This Book Changed My Relationship to Pain

<p>Physical pain is a universal human experience. And for many of us, it’s a constant one. Roughly 20 percent of American adults — some 50 million people — suffer from a form of chronic pain. For some, that means having terrible days from time to time. For others, it means a life of constant suffering. Either way, the depth and scale of pain in our society is a massive problem.</p><p>But what if much of how we understand pain — and how to treat it — is wrong?</p><p>Rachel Zoffness is a pain psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine and the author of “<a href="https://www.newharbinger.com/9781684036448/the-pain-management-workbook/" target="_blank">The Pain Management Workbook</a>.” We tend to think of pain as a purely biomechanical phenomenon, a physical sensation rooted solely in the body. But her core argument is that pain is also produced by the mind and deeply influenced by social context. It’s a simple-sounding argument with vast implications not only for how we experience pain but also for how we treat it. She points to numerous underused tools — aside from pills and surgeries — that can help lessen our pain.</p><p>We discuss how pain serves as “the body’s warning signal”; how our mood, stress levels and social environment can amplify or dial down our pain levels; what phantom limb syndrome says about how the brain “makes pain”; how our emotions and trauma influence our pain levels; the crucial difference between “hurt” and “harm”; why studies on back pain have yielded such bewildering results; how to figure out and improve your personal “pain recipe”; the roots of our chronic pain crisis; how our health care system could be better set up to treat chronic pain; why Zoffness says, “If the brain can change, pain can change”; and more.</p><p>Mentioned:</p><p>“<a href="https://academic.oup.com/painmedicine/article/18/4/736/2924731" target="_blank">Sham Surgery in Orthopedics</a>” by Adriaan Louw, Ina Diener, César Fernández-de-las-Peñas and Emilio J. Puentedura</p><p>Book R