Pain psychologist: the brain constructs pain from biology, emotion and environment

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We treat pain like a plumbing problem. Something in the body is broken, so we block the signal with medication or cut it out with surgery. The opioid epidemic is what happens when that is the only model we have.

Pain psychologist Rachel Zoffness explains why it is also an incomplete account of how pain works. Pain is constructed by the brain, out of biology, emotion, and environment at once. Most chronic back pain has no identifiable structural cause, and 90% of us are walking around with abnormal spines and no pain at all. Sleep, stress, fear, and isolation are not side factors. They are ingredients in the pain itself.

This video The secret your brain uses to decide how much pain you feel is featured on Big Think .