You Are Not Required to Explain Your Pain
- Author Honey Badger
- Jan 9
- 3 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
There is a reflex in our culture to ask why.
Why does it still hurt?
Why can’t you move on?
Why does this affect you so much?
These questions are often framed as concern, curiosity, or a desire to understand. But for people living with pain—especially pain shaped by trauma—they function as something else entirely.
They place the burden of translation on the person who is already carrying the weight.
This essay is an assertion of a different truth: you are not required to explain your pain in order for it to be real, valid, or worthy of care.
Pain Does Not Need a Backstory
We are taught that pain becomes legitimate once it has a clear origin story. A beginning, a middle, and an end. Something others can follow, evaluate, and make sense of.
But pain does not always arrive neatly.
It does not always follow logic.
It does not always stay in the past.
Sometimes pain lives in the body without words.
Sometimes it shows up as fatigue, silence, anger, numbness, or fear.
Sometimes it resists explanation entirely.
The absence of a tidy narrative does not make pain less real. It simply means the nervous system is still doing its work.
Explanation Is Often a Performance
When people ask for explanations, they rarely mean for you.
They mean:
Help me feel more comfortable.
Help me understand enough so I don’t feel helpless.
Help me decide how much care you deserve.
In this way, explanation becomes a performance. One that requires the person in pain to translate an internal experience into something palatable, coherent, and emotionally manageable for others.
This performance costs energy.
It costs safety.
It often costs truth.
And it places the responsibility for others’ comfort on the person who is already hurting.
Trauma Disrupts Language
For many survivors, pain is not stored in neat sentences. It is held in the nervous system, the muscles, the breath. It surfaces as sensation long before it becomes story.
When someone is asked to explain their pain, they may be asked to do something neurologically difficult or impossible in that moment.
This does not mean they are being evasive. It does not mean they are exaggerating. It does not mean they don’t understand their own experience.
It means pain does not always speak in words.
Boundaries Are Not Avoidance
Refusing to explain your pain is often labeled as avoidance, defensiveness, or unwillingness to engage.
But boundaries are not avoidance.
They are information.
They say:
This is not safe to share right now.
They say: I am protecting something tender.
They say: I do not owe access to my inner world.
Choosing not to explain is not a failure of communication. It is an act of self-trust.
You Do Not Need the “Right” Reason
There is a subtle hierarchy of pain in our culture. Some reasons are seen as valid. Others are minimized, questioned, or dismissed.
Too long ago?
Not severe enough?
Not provable?
Not visible?
This hierarchy is false.
You do not need the right reason to hurt.
You do not need to justify the duration, intensity, or shape of your pain.
You do not need to convince anyone that it qualifies.
Pain is not a debate.
What Support Can Sound Like Instead
Support does not require explanation. In fact, some of the most supportive responses ask for nothing at all.
They sound like:
“I’m sorry you’re hurting.”
“I don’t need details to care.”
“What would feel supportive right now?”
“You don’t have to explain.”
These responses create space rather than pressure. They communicate belief without interrogation.
For Survivors
If you are living with pain, you are allowed to keep it close.
You are allowed to say:
"I’m not ready to talk about it.”
“I don’t have words.
”I don’t want to explain.”
You are allowed to exist in pain without translating it for others.
Your experience does not become more legitimate once it is understood. It is legitimate because it is yours.
For Those Who Witness Pain
If you are supporting someone in pain, consider what your questions are really for.
Are they for connection—or for your own reassurance?
Are they for care—or for clarity?
Sometimes the most respectful thing you can do is resist the urge to understand and choose instead to be present.
Presence does not require a story.
Closing
You are not required to explain your pain.
Not to be believed.
Not to be supported.
Not to be treated with dignity.
Pain does not owe coherence.
Healing does not owe a timeline.
You do not owe anyone access to your suffering.
Your pain is not a lesson.
It is not a performance.
It is not an invitation for analysis.
It is a reality—and that is enough.
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