Explain Pain

A really fascinating and useful book, especially for anyone who has suffered chronic pain. As much as I knew that our brains create all our experience, this taught me a lot about how context and memory influence not just the ability to cope with pain, but the literal level of pain felt.

The book has a lot of theory, all packaged in friendly and straightforward terms any layperson can understand. Then it ends with descriptions of various exercises one can try (in conjunction with professional medical care) to decouple the “pain neurotag” in the mind from tissues that may no longer be damaged.

The only thing I didn't like about this was the art! I feel bad because they clearly made an effort to use art to keep the information accessible and fun, as well as to illustrate concepts. But the artist's style is very off-putting to me, reading as grotesque rather than whimsical to my eyes. Still, some of it avoided this style, such as charts and the stick figures demonstrating exercises. Those were quite useful and less weird.