Your Pain Is Real: How Your Brain Shapes What You Feel 

 

Released Sept. 15, 2026 

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Trina Wilcox: Welcome to the Live Yes! With Arthritis podcast. I'm your host for this episode. My name is Trina Wilcox, and I was diagnosed at age 6. So, a lot of times when people are first getting diagnosed, one of the things they realize is that they are having a lot of pain, which brings me to the topic we're going to discuss today. Your pain is not in your head, but it is in your brain. Welcome, Dr. Afton Hassett, clinical psychologist and pain researcher at the University of Michigan, where she serves as director of pain and opioid research, author of the book, Chronic Pain Reset: 30 Days of Activities, Practices and Skills to Help You Thrive, and a podcast host. Your podcast is called Chronic Pain Reset. Welcome. 

Dr. Afton Hassett: Thank you so much, Trina. Thank you to the Arthritis Foundation for the invitation. So happy to be here. 

Trina Wilcox: This is an important topic. When you burn your hand, you put ice on it. Or if you scrape your leg, you can put some cream on it. Your joints hurt, you can put hot and cold packs on them. But sometimes you just can't get to where the injury is. And there are different types of pain, and the brain's involved with all of those. So, if you could, break it down and tell me what we need to know about how to better manage all of this pain. Could you start by telling us a little about yourself and why the interest in arthritis pain specifically? 

Dr. Afton Hassett: I'm a pain psychologist, but I didn't start out as a pain psychologist. I was very interested in depression and anxiety and other standard kind of psychology concerns. And I noticed that in a subset of my patients who also had chronic pain — some of them had arthritis, some of them had fibromyalgia — but what I noticed is how frequently the pain would fluctuate. And at first, it didn't seem to be any clear pattern, but then as I put pieces together, it seemed that it was powerfully tied to often what was going on in people's lives. And it just tweaked something in me. And my supervisor said, "Hey, why don't you go to the University of California San Diego Medical Library and pull some articles on chronic pain, on fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis, and just do some reading." 

And at that point, I was hooked, because I had always been an advocate of empowerment, you know: How can we do things to empower ourselves despite what happens in our life? And also a fan of kind of mind-body approaches. And so, hearing that, there was a door cracked open for how we think, feel and behave could impact our actual physiological experience of pain, I was just fascinated. So, that was kind of the turning point for me. 

Trina Wilcox: When you're doing all of this reading, is that what encouraged you, kind of the catalyst to writing a book? 

Dr. Afton Hassett: Oh, my goodness, so the book came 20 years later. (laughs) 

Trina Wilcox: Oh, OK. 

Dr. Afton Hassett: That first tapping my toe in the water was when I was still in graduate school. And I, at that point, just decided this is where I want to spend my life. I'm absolutely fascinated. And so long story short, I became a pain researcher initially at Robert Wood Johnson in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and the last 17 years at the University of Michigan with the Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center. And what I saw in that time was an absolute evolution in how we think about pain. And it has been no less than a complete honor to work with Dr. Dan Clauw, who's the director of our center and one of my mentors and also closest collaborators now, who really did more than almost anyone else to help change how rheumatologists and other people, working with people with rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis, you know, how they thought about pain. And so that took me there, but the book came because we had all this wonderful knowledge and it wasn't getting into people's hands. So, I really wanted to reach out to to people with lived experience, reach out to the clinicians who treated them, and to family members who just wanted to know more about life with pain. 

Trina Wilcox: I'm glad you're doing the research on it and sharing it because, as someone who knows what it's like to experience pain, fluctuations in pain, it can be confusing. You would think we would be the experts, but we're not always. For example, can you kind of define the difference between acute and chronic pain? 

Dr. Afton Hassett: Yes. So, Trina, the difference is acute pain is usually in response to an injury, some sort of tissue injury. It could be an accident, it could be you twisted your ankle. It's something that happens all of a sudden. It's really painful. We say it's acutely painful because it doesn’t really go away. It's quite powerful. But what we anticipate is that, without re-injuring it over and over again, the pain eventually will go away as we heal. We have a remarkable ability to heal from these injuries and insults. What chronic pain is, is when the pain continues kind of longer than we might anticipate the healing process to take. And so, we're thinking, oh, something is happening. Either the wound or injury isn't healing or something else is now going on to perpetuate the pain. And that's kind of that chronic pain is this persistent pain after three months. 

Trina Wilcox: Is there a difference in the way people with osteoarthritis pain experience it from, say, like lupus or rheumatoid? 

Dr. Afton Hassett: Interestingly, pain is kind of pain, and maybe we experience it a little bit differently. Sometimes it's sharp, sometimes it's hot, sometimes it's radiating. But what we do know is that pain, as processed by the brain, is kind of several things, right? There is different types of pain. So, one type of pain comes from an injury or some sort of tissue damage. And that is kind of what I think about with osteoarthritis, when you have kind of this bone on bone, crushing, painful, you know, this is a structural problem that's creating this pain. That's what we call nociceptive pain, which just means that something is happening in the body that the brain is detecting as pain and say, "Ow," there is an injury or ongoing pain out there. 

Now, there's a slightly different type of pain that's associated with say, having an impingement, like, if you have a back injury and it's impinging on a nerve. That is called neuropathic pain, right? So, that is kind of a neuropathy where your leg might go numb and your foot is sore or numb from a neuropathic injury. And then the third type of pain is what we refer to as nociplastic. And that means noci, which is the Latin word for pain or pain detection, and plastic is the notion that the brain changes in response to pain signals. And so nociplastic pain is a term that we use to refer to when the brain now is processing pain differently. It can be amplifying the pain signal that's coming in, say, through an injury to your knee, or it can be actually generating the experience of pain all on its own. 

Trina Wilcox: What about flares? Does that mean there's a different kind of pain that's different with different kinds of flares? 

Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah. So, flares are different. When we talked about the nociceptive pain, the pain that's created by injuries in the body, I didn't mention that inflammatory pain is one of those nociceptive pains, one of those pains that's being created by something happening in the body, and that's inflammation. Now, when we think of flares, often we think about it with inflammatory arthritis, right? So, someone's rheumatoid arthritis suddenly becomes so much worse, and there's a lot of swelling and aching, and they're having a pain flare. There's a disease flare that's happening. We can see pain flares, though, in other conditions that, you know, aren't inflammatory. So, people with fibromyalgia can have a flare. That just means, for one reason or another, usually they've overdone it, but the pain is suddenly so much worse, often in reaction to perhaps something that happened to them or they had done, overdoing it the day before often. 

Trina Wilcox: What's the brain's role with each one of these different kinds of pain? 

Dr. Afton Hassett: The brain is involved in all three types of pain. Without the brain awake and processing, there is no pain. And an example of that is if you're undergoing surgery and the anesthesiologist knocks you out and surgery occurs. There's an incision, and you feel nothing. You have no sense that there's pain. Then you wake up in the recovery room and ouch, right? Your brain is now functioning, and it's recognizing that there is this pain. So, the brain is absolutely necessary for any type of pain. 

Now, what the brain does with pain that's, like, from inflammation, as in rheumatoid arthritis, or like bone on bone, so structural problem, like osteoarthritis, the brain is detecting the signals out in the body and going, "Oh, there's pain. OK, feel this, that's pain." When someone has a condition like fibromyalgia, the brain can be doing one of two things. It can be interpreting some signals from the body, but often it is just on its own creating pain. And that is something that our brains do with remarkable precision. 

PROMO: The Arthritis Foundation offers essential resources for newly diagnosed patients, including educational materials to help them better understand their condition. We offer support groups and online communities for patients to connect with others facing similar challenges. Additionally, we can refer you to healthcare professionals for guidance on treatment options and lifestyle adjustments. Learn more at arthritis.org/newly-diagnosed. 

Trina Wilcox: Can pain, like the level of pain, intensity of pain, be noticed on an X-ray or an MRI? 

Dr. Afton Hassett: Oh, you bring up an interesting question. Many studies have been conducted that look at MRIs and other imaging techniques and show pretty significant damage in individuals, but individuals who feel no pain, right? There was a study that was done that looked at older adults, and it found that 90% of the people with chronic low back pain had degenerative joint findings, right? So, it looked like, oh, something's happening in the back, that's kind of coming down. But then they also looked at individuals who had no chronic pain, and 90% of them also had findings of degenerative joint disc disorder. So, what happens is: Some of these findings that we see are just part almost of normal aging, and whether or not somebody feels pain is often part of the human themselves, how their brain processes information. It can be genetic. There's many factors that we're just beginning to understand that helps us differentiate who will manifest pain and who won't, given a similar type of finding on an MRI. 

Trina Wilcox: Is that kind of similar to people that have had a joint replacement and then they're told, "It went great, perfect, it was successful." But then they're still saying, " I know it's healed, but I'm still having pain"? 

Dr. Afton Hassett: Yes. Great point. And we've done a number of studies at the University of Michigan, following people who have undergone both total knee arthroplasty and total hip arthroplasty. And we see over and over again a subset of these individuals who have a joint replacement and still have this pain, as you described. It can be anywhere from like 5% to 15%, just depending on the cohort that we study. And the question is, what's happening here? How is it that we've replaced a joint, the thing that's creating the pain, yet the person still has pain? 

When we do a little deeper dive, what we find is: In those individuals, what's more common is also they have nociplastic pain, meaning they have brain-driven pain, too, which goes to show and nicely illustrate that people can have all three types of pain in one body, right? We can have an inflammatory pain, an osteoarthritis pain, neuropathic pain and a nociplastic pain. So, part of our job is to help untangle the various mechanisms in each person. They could be unique. We see in people with rheumatoid arthritis, about 20% of them also meet criteria for fibromyalgia, which tells us they probably have nociplastic pain mechanisms working, too. We see upwards of 40% of individuals with lupus who also can meet the criteria for fibromyalgia. So again, it just tells us that there are multiple mechanisms that are working. 

Trina Wilcox: What are some of the biggest misconceptions people have about their own pain? 

Dr. Afton Hassett: Oh, my goodness. You know, talking to many, many people, I kind of hear a few patterns, and one of the greatest misconceptions is, "There is nothing I can do. I've tried everything, nothing works." I totally get the feeling of like, really, what am I supposed to do? 

Trina Wilcox: Defeat. (laughs) 

Dr. Afton Hassett: Seriously. But over and over again, we've found part of it is our failure not to properly match people to the best treatment for them. And that it involves working closely with people who can really look at you in a personalized fashion and help discern what combination of treatments, types of treatments, are best for you. It is the focus of the work that we've been doing in the Back Pain Consortium for the last five years and, moving forward, is to better understand who responds best to what treatment. So, number one, don't give up. We're working on it. But number two, there's so many more things that would be great for you to try and many things that you haven't tried. 

Trina Wilcox: What is something that you wish more patients knew about pain? 

Dr. Afton Hassett: That it's not their fault. I think there's a lot of stigma often around having chronic pain because it can't be seen. Sometimes what you think and how you feel and what you do can impact pain. Then they start thinking, "Oh my God, am I creating this?" No, that's not it at all. That's actually how you can be empowered, that there are things that you can do to make your pain better because it is such a mind-body process. So, yeah, do not blame yourself. Just understand that everybody tends to sometimes feel this and be really tough on themselves. And we all do this as humans anyway. We're sometimes our own worst critics. 

Trina Wilcox: Let's talk about our brains a little bit. Like, how is the brain involved in pain relief? And if the brain is creating this pain on its own, if you will, does that mean that, in our head, just our mind playing tricks on us? 

Dr. Afton Hassett: Because pain is in the brain, there is kind of this natural thought, "Oh, no. (laughs) Am I making this up? Am I doing this to myself?" No, no. The brain is very, very busy all on its own, with little you can do to have created any of it. But the good news is that there are things you can do to calm your brain down. Often pain is nothing but a signal or an alarm that something is wrong. Meaning that, if you think about a smoke alarm, and so sometimes a smoke alarm will go off when there's fire, and that's really good because we want to get out of the house. But probably more often than not, the smoke alarm is going off because you burned the bacon or some other reason, some innocuous reason, and then you open the windows and you fan the smoke out and it's done, and it's really irritating, but there really was no danger. 

The brain to some degree can have a very sensitive alarm that will go off if it senses danger. And what we're learning is that what the brain senses as danger can be really wide. It can be something horrible like being in a terrible accident and having a lot of trauma around a car accident. Or it can be fear about having to do a public talk the next day, right? The brain isn't great at deciphering what is an actual threat to life and limb and what is just a threat, you know? And so sometimes the brain can pump up or just be hypersensitive and send out this pain signal. Other times, the brain will detect something that's happening in the body and really be concerned about it. It could be like a pull or just a slight twinge, but the brain might say, oh, that's a threat, and now it's sending the pain alarm, too, and now it's shooting pain. So, there's a lot that's kind of going on with the brain on its own, but that opens the door to the newest therapies that are teaching us how to do a better job of kind of deactivating that alarm and greatly decreasing pain. 

PROMO: Arthritis Foundation Connect Groups provide a safe space for people to share their experiences with different forms of arthritis. These virtual and in-person support groups foster connections based on shared interests — allowing participants to support one another in the challenges they face while enhancing their sense of community and understanding. Find your group at connectgroups.arthritis.org. 

Trina Wilcox: When we need to learn to work with our brains, what are some of the best ways to manage arthritis and its symptoms with exercise, but knowing which signals to, quote-unquote, "believe" and not? 

Dr. Afton Hassett: Oh, yes. So, it's very difficult because, you know, when we think about arthritis, in many cases, especially with osteoarthritis, there is this bone on bone pain that's going on. But as we said in our surgical studies, we know that quite a few people also have this nociplastic pain, so they have that going on. It's kind of teasing out which type of pain you have, right? The best thing that we can do almost across the board, if it's recommended by your healthcare provider, is to exercise. But again, pain is a signal. Unless your physical therapist or your physician is saying, "Exercise through the pain," you probably don't want to do that, right? Because that's often how we spark that pain flare. Really, when we teach people how to become more and more active, who have any of these pain conditions, ranging from arthritis to fibromyalgia to low back pain, is to do things slowly. To do things, but do things within the realm, where the pain doesn't make you stop, right? 

Maybe you feel tightness, that's OK. But the goal is just to do the activity until you think you might start to feel pain and then stop. And at that point, you break, give them two or three minutes, and then maybe do whatever it is you're doing, say it's raking the leaves or working around the house. Do that for another few minutes till you feel like, "Oh, I might be getting a little sore." Then you stop and you break. And what we find is we're much less likely to create a flare down the road, when people do what we call activity pacing, kind of based on time. We don't do activities till it's done, because then sometimes we push through until we're in so much pain, and now we're going to have a flare that's going to knock us out for three days. The goal is to do an activity for a safe amount of time. Maybe you start feeling a little sore, a little stiff. That's OK. But you don't do it until it hurts. 

Trina Wilcox: We have to be wise about it. 

Dr. Afton Hassett: Yes. 

Trina Wilcox: What about sleep, stress and mental health? How do those affect our pain? 

Dr. Afton Hassett: Those are all really critical. For any pain condition, we often think about pain as being an important pyramid that is pain, sleep and depression or stress, right? Those three factors tend to go together, and if one gets worse, it makes the others worse. For example, if your pain is really bad, you're probably not sleeping very well. And when your pain is bad and you're not sleeping well, your mood, understandably, is much worse. And then you think about the large number of people with depression who have pain, so their depression is very bad. It often keeps them from sleeping at night, and then they can develop a pain syndrome. So, it goes all these different ways. People who don't sleep well often develop depression or a pain syndrome, right? So, it's all of these are so tightly interwoven. 

The good news, though, is if you have chronic pain, and you can improve any of these other symptoms, you can do better. For example, if you have some significant chronic pain and you sleep terribly also, if we can get you sleeping well again, it's amazing how much the pain can improve, as well as your energy, as well as your mood. If you're depressed because you've been living in a very difficult situation for a long period of time, if we can get that depression better, get you moving again and doing things that you love to do again, and reconnecting and just feeling better, then you tend to sleep better and have less pain. So again, these things travel together. 

Trina Wilcox: Does that mean that all of our thoughts, our experiences, expectations have a role in how our pain plays out? 

Dr. Afton Hassett: They can, right? They certainly aren't solely responsible, but they can play a powerful role. I know, when talking to people with pain, that they'll say, "Oh my gosh, I know that my pain was coming. I knew that I was going to have a flare. I had three weeks of the worst stress, and sure enough, I had a terrible lupus flare. I had a terrible RA flare." People with fibromyalgia, "I didn't sleep, and now I got a terrible flare." So, we kind of can anticipate, we kind of know that these are all related. 

Trina Wilcox: Even more important, most people with pain, is how they can stop it. So, what are some ways people can get some relief? 

Dr. Afton Hassett: Yes, yes. So critical. Well, OK, so first thought: We all are kind of our own best doctors, right? We kind of know what makes our pain worse and what can make our pain better. Focus on the things that you know that typically work — what we call pain self-management is critical, right? So that's one. Once you've kind of exhausted those things, then it's taking kind of a survey. Am I sleeping? How is my mood? Am I active? Am I doing the things I love? And becoming more aware of — are  all these pieces in place in my life? — can help us start moving forward. 

Trina Wilcox: We talked a little bit about how our mind is so connected to all of this. What about things like meditation or breath work? Do these help? 

Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah, they can be extremely helpful. Again, when we think about stress and the role that it can play in making pain worse, the more tools that we have to decrease and manage our stress, the better shape that we'll be in. There are some pretty good data showing that mindfulness meditation can be really quite effective for decreasing pain, as well as improving sleep and improving mood. So, mindfulness meditation can be helpful. Breathing techniques are really powerful. Just slow breathing. Just kind of slowing our breath down and using diaphragmatic breathing techniques, sometimes as simple as just breathing at about eight breaths per minute, so setting a timer and breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth about eight breaths per minute. That can absolutely really reduce kind of our autonomic nervous system or kind of our stress activation, and so that can be really helpful. 

Trina Wilcox: When it comes to pain treatments, is there something that you've heard of that is just completely overused or underused? You hear these remedies all the time, and some are wives' tales and some may not be. 

Dr. Afton Hassett: First of all, buyer beware. There are so many things, objects and stuff, to buy out there that are not proven. There's excellent evidence supporting many different interventions for pain. And again, it varies depending on the type of pain that you have, whether your pain is more due to inflammation, as rheumatoid arthritis, or it is a mechanical problem, like osteoarthritis, or more in the nociplastic range. We want to be sure that we're choosing something that maps on well to our pain. 

So, overuse. I would have said 10 years ago: opioids. They have a place in care for sure, and some people with chronic pain respond very well to them. But there was a period when they were being overused and causing much more harm than good. I think we're in a better place there, and hopefully people who do benefit are still able to access opioids. We may, for some patients, overuse interventional techniques, like injections and other things. For some people, they work really well, and other people, less so. What we under-use, I think, are the things that we can do ourselves. Walking, starting a walking program, incredibly helpful. If your doctor has cleared you to walk, that's probably one of the best interventions that we have, is simple exercise. What happens when we have chronic pain, we often become deconditioned. We're home, we're sitting there. It's healthy when you're first injured to avoid exercise so you can heal. But once that's passed, we often want to get people moving, walking, engaging with friends, you know, doing things that you love. Because that gets us out, that gets us moving, that gets us having some positive emotions, and then that can help us with our sleep. 

I think just, in general, we under-use behavioral therapies, because behavioral therapies are not for people who have mental illness in the context of pain; they're for people who want to learn how to better manage your pain. And there's so many tips and tricks and things you can do. It's almost like having a personal trainer for pain. So, I think that is so underused, and I think we're also understaffed. I don't think we have enough pain experts, practitioners, to help all the individuals. And we're talking about 50 million people in the U.S. with chronic pain alone. That's a lot. 

PROMO: The Arthritis Foundation’s website is packed with helpful information about various types of arthritis and how to manage them. You can find inspiring stories from people living with arthritis every day, as well as opportunities to connect with others through support groups and community events. Get resources on physical activity with arthritis, nutrition tips that support joint health and so much more. Check us out at arthritis.org. 

Trina Wilcox: We asked our followers on social media a question. We said: "Has anyone ever dismissed your pain as being all in your head? And if so, how did you handle it?" So, I'm going to read some of our responses and you kind of give me your feedback on it. John Montross said, "My PCP did. Actually made me pretty mad because I don't complain. I just power through. I eventually got into orthopedics for arthritis in my shoulders that works all the way down to my fingertips. He's top-notch. Finding someone who actually listens and takes you seriously is vital." 

Dr. Afton Hassett: I couldn't agree more. If your doctor is treating you as if there is nothing to worry about here, dismissing your pain, that is not working with you as a partner, and you ideally being an active, engaged partner, finding these good connections, find someone who you can work with. I think that's absolutely critical. I do think we're losing a lot of the dinosaurs (laughs), a lot of the older physicians who may have been much more dismissive of pain. I mean, I certainly feel like I hear this at the big rheumatology conferences: that there is a different thought and respect and kind of care for patients that I love hearing. But they still exist: the individuals who will make you feel not heard and dismissed. 

Trina Wilcox: Abigail Myers said, "An orthopedic surgeon kept telling my mom and me I was fine. But when my joints were swollen beyond repair, he immediately rushed me to rheumatology. I now have had JA for 15 years, including permanent damage from untreated inflammation. My rheumatologist wrote a very strongly worded letter to that orthopedic surgeon." 

Dr. Afton Hassett: Good for your rheumatologist. 

Trina Wilcox: Yeah. 

Dr. Afton Hassett: Right? So, you know your body. You know your body better than anybody. You are the expert of your body. And if someone is telling you those swollen joints don't mean anything, get a second opinion, right? I think that is so critical. And somebody who is willing to sit with you and listen, do a few tests, walk you through the options. You deserve to be heard. It is absolutely a critical. This is a partnership between you and your treating team. You need to find the people, create the team that is going to best serve you. And remember that physicians aren't always right. (laughs) 

Trina Wilcox: Yeah, right. Al Blum said, "I've had relatives compare my pain to others. They decided that I was in less pain because I don't complain about it. I decided a long time ago that I wanted to stay positive about what I can do." 

Dr. Afton Hassett: Oh, I like this guy. It's frustrating, right? People aren't going to understand your pain really, in any way, shape or form. It's not something that's visible. And so, for yourself, making that decision that, I'm going to power on, I'm going to stay positive because it will work for me, that's a wonderful thing that you do. It's unfortunate that maybe others don't appreciate that you are as empowered and powerful as you are. But sometimes we can't worry too much about what people think, right? We have to live our lives on our own terms. 

Trina Wilcox: Nat Ki said, "My kid's rheumatologist, had seen for nine years, had wanted her to go to camp to learn to cope with her pain because arthritis isn't a 'painful disease,' end-quote. My jaw hit the floor and we never went back." 

Dr. Afton Hassett: Yay, never went back. And, oh no, a dinosaur still roams the earth, right? 

Trina Wilcox: Yeah. (laughs) 

Dr. Afton Hassett: Oh, sad. Yeah. 

Trina Wilcox: That is sad, but I'm glad that they took the initiative to move on. 

Dr. Afton Hassett: Yes, yes. 

Trina Wilcox: So finally, as we wrap up, we like to talk about our three takeaways that we've gotten from this conversation. So, if you would like to start, I'd like to know what your three takeaways that you want to share with everyone would be. 

Dr. Afton Hassett: Oh, my goodness. Probably the first takeaway is that the pain research world has come so far over the last decade, and it's really, really exciting to see all the changes and the transformation. So, even people who are living with chronic pain that is mostly nociplastic due to fibromyalgia or chronic low back pain, we are working with cutting-edge therapies now that involve brain retraining and other things that are making a profound difference and are currently testing these types of interventions. We're testing in veterans, chronic low back pain, lupus, chronic pelvic pain. We are so excited that there is a really cool future ahead where we do see a lot of hope. 

The second thing is that, it's just really a focus of my book that people have a remarkable, untapped ability to self-manage their pain. And it's pairing people with the activities that resonate best with them. And the problem is: We don't get these into people's hands. I wrote the book with kind of this 30-day challenge. And so, every morning you're supposed to wake up and try one of the activities. And these are everything ranging from activity pacing, different types of sleep hygiene techniques to improve your sleep, but also social techniques to help you get reengaged in the world and to get you doing the things that you love again. To challenge you to experience more self-compassion. 

So many of these little things that you can learn, we have people try one a day over 30 days, and at the end of the book, you pick the ones that you really love, and we help you build a self-management program. Because people, again, are the best judges of their body, they are the ones that are going to, no matter what, stick with themselves to help them get through to the other end. And just having the tools, if you just have the tools, I think they make a tremendous difference. So that's kind of two. 

And then, number three kind of builds on two, but small, simple things often make a profound difference where chronic pain is concerned. And that might seem crazy, because pain can be such a powerful, dominating force, but sometimes something just as small as having just a profound moment of joy or happiness can help the body or the brain rewire. The more that we have kind of positive emotions — I really liked what that gentleman had to say about being positive — there are data that suggest that positive emotions do indeed buffer negative emotions and the feelings of pain. So, even when something bad is kind of happening in your life, if you have a little gallows humor and laugh a little bit, the brain detects that as saying, "Oh, the threat's not so bad," right? So, there is this biological, physiological rationale for why we need to bring joy into our lives, do things that we love and that make us happy and feel rewarding, because they're actually good for us, truly good for us. 

Trina Wilcox: OK, I'll share my three. I think pacing; I love being reminded to pace ourselves. Partnership, it is so important to be your own health advocate. It can be a full-time job, but get a doctor on board that will partner with you and move forward and you're going to get more done. And then I also like what you said: Do as much as you can that you have power to do. I think that's so important. So, thank you for sharing. Please tell us where we can find your book and the title of it again. 

Dr. Afton Hassett: It's Chronic Pain Reset: 30 Days of Activities, Practice and Skills to Help You Thrive. You can find it at Amazon and most small bookstores. Love supporting small bookstores. Then also the podcast, on Apple and Spotify and any place that you could get podcasts, but lots of fascinating guests and wonderful tips for living well with chronic pain. 

Trina Wilcox: Love it. Thank you so much. If you have a question or an idea for a show, please send us an email, [email protected], and you can always find more information at arthritis.org. Thanks for listening. 

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