Unbelonging: The experience of being-in-society whilst living with ‘frozen shoulder’

This Auto-phenomenology (hermeneutic) account seeks to explore the author’s first-person experiences of a discrete phenomenon; the experience of shoulder pain and restricted range of movement. I aim to move away from modernist biomedical descriptions and instead, reclaim my existential experience. Taking a lifeworld perspective, I explore the meaning of the world as I subjectively experienced it whilst living with ‘frozen shoulder’. I reflect on how a change in my shoulder movement changed my movement in time and space and my sense of being-in-society. Drawing on the work of Talcott Parsons, Susan Sontag, Elaine Scarry and Arthur Frank, I reflect on my sense of unbelonging in relation to the sick role; how my explanations were delegitimized and my search for a socially accepted diagnosis; being a physiotherapist and my changing sense of self and identity. I ask how honouring knowledge from qualitative, post-qualitative research and sociology might offer an otherwise physiotherapy which engenders embodied relational understanding.