What Chronic Pain Teaches Us About Listening and Leadership

Living with chronic pain — particularly through conditions like endometriosis and perimenopause, teaches you very quickly that bodies don’t follow neat rules.

Symptoms fluctuate. Capacity changes. Pain can be unpredictable, confusing, and deeply personal. And often, the only person who truly understands what is happening in the body is the person living in it.

Only you know what feels normal for your body.
Only you know when something isn’t right.

Yet many people navigating chronic pain know what it feels like to be dismissed. To be told their pain is “in their head.” That it’s “not that bad.” That they should “just take pain relief and get on with it.”

I can’t count how many times I’ve heard this — both personally and through the stories of others. And the impact isn’t just physical. Being minimised erodes trust. It creates doubt. It teaches people to disconnect from their own internal signals rather than honour them.

This is why listening matters.

Listening to your body as a patient isn’t indulgent or dramatic — it’s essential. Chronic conditions demand self-awareness, adaptation, and compassion. They require you to notice patterns, respect limits, and advocate for yourself in systems that don’t always make space for nuance.

But listening doesn’t stop there.

As health practitioners, leaders, and people who support others, we carry a responsibility too. Pain is never experienced in a vacuum. Two people can present with similar symptoms and have entirely different lived realities. When we rush to explain, minimise, or categorise, we risk missing what actually matters.

Listening — real listening - requires humility.
It means accepting that we don’t get to decide what someone else’s pain feels like.
It means staying curious rather than dismissive.
And it means recognising that understanding someone’s experience often matters as much as any intervention.

When we learn to listen more deeply, to ourselves and to others, we don’t just become better patients or practitioners.

We become better leaders.