“I don’t want the pain to define me. I want me to define me.”

This was how one employee described working with chronic pain in interviews conducted in 2021 by one of us, Duygu Biricik Gulseren, and co-researcher Kevin Kelloway. The employee wanted colleagues to understand their experience without pain becoming the centre of every conversation.

For many workers living with chronic pain, disclosure is complicated. Some interviewees worried that revealing their pain would make them seem less capable or put their jobs at risk. Yet keeping it hidden can make it harder to explain why previously manageable tasks suddenly become difficult.

When pain persists or recurs for longer than three months, it’s generally considered chronic pain. Many people continue working while experiencing it, and may have chronic pain-related needs. As Duygu’s earlier work argues, understanding these needs requires looking at how employees experience their jobs and what they need to participate fully.

Our new research examines the role supervisors play in shaping that experience. The findings suggest supportive leadership may help employees’ psychological well-being, but this pathway weakens as pain becomes more intense.

Pain is not only about intensity

Two concepts are key to understanding our results. Pain intensity describes how much pain hurts, while pain interference describes how much pain disrupts activities. At work, interference can mean difficulty concentrating, completing physical........

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