我们每个人都会经历疼痛，所以我想慢慢翻译这篇采访。

This Book Changed My Relationship to Pain

The pain psychologist Rachel Zoffness explains how pain is a “biopsychosocial phenomenon” — and how we can better treat it as such.

Tuesday, February 21st, 2023

Ezra Klein

这本书改变了我对痛的认知

疼痛心理学家 Rachel Zoffness解释为何疼痛是一种“生物心理社会现象”——以及我们如何才能更好地对待它。

2023 年 2 月 21 日，星期二

埃兹拉·克莱恩

I’m Ezra Klein. This is “The Ezra Klein Show.”

So maybe it’s that I’m in my 30s now. Maybe it’s that I have kids and I’m always picking them up, and pulling them out of car seats, and bending down. Maybe it’s my constant habit of emotional repression. I’ll come back to that one. But for the past couple of years, I’ve had a lot of nasty neck and back pain. And I’ve sought all the normal remedies and experts, doctors, and the sports medicine doctors, and chiropractors, and X-ray technicians, and physical therapists, and masseuses. I got an ergonomic chair for the day, and a standing desk, and I got a neck bolster at night.

我是埃兹拉·克莱因。这是“埃兹拉·克莱因访谈”。

所以也许是因为我现在已经 30 多岁了。也许是因为我有孩子，我总是把他们抱起来，把他们从汽车座椅上抱出来，这需要我弯下腰。也许这是我一贯的情绪压抑“坏”习惯。我晚一点会回到这个问题。但是在过去的几年里，我的脖子和背部一直很痛。我找了所有的常规疗法和专家、医生、运动医学医生、脊椎指压治疗师、X 光技师、物理治疗师、和按摩师。我为白天工作买了一把符合人体工学的椅子和一张站立式办公桌；我晚上睡觉还买了一个颈枕。

And what I’m totally certain of is none of these people have any idea what is going on with me. And I’m not telling you this because it’s interesting, although I appreciate it because I want your theories. I’m telling you because it’s banal. Roughly 20 percent of American adults, about 50 million people suffer from chronic pain. For most people, that just means bad days now and again, a couple days laid out in bed. For some, it means constant suffering, the narrowing of the horizons of life. And for too many, it’s meant opioids. It’s meant addiction. It’s meant overdoses.

我完全可以肯定的是，这些人都不知道我身体发生了什么。我告诉你这些不是因为它很有趣；当然，因为这些疼痛，我更想了解你的理论。我告诉你这些，是因为这些疼痛很平庸。大约 20% 的美国成年人，即大约 5000 万人患有慢性疼痛。对于大多数人来说，这只是意味着时不时的糟糕日子，几天躺在床上。对一些人来说，这意味着持续的痛苦，生活视野的缩小。对于太多人来说，这意味着阿片类药物。这意味着上瘾。这意味着过量服用。

And spend even a few minutes talking to people about their pain experience, or for that matter, as I have looking at the studies tracking treatment success, and you’ll realize that when it comes to chronic pain, we do not understand what is behind all this, and we are not good at treating it. So I’ve become interested in what we understand about pain, what is happening at the frontiers of pain research and pain thinking. And somebody who’s sitting there is Rachel Zoffness, who is a pain psychologist at the University of California at San Francisco in their school of medicine. And she’s the author of “The Pain Management Workbook,” which I would recommend to anybody dealing with chronic pain. I found it revelatory. But her core argument is that pain, and particularly chronic pain, and this is all built on reams of research, it’s never just a biomechanical phenomenon. It’s never just something that exists in your shoulder, or your elbow, or your hip. Pain of course, is made by the brain. And it also arises, importantly, and this is particularly true for chronic pain, in a social context. It responds to where we are, and who we’re with, and what is happening around us.

如果你花几分钟与人们谈论他们的疼痛经历，或者疼痛而言，正如我查看跟踪治疗成功的研究，你会意识到当谈到慢性疼痛时，我们不了解背后的原因这一切，我们并不善于对待这种疼痛。所以我开始对有关事情感兴趣，即我们对疼痛的理解、疼痛研究和疼痛思考的前沿领域发生的事情。坐在我对面的人是 Rachel Zoffness ，她是加州大学旧金山分校医学院的疼痛心理学家。她是“疼痛管理手册”的作者。我向任何面对慢性疼痛的人推荐这本书。我发现它很有启发性。她的核心论点是疼痛，尤其是慢性疼痛，这一切都建立在大量研究的基础上，它绝不仅仅是一种生物力学现象。它绝不仅仅是存在于你的肩膀、肘部或臀部的现象。疼痛当然是由大脑造成的。重要的是，它也会在社会背景下出现，慢性疼痛尤其如此。它会对我们所在的位置、与谁在一起以及我们周围发生的事情产生响应。

I sometimes run into books like this. You have a book that claims to be about one topic, maybe a pretty narrow topic, in this case, a workbook for pain. And then you realize they’re about something a lot bigger, how our minds, and our bodies, and our societies interrelate and co-create our experience, and what that suggests about what human beings need to live well, whether you have daily pain or not.

As always, my email, ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

我有时会遇到这样的书。你有一本书声称是关于一个主题的，也许是一个非常狭窄的主题，比方说我们在这里讨论一本关于疼痛的工作手册。然后你意识到这本书其实是关于更大的事情，包括我们的思想、我们的身体和我们的社会如何相互关联并共同创造我们的经验（即疼痛），以及这表明人类需要什么才能过上好日子，无论你是否每天都感受疼痛。

我的电子邮件地址是 ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com。