Dr. Watson, I presume!:>)) VERY VERY good article.

As a psychology intern, I did psychological pain management, and later did (successful) research on mindfulness in the reduction of pain.

You didn't include it, but I thought I'd make a few suggestions for people who read this and want to complain, "But my pain is REAL."

1. ALL pain is 'real" and ALL pain is in the brain. no brain, no pain (it's a no-brainer!).

For patients who came to me who didn't want to hear about 'psychology" and pain, I found this image very helpful. I"d say ,"If I severed the nerve connection from your wrists to your brain, what do you think you'd feel if I took a knife (I'm mimic the action of doing this) and plugged it into your hand?"

Their eyes would widen and they'd realize, they would not feel any pain.

Then I'd go on, "well, if I could change your brain so much that, even if the pain signals from your hand went to your spine and up to your brain, that your brain processed the signals as, say, pleasure, you wouldn't feel any pain, right?"

And they'd get it. If they needed more, I'd tell them about experiments I did when I had severe dental pain and didn't have any pain medication available. I discovered if I just sat wit the sensations, noticed the resistance and slowly let go of it and paid VERY VERY close attention to the actual sensations rather than my emotional/instinctive/mental reaction to it, the extreme pain would become neutral - ad as long as this equal attention was maintained, sometimes would momentarily turn to extreme pleasure.

I'm not recommending avoiding pain meds only telling the story to inspire people to realize how profoundly the brain can be changed.

Thanks for a great article!