This Book Changed My Relationship to Pain

 Relationship to Pain

https://youtu.be/gZdtrY8NuUc

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. But what if much of how we understand pain — and how to treat it — is wrong? Rachel Zoffness is a pain psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine and the author of “The Pain Management Workbook (https://www.newharbinger.com/97816840...

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. 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. Mentioned: “Sham Surgery in Orthopedics (https://academic.oup.com/painmedicine...

by Adriaan Louw, Ina Diener, César Fernández-de-las-Peñas and Emilio J. Puentedura Book Recommendations: Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers (https://us.macmillan.com/books/978080...

) by Robert M. Sapolsky The Body Keeps the Score (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...

) by Bessel van der Kolk Pain (http://cup.columbia.edu/book/pain/978...

) by Patrick Wall Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast (https://www.nytimes.com/column/ezra-k...

, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-...

(https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-...

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