01/10/2026
[…]“How patients think of their chronic pain, even how they and their health care team talk about it, can also play a role in how they experience pain. Moseley recalls a patient who consistently referred to his back as his “Roman ruins.” The patient even kept a photo of Rome’s crumbling Forum above his desk. A physician he consulted pointed to structural problems on his MRIs and X-ray reports, without acknowledging that these were typical of an aging spine. Convinced that his spine could “go” at any time, Mr. Roman Ruins’ brain created a neurotag, a network of brain cells that fire together to produce, essentially, a conditioned response. Because he felt and acted as if he had something seriously wrong with him, and the people around him reinforced this idea, the patient repeatedly strengthened that neurotag.
[…]
Watch Your Language
While working with patients early in his career, Moseley observed that the attitudes health care providers displayed, and the language they used, could actually worsen their patients’ discomfort. Terms such as degenerated, desiccated, stuck, bone-on-bone, jammed, out of alignment, locked and twisted can color a patient’s self-perception of pain.
Instead of describing pain with such daunting and imprecise language, says Moseley, it should be reframed as a smart, protective mechanism that sometimes goes off the rails. Pain is modulated by context, expectations and experience, so what the practitioner says to the patient makes a big difference.”
CATHRYN JAKOBSON RAMIN
(Link to full article in the comments)
Cathyrn Jakobson Ramin is the author of Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting on the Road to Recovery. This article originally appeared in print as "Tame the Pain."
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Image: from an old publicity leaflet for Botox for pain
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