Excerpts from our conversation with Dr. Williams, associate director of the Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center at the University of Michigan
NIHNiH: Your team does research into using types of talk therapy to help people manage chronic pain. How do people tend to feel when a psychological therapy is suggested for their pain? 
Williams: People have grown up in a world where when you get sick, you go to the doctor and they give you a pill to feel better. That’s what people are used to. But chronic pain doesn’t necessarily respond to that model and isn’t necessarily a problem in the location that hurts. Pain is processed in the brain even though it may be felt somewhere else in the body. Treatment of chronic pain needs to take into account how the brain processes pain….