Right shoulder pain: spiritual meaning and emotional causes

What right shoulder pain is

Right shoulder pain is pain in or around the right shoulder joint. For most people the right is the dominant arm, so this is the shoulder that lifts, reaches, throws and works overhead, and overuse is a frequent cause. Rotator cuff problems are the commonest: tendons that become irritated, pinched under the bony roof of the shoulder, worn or torn, so that lifting the arm sideways or sleeping on that side hurts. Bursitis, osteoarthritis, frozen shoulder, a dislocation or a fracture after a fall, and a trapped nerve in the neck are other causes.

The right shoulder can also pick up pain from organs below it. The gallbladder and the liver sit under the right ribs, just beneath the diaphragm, and irritation there is often felt at the tip of the right shoulder or under the right shoulder blade. Biliary colic from gallstones typically causes pain in the upper right tummy, often after a fatty meal or at night, that spreads to the right shoulder. With fever, vomiting or yellow skin or eyes, it needs a doctor the same day. Heart pain is classically on the left but can occasionally be felt in the right shoulder or both arms: any shoulder pain with chest pressure, breathlessness, sweating or nausea needs emergency help (999 in the UK, 911 in the US, 112 in the EU).

Most mechanical shoulder pain improves within weeks with relative rest, simple painkillers, gentle movement and physiotherapy. Steroid injections and surgery are options for some cases. The page on shoulder pain covers the condition as a whole.

The emotional meaning of right shoulder pain

Spiritually, the shoulders show your capacity to carry a load: responsibilities, insecurities, the weight of what you do and of what you would like to do. 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 material world, and the men in your life. So the right shoulder tends to carry the loads of doing and providing.

Material insecurity

Pain in the right shoulder is linked above all to material insecurity: money, a job, a home, the fear of not managing. You may be carrying the household budget, the business, the future of a project, and feel that if you put any of it down, everything would fall.

Crushed by having to succeed

The obstacles you meet, and the duty to create, to do and to succeed, can press down until you feel flattened. You may feel shut inside a structure, a company, a contract, a role, without the strength to break the door down and walk out. Perfectionism adds to the load. Each "I should have done better" is one more weight on the same shoulder.

Authority and no backing

The right shoulder is linked to how you react to authority. Things may be imposed on you, someone's opinion may block your plans, or the support you counted on for a project simply never comes. You can feel you are taking blow after blow, until you want to lay down your weapons. Life looks tangled, and you lose sight of your own good qualities.

The stiff, controlling side

When the right shoulder is affected, the stiff and controlling side of you may be the one in charge. You may undervalue your role or your status in the family, the couple or society, and try to make up for it by holding tighter. When the bone itself is hurt, the question is sharper: are you asking too much of yourself and wanting too much control, until the load is more than anyone could carry?

Shoulders thrown back

Some people meet pressure by pulling their shoulders back and pushing the chest forward, to show they can face anything. Spiritually, that posture can hide a back weakened by fear. The right shoulder may ask whether you are proving your strength to others while doubting it inside.

Flying with your own wings

If the pain is worst when you raise your arm, the question may be autonomy: whether you feel free to act on your own, to fly with your own wings. Because the right side is partly learnt from your father, his way of carrying responsibility may still be the model you follow. For a man, the tension may touch rivalry and proving his worth. For a woman, it may touch her working life and the roles she wants to step out of.

The other side

Left shoulder pain is linked to emotional insecurity and the loads you carry for love: the happiness of your family, the role of good parent or good child. The right shoulder asks what you carry to provide and to prove yourself, the left what you carry for the people you love. The page on shoulder pain holds both sides.

A gentler way to hold it

• List what you carry at work. Next to each item, write whether it is truly yours.
• Delegate one thing. Hand over one task this week, and let it be done differently from how you would do it.
• Ask for the backing you need. Say plainly what support would help, instead of waiting for it.
• Loosen control a notch. Notice one place where holding tight costs more than it saves.
• Value your role as it is. Name one way you already contribute, without needing to do more.
• Live this day. When worry about money or tomorrow takes over, come back to what needs doing today.
• Look after the joint. Pace overhead work, and see a physiotherapist if the pain lasts.