Right elbow pain: spiritual meaning and emotional causes

What right elbow pain is

Right elbow pain is pain in or around the right elbow. Because most people are right-handed, the right elbow does most of the gripping, twisting and lifting, and overuse is the usual story. The commonest cause is tennis elbow, or lateral epicondylitis: soreness where the forearm tendons attach to the bony point on the outer elbow. It comes from repeated gripping with the wrist bent back, so it is common in people who use a mouse all day, use screwdrivers or other tools, paint, garden, lift at work or play racquet sports. Pain on the inner side of the elbow is often golfer's elbow, the same problem on the other set of tendons.

Other causes include olecranon bursitis, a soft swelling over the point of the elbow, a pressed ulnar nerve with tingling in the ring and little fingers, arthritis, gout, and fractures or dislocations after a fall. A red, hot, swollen elbow with fever needs a doctor quickly.

Heart pain is usually felt in the chest and the left arm, but it can spread to the right arm or to both. Arm pain on either side with chest pressure, breathlessness, sweating or nausea needs emergency help: call 999 in the UK, 911 in the US or 112 in the EU.

Most tendon pain improves over weeks to months with relative rest from the provoking task, a lighter or different grip, a better workstation, simple painkillers, a forearm strap if it helps, and gradual strengthening exercises, often with a physiotherapist. Pushing through the same movement because you "have to" is how it lasts.

The emotional meaning of right elbow pain

Spiritually, the elbows give you freedom of movement and the flexibility to change direction in new situations. They are linked to ambition, possession, work and, at the other end, laziness: the joint that turns a desire into something done. In the map of the left and right sides of the body, the right side carries the active, masculine principle, in women as much as in men: action, logic, decisions, work, the direction you choose, and the men in your life. So the right elbow tends to ask about flexibility in what you do.

A new direction you refuse

Elbow pain is linked to resisting a new direction by holding your position. On the right, this is often a change at work or in your plans: a new role, a new method, a move into another field, the end of a way of working you know well. You may cling to what you have because the unknown frightens you, even when part of you knows the old direction has run its course.

Forced to do, without taste for it

Inflamed elbows are linked to something you cannot manage to achieve, or something you are made to do without any appetite for it. You may feel obliged to act against your will, to elbow your way through, day after day. The right elbow may ask how much of your effort goes into tasks you have stopped believing in.

Effort without credit

You may feel you work harder than others to reach the same results, and that the recognition you are due never comes. The same pressures keep returning, and each time you absorb the blow. Impulsive reactions can make it worse: acting fast, forgetting what you learnt last time, and walking into the same mistake again.

Rigidity and judgement

Because the elbows are linked to action, stiffness there can show in how you judge others. Colleagues who work differently from you may irritate you because their way questions your own habits. When your routine is disrupted, when order comes apart at the seams, the elbow reacts. You may also fear being incompetent in a field you care about, and so being unable to support your family.

The punch you hold back

Tennis elbow is linked to a great deal of anger about a situation, with a wish to punch someone and a hand that holds back. On the right, that anger is often aimed at authority: a boss, a client, a father whose way you resist. For a man, it may touch rivalry and the need to prove himself. For a woman, it may touch her working life and the roles she wants to step out of. Holding back the blow is wise. Leaving the anger unheard is what keeps the arm tense.

The other side

Left elbow pain is linked to flexibility in the emotional life: a change at home you resist, care that goes unrecognised, and the people you keep at arm's length. The right elbow asks where you are rigid in your work and your plans, the left where you are rigid in your heart. The page on elbow pain holds both sides.

A gentler way to hold it

• Name the direction you refuse. Write down the change at work you keep resisting, and what you fear in it.
• Separate want from must. List your weekly tasks, and mark the ones you do only because you feel obliged.
• Claim your credit. Tell someone, plainly, what you achieved this month.
• Learn from the repeat. When a familiar mistake comes back, pause before reacting.
• Let others work their way. Notice one colleague whose method differs, and let it be.
• Hear the anger without striking. Write it down, walk it off, or say it to someone safe.
• Change the grip. Adjust the mouse, the tool or the racquet, and let the tendon recover with graded exercise.