How to Combat Pain
7/20/202650 min
Pain feels like a simple message from the body. If your elbow hurts, there must be something wrong with your elbow. If your back is painfully stiff, you need some work done on your back. But psychologist Rachel Zoffness says our minds play a much larger role in our experience of pain than many of us realize. This week, we look at what's really happening when we experience pain, and how a better understanding of this process can open up new possibilities for treatment and healing.
In our companion conversation for Hidden Brain+ subscribers, Rachel Zoffness goes deeper into techniques that can help to reduce our brains' sensitivity to pain. You can hear that episode, which is called "Plastic Brain, Changeable Brain," with a free seven-day trial to Hidden Brain+. Go to support.hiddenbrain.org or apple.co/hiddenbrain to access your trial subscription.
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsShankar Vedantam· Host0:00
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. It happens in an instant. [bones cracking] You move too fast, and you feel a wrench in your back. [gentle music] That first sharp pain is followed by a persistent ache, bothersome enough to send you to the doctor. A scan reveals a problem. A specialist recommends surgery. You go under the knife, trusting that once the damaged tissue is repaired, the pain will disappear. The story makes intuitive sense. Diagnose the problem, fix the bone or ligament or tendon that is not working properly, and you'll make the pain go away. But for many of us, that's not how pain unfolds. Aches persist even when scans look normal, or they vanish without any medical intervention. Treatments that promise relief fail to deliver. We also notice something puzzling. The pain we feel changes with other things happening in our lives. When we're feeling calm or absorbed in something else, the pain subsides. When we feel isolated or sad, the pain gets worse. Today on the show, and in a companion episode on Hidden Brain Plus, we examine