire body to achieve a view in that direction, is real. The mild scoliosis in my spine… The migraines that take me down for the count… Those. Are. Real.
Even if others I know don’t—or can’t—see it. The arthritis in my lumbar spine, my hip, my foot… The fact that it hurts to sit for too long, stand for too long, sleep for too long… the fact that there is fibrous tissue in my left foot connecting two bones that shouldn’t be connected, the pain and swelling there, the fact that I lose my balance sometimes because the discomfort in that foot daily affects the gait of my stride… the fact that I absolutely look different than I did just 2 or 3 years ago… is real.
And it has a name, now.
I’ve been moving through Chronic Pain, and over more than the last year or so it has culminated into a syndrome affecting other, significant pieces of my mental or emotional outlook, my good rest… and my preferred peaceful state.
I’m not at the end of this story. I’m at the beginning.
I’m finally standing on some solid ground about what I’ve been moving through. Now there is a plan in place to come back to myself over time… To find my way... To do what I must do with the life I’ve been given.
It’s time to get to work on this list of shifting priorities in my life. To make my way. To not lie down and just succumb to the battles, within.
”I’ve got shit to do.”
I’m glad this group of symptoms has a name, now, so I can call it out when I notice it rearing up... So I can give myself acknowledgment for my strength and fortitude thus far—but also so I can tell it, “I see you there,” and then proceed to show it who’s boss.
This is my body (right now). This is my temple, my vessel.
This is my life, and there’s so much more to take on along the path I’m on. I’m not willing to negotiate the things I must accomplish which are most important to me while I live.
Onward.
If you see yourself in any part of this — if you’ve ever carried invisible pain, or blamed yourself for struggles you didn’t choose —
You’re not alone.
We are not broken.
We are survivors learning to live with open eyes and open hearts.
Thank you for reading.
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I would love to have you alongside me as I navigate the tangible weight of this earthly experience with an ever-renewing sense of purpose.
More art to check out and discuss here, coming up soon!
All the love,
Colleen Noelle