Living with Chronic Pain: The Difference a Caring Workplace Makes

Living with a chronic pain condition is a quiet kind of resilience. It’s not always visible, and it doesn’t come with a cast or crutches. It’s the kind of challenge that sits in the background of everyday life, persistent, unpredictable, and often misunderstood.

For those of us navigating professional life with a chronic pain condition, the workplace can either be a source of support or a source of strain. And that difference, I’ve found, comes down to one thing: how seriously a company takes wellbeing.

Chronic pain doesn’t clock in and out. It doesn’t wait for a quiet moment or a less busy day. It’s there during calls, team meetings, during the conversations with colleagues and even the commute.  Unfortunately, in Conveyancing, when so many parts of the profession are time critical, we feel we have to push through so as not to let our clients down. 

That’s why working for a company with a huge emphasis on wellbeing isn’t just nice to have. It’s essential.

It’s not about ticking boxes or offering perks for the sake of it. It’s about creating an environment where people feel safe to express that they are having a bad health day, where there is no judgment, just understating.

Since my diagnosis 18 months ago, the wellbeing offerings at TFS have impacted my journey with my condition on an unmeasurable scale. In particular:

• Vitality health insurance, which helped me access a rheumatologist and get the advice and tests I needed without delay.
• Medicash, which contributes toward complementary and alternative therapies, something that’s been invaluable for managing flare-ups.
• Corporate massages and Pilates taster sessions, which offer gentle ways to ease tension and reconnect with my body.
• Networking events at the office with nutritional food, and information on the foods which could assist to reduce the flare ups, and wellbeing speakers with advice on breathing techniques, tapping etc.
• Understanding, advice, and support: being set up to work from home when I have a huge flare up; to advice from colleagues who have friends who have had the same condition for longer, and how they deal with it; colleagues who tailor “office treats” to include foods that won’t cause inflammation.

It’s easy to write a wellbeing policy. It’s harder to understand the real importance of it, and embed it into the culture of a company.  

I’ve been lucky to find that at TFS. And while I don’t want this to sound like a sales pitch, I do want to say, if you’re living with chronic pain, you deserve a workplace that sees you, supports you, and makes space for your wellbeing.

It’s easy to underestimate how much the right support can change your day. But when you live with something like a chronic pain condition, those acts of care add up. And they matter more than most people realise.