Chronic pain made me a worse person

There’s a version of this story I don’t usually tell.

When my back was at its worst, I wasn’t just in pain. I was mad.

Not at the pain. At other people.

Guys at the gym adding plates while I negotiated with warm-ups.

Friends signing up for meets. Everyone’s life kept moving.

Mine felt paused.

That’s the honest part. It sounds horrible to say I was mad that other people were getting better. But I was. And if you’ve been hurting long enough, I’d bet you’ve felt some version of it too.

Long pain does that. It doesn’t just change your training.

It starts to feel like it changes who you are.

You’re still you. You just stop feeling like it.

But the part I want you to have is this.

I’m on the other side of it now. And that version of me, the anger, the hopelessness, all of it, feels like someone else’s memory.

It wasn’t even that long ago.

From inside the stuck season, that state looks like the rest of your life. It wasn’t. Not for me, and I don’t believe it has to be for you.

If you’re in it right now, the mad-at-everyone season, book a call and tell me.

I remember it well enough to talk about it.

Gabe