It’s Not Written All Over My Face

The discussion explores how on these 3 levels, notions of the abnormal or deviant body come into play, in which patients and health professionals complexly construct pain both as not normal (i.e., not a neutral or desirable state of being), whereas, at the same time, the lack of traceable tissue injury is constructed as medically normal for chronic pain. This also relates to how patients and health care providers often orient to the stigma around chronic pain.