The Youngest Person in the Room
A free monthly pain group for people ages 18-25
Joining starts with a quick 10-minute chat, so the group stays a safe and good fit for everyone. Grab a time below.
On Zoom - First Monday of the Month, 6-7:15pm pacific
Pain is a relationship.
It's a relationship you have with yourself, and we work on it better in company.
This group isn't about fixing your pain or learning techniques to manage it. It's a space to step back and understand your experience of pain in a broader context, alongside other people doing the same.
Too many people living with chronic pain think the struggles they're experiencing are entirely individual. In fact, many of those struggles are socially produced. Pain is biological, but it's also social: an experience shaped by cultural norms, institutions, and the people around us. That's the layer this group works with, and when we parse it out together, the experience of pain often shifts.
Why a group just for 18 to 25
For over a year I’ve run a drop-in group for people living with chronic pain. The younger members kept mentioning that it’s hard to be the youngest person in the room.
Pain is difficult at any age. When it shows up early, it brings its own kind of isolation. Most people your age aren’t dealing with anything like it, and the people around you may not know what to make of it. You may have been told you’re too young to hurt this much, sometimes by the people who are supposed to be helping.
There’s a lot that can happen when you get together with others who get what it’s like. That’s what this group is for.
What you’ll get from this group:
A reduction in the isolation that so often accompanies pain
Space to put language to your own experience, often in ways that aren’t available in everyday conversation
A clearer sense that what you’re experiencing is not just personal, but shared and patterned
New ways of understanding where your ideas about pain come from (and how they’ve been shaped)
Exposure to how other people are making sense of pain in their own lives, without advice or comparison
A temporary distraction from the monotony of managing your pain day in and day out
