Rachel Zoffness

Pain, especially chronic pain, is also about what's happening in our brains.

When we come back, psychologist Rachel Zoffness returns to the show to respond to listener questions and stories about pain and the role that our minds play in managing it.

You're listening to Hidden Brain.

I'm Shankar Vedantam.

It's the ache in your hip that won't go away, the cramp in your gut that wakes you every night.

Chronic pain can rob us of the ability to work, the urge to exercise, even the desire to do fun things with friends.

We talked recently about chronic pain and how to cope with it with Rachel Zoffness, a psychologist at the University of California San Francisco.

If you missed that episode, it was titled How to Combat Pain.

I actually also listened to...

Rachel Zoffness, Z-O-F-F-N-E-S-S on Armchair Expert, which is a podcast that I really love hosted by Dax Shepard.

She has a book called Tell Me Where It Hurts, The New Science and Pain of How to Heal.

And one of the biggest takeaways was her advice to create your own kind of pain recipe, the things that you need to heal.

Welcome to Episode 3 of PRF Spotlight Interviews.

Today, PRF editorial board member Dr. Wendy Gaultney from the University of Colorado Medical School interviews Dr. Rachel Zoffness, pain psychologist and author.

Dr. Zoffness has a new book out called Tell Me Where It Hurts, The New Science of Pain and How to Heal.

The conversation covers biopsychosocial pain and how this framework is being used to bring relief to people suffering from pain.