Being Well with Forrest Hanson and Dr. Rick Hanson

Pain psychologist Dr. Rachel Zoffness joins Forrest and Dr. Rick to explore what pain is, why it can persist long after an injury has healed, and what actually helps. Rachel explains why the brain, rather than the body part that hurts, is what constructs pain, the difference between acute and chronic pain, and the distinction between hurt (what you feel) and harm (what's damaged). They get into the biopsychosocial model, the "pain dial" that stress, sleep, mood, and social connection can turn up or down, the disappointing response rates for most pain treatments, why pain is absolutely not “just in your head,” what sham surgery and open-label placebo studies reveal about how pain works, and why the research is so hard to interpret.

This is not medical advice. Please do not start, change, or discontinue any medication based on this episode. All decisions should be made with your doctor.

About our Guest: Dr. Rachel Zoffness is a pain psychologist, assistant clinical professor at the UCSF School of Medicine, and the author of Tell Me Where It Hurts.

Key Topics:

0:00 Introduction

1:42 Acute vs. chronic pain

3:41 What is pain?

9:20 The biopsychosocial model

11:11 Hurt vs. harm: the tale of two nails

19:10 The pain dial

23:10 Nociception vs. pain

26:46 Your pain recipe

29:46 The "all in your head" stigma

31:23 Central sensitization

35:53 Pushback from pain patients

40:42 Loneliness and pain

46:51 Pacing

50:48 Reducing distress vs. reducing pain

54:26 Does anything work?

1:00:07 What placebo actually is

1:03:19 Acupuncture, sham surgery, and open-label placebo

1:09:42 Why the research is such a mess

1:14:10 Hopelessness, and trying one more thing

1:17:46 Mindfulness and attention

1:23:02 Advice for friends and family

1:30:22 Recap

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Dr. Rick and Forrest talk about what separates people-pleasing from the fawn response, and why those differences affect what actually helps. They trace the surprising history behind both ideas, explain each’s relationship with trauma, and answer common questions along the way. They discuss why old friendships pull you back into old patterns, when appeasement is actually the right call, how to assert your needs when people expect you to concede, and how to figure out what you want after a lifetime of tuning into everyone else.

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Key Topics:

0:00: Introduction

2:05: What’s the difference between people-pleasing and “just being nice?”

8:50: Common signs of people-pleasing

21:00: Where "people-pleasing" and “fawning” come from

27:00: Pete Walker, trauma, and how the two terms got merged

30:45: "Is the conflict causing my anxiety, or is my attachment style causing the conflict?"

39:10: Becoming more assertive

47:30: How to change relationships built on the pleasing version of you

55:15: Emotional neglect, shame, and learning what you want

1:04:30: Recap

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Forrest is joined by his parents, psychologist Dr. Rick Hanson and nutritionist Jan Hanson, to discuss "Depleted Mother Syndrome:” the exhaustion, brain fog, and low mood so many mothers experience. They talk about how Jan hit bottom in the years after Forrest and his sister were born, why the hardest stretch often comes two or more years after birth, the problem with dismissing these experiences as "just motherhood,” and how people can recover.

Key Topics:

00:00: Intro & welcome Jan!

2:39: What inspired the book

10:02: Dr. Rick’s perspective

13:30: Depleted Mother Syndrome

18:33: The accumulated impacts of motherhood

25:44: Taking care of your health as a mom

36:40: Rick & Jan’s personal experience

50:08: Small actions that maintain and repair a relationship

1:04:19: What Jan would tell her younger self

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We’ve all been told to “feel our feelings,” but what does that actually mean, and how do you do it? Forrest talks with trauma therapist Simone Saunders about how to go from knowing your patterns to being able to do something about them when things get intense.

They discuss what your nervous system does when it decides you're not safe, why the tools you've collected go offline in exactly the moments you need them, and how a sense of agency changes that equation. Simone walks through her three-step process for noticing a sensation, working out what it's asking for, and doing something different with it. They also talk about the functional freeze, what to do when you “don’t feel anything,” and how to relate to shame and grief.

Key Topics:

00:00: Intro: overthinking, cognitive bypassing, and intellectualizing

4:42: What it means to “be in the body”

9:46: Bottom-up approaches and trauma

18:33: How to recognize disconnection and functional freeze

28:38: Moving out of a dictatorship and into a partnership with your body

34:51: How to actually feel your feelings

46:29: The difference between emotions and feelings

52:14: Meeting your needs

57:40: The limit of self-understanding, frameworks, and tools

1:00:07: Moving into experiments, titration, and when you feel too much or not enough

1:17:28: Recap

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Dr. Rick and Forrest explore how to become more resistant to manipulation, discussing terms like gaslighting, DARVO, and love bombing. They talk about why cynicism doesn’t make you immune to manipulation, and how excessive skepticism and trust can go together. They share the “handles” manipulators exploit, break down common forms of reality distortion, emotional manipulation, and situational engineering, and discuss what actually helps.

Key Topics:

0:00: What is manipulation?

6:25: Are cynical people less manipulatable?

14:52: How can we become manipulation resistant?

25:51: How manipulation works

26:30: Tactic 1: Reality distortion

33:49: Tactic 2: Emotional manipulation

38:02: Tactic 3: Situational engineering

40:00: Key qualities to develop

45:17: Establishing protective systems and managing "the fuzz"

1:02:36: Recap

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