Chronic Pain Trope: Pain Is Weakness Leaving the Body

Lewis B. Chesty Puller, a highly decorated combat veteran and United States Marine Corps officer, is widely credited with a quote he reportedly used to train troops, "Pain is just weakness leaving the body." 

While catchy and memorable, this quote probably has limited application to marine recruits surviving the rigors of boot camp. 

Pain has an evolutionary purpose. Pain signals the body to danger such as heat sources, infections, blunt force trauma, and over-exertion among others. Pain is a human's warning signal that something is wrong.

Would say to a person with a migraine, "Pain is just weakness leaving the body"?

Should we use this quote for people who have bone cancer?

How about breaking out these kind words to a person with:

A broken hip?

A cracked tooth? 

Gangrenous feet secondary to diabetes? 

Bulging spinal disc?

Shattered elbow?

The list is really endless, but the examples serve to prove the point. Repeating the quote by a respected individual in one context doesn't make it appropriate in a wider context. 

In truth, the pain trope doesn't apply in the context of inspirational speech either. While training military personnel isn't my specialty, I should reserve judgement on that application of the phrase, but the statement that pain is weakness is inaccurate at best and at worst, it characterizes people who suffer from pain or with pain as weak and unable to simply allow it to leave their bodies. 

It's a tired trope and piles additional pain to the burden of people who already suffer from chronic pain. Pithy tropes allow people to create catchy bumper stickers or conversation-provoking T-shirts, but do not encourage people to think beyond the word combination to any deeper meaning with value.

Pain isn't weakness leaving the body. Pain is the body's warning system and it signals the brain for various reasons. Period.