96% of Drs Weren’t Taught About Pain: The Recipe for Relief with Dr. Rachel Zoffness
6/1/20261 hr 2 min
Dr. Rachel Zoffness is a pain psychologist, neuroscientist, and author of Tell Me Where It Hurts -- and she's here to dismantle the biggest lie medicine has sold us: that pain is a purely biomedical problem requiring a purely biomedical solution.
Dr. Rachel unpacks how trauma turns the nervous system into a pain megaphone, why the brain literally gets better at producing pain the longer it practices it, and why loneliness is as dangerous to your physical health as poor sleep or a bad diet.
This one is for every woman who did the surgery, took the pills, and still woke up hurting. The roadmap exists. You just haven't been given it yet.
Episode Overview:
(0:00) Intro/Teaser
(4:55) Why "Psychosomatic" Is a Dirty Word That Needs Retiring
(8:48) The Big Fat Lie: Pain Is Not Just Biology
(10:46) Biopsychosocial 101: The Three Ingredients of Every Pain Recipe
(13:48) Big Pharma, Back Surgery, and the $54 Billion Reckoning
(28:12) How Trauma Turns Your Brain Into a Pain Megaphone
(30:44) Central Sensitization: Why Your Brain Keeps Practicing Pain
(36:57) The Pain Recipe: How to Map Your Triggers and Take Back Control
(45:58) Loneliness Is a Pain Amplifier (Here's the Neuroscience)
(54:16) The Healing Science of Touch
(57:33) Emotions Need to Move: Swearing, Rage Rooms, and Trauma That Gets Stuck
(1:04:26) After Party: What Landed and Why I'm Getting Her Back
Resources mentioned in this episode: https://drstephanieestima.com/podcasts/ep471
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsStephanie Estima· Host0:00
[gentle music] Finish this sentence: Most women in chronic pain are not broken, they're blank.
Rachel Zoffness· Guest0:06
They are stronger than they think they are, and they've been led down a false rabbit hole about what pain really is and what healing requires.
Stephanie Estima· Host0:15
I love it. That's so great. Yeah. That's the mic drop. Thank you.
Rachel Zoffness· Guest0:19
Okay, cool.
Stephanie Estima· Host0:20
[upbeat music] Hello, my friends. Welcome back to another episode of Better with Dr. Stephanie. It's me, your host, Dr. Stephanie Sema. If you have ever been told that the solution for your pain is either a pill or a procedure, and if you have been dealing with pain of any kind, especially chronic pain, then this episode is going to flip that on your head. My guest this week is Dr. Rachel Zoffness. She is the author of Tell Me Where It Hurts, and was trained at Brown University, where she majored in human biology, brain and behavior, and conducted her honors thesis on pain neuroscience. She earned a master's degree from Columbia and a second master's at SDSU and a PhD in clinical psychology at UCSD. She completed additional pre and postdoctoral training at NYU, Rockefeller University, and Mount Sinai Hospital. I think my favorite part of this conversation was the conversation around the healing power of touch, so I want you to listen for that in the show. But overall, you are going to have a new understanding of pain, and it's