Do you ever feel powerless in your struggle with chronic pain?
In my 20-plus years of unmanaged chronic pain, I felt powerless a lot. So stay with me, because today I want to talk about how to move from feeling powerless to feeling more potential.
In a recent conversation, we talked about moving from feeling like a victim of pain to becoming a self-manager of your life and health. That’s an important shift. But there’s another piece that has to come next: believing that maybe what you do actually matters. Maybe your choices matter. Maybe the small things you practice matter. Maybe you have more influence than you thought.
That belief has a name. It’s called self-efficacy.
What Self-Efficacy Really Means
It sounds like a complex word, but the meaning is simple. Self-efficacy just means believing that you can do something that actually makes a difference. Not fixing everything. Not controlling everything. Just believing that your actions have some effect.
That belief matters enormously, because when people feel powerless, they often stop trying. Not because they’re lazy, and not because they don’t care, but because hopelessness is exhausting, and pain can make hope feel very fragile. Fragile is exactly the word.
Before I understood any of this, I didn’t believe I could influence my pain at all. It felt like pain was making all the decisions and I was just reacting. If it was a bad day, I was down. If it was a flare, I was panicking. If something I tried didn’t work, I felt defeated. It often felt like my medical providers were the only ones with any answers, and I was just hoping that one day they’d find the right one for me.
Underneath all of it was the feeling that nothing I did mattered. That’s a hard place to live.
How Hopelessness Becomes a Lens
That feeling of hopelessness becomes like a lens. You start viewing everything through it. Setbacks feel permanent. Effort feels pointless. Even small wins feel insignificant. And when that happens, motivation naturally shrinks.
I didn’t suddenly become more confident either. It began with little moments where I thought, “Hmm, okay, that helped.”
As I learned more about how pain works and tried some strategies, I noticed things. When I directed my attention differently, pain lost some of its intensity. When I reframed some of my thoughts, I felt less overwhelmed. When I paced myself better, I sometimes avoided a flare. When I gave myself permission to move more, I started feeling stronger over time.
They were small things. But I did them consistently, and that’s what mattered. Every time, my confidence in my ability to make a little difference grew, a little at a time.
That’s how self-efficacy is built. Not through giant, monstrous breakthroughs, but through repeated experiences of “I did something, and it seems to have made a difference.”
Sometimes You Have to Borrow Belief
Here’s something important. Sometimes, before you can believe in yourself, you have to borrow belief from someone else.
There were times I needed someone else to believe that change was possible before I could. My physical therapist would remind me, when I was feeling helpless and hopeless, how far I’d actually come, and that I really was making progress even when I couldn’t see it.
That’s very human. Sometimes hope is relational. You might borrow it from a spouse, a coach, a physical therapist, a provider, a friend, or even a community of people, a support group or a family, until your own confidence starts growing.
If that’s where you are right now, that’s okay. Borrow some hope. It still counts. And if you don’t have anyone to borrow it from, that’s okay too. Borrow it from me. I’ve been in the darkest parts of this pain journey, and I’ll lend you some of my hope.
Low Self-Efficacy Is Often Pain Talking
Low self-efficacy tends to sound like this: “What’s the point? Nothing’s helping. I can’t do this. I always fail. Other people are improving, but not me.”
I know those thoughts because I lived them. But those thoughts aren’t character flaws. They’re often pain talking. Sometimes fear talking. Sometimes exhaustion talking. Not truth.
How to Actually Build Self-Efficacy
So how do you build it? You start by noticing.
Notice what’s helping even a little bit. Not what fixes everything, but what helps 5 or 10 percent. And this isn’t only about reducing pain. Ask whether something is helping you function better, feel less overwhelmed, experience more joy, or be more present in your own life and in the lives of others. Notice what softens things and what supports you.
Then repeat those things, and notice when they make a difference. That noticing matters, because it reminds you how your life is impacted by what you do. Slowly, you build confidence. Confidence encourages more helpful action. And the more helpful things you do, the more they build on each other. That’s how momentum starts, like a snowball gathering size as it rolls.
If You Feel Like You’re Not Doing Enough
I want to say something to the person who feels like they’re not doing enough.
If you’re showing up, if you’re learning, if you’re adjusting, if you’re trying again after hard days, if you’re paying attention to what helps and listening to your body, you’re already practicing good self-management. You’re already building self-efficacy, even if it doesn’t feel dramatic.
So if you take one thing from this, let it be this. You may not control everything about your pain, but you are not powerless in it. What you do matters. Small steps matter. Small wins matter. Learning matters. Trying again matters. Over time, those moments build confidence, quietly and steadily, and, as Jim likes to say, profoundly.
Sometimes belief starts simply by saying, “Maybe I can influence more than I thought.” That’s enough to begin. Borrow hope if you need to. Take small steps. Notice small wins. And be gentle with yourself. Your confidence will grow, and that matters.
