Bound Together by Chronic Pain and Trauma: A Study of Two Mother–Daughter Relationships

Abstract

Girls and women are disproportionately affected by chronic pain unrelated to medically defined disease. Because the mother–daughter relationship is pivotal in female development, one can speculate that chronic pain could be entangled with and expressive of the mother–daughter relationship. I describe two women who came for treatment with chronic pain and other psychosomatic manifestations as the primary symptoms. Both experienced profound trauma and had deeply conflicted relationships with their mothers, in which reflective function and symbolic capacity were stunted, resulting in a physical language.