In the last post, I introduced an example where I was talking to someone suffering from chronic pain. Today we will dive into the rest of the transcript. Interspersed are annotations describing my thought process as the interaction unfolded. I cover what I did which seemed to work, and what I did that a cringe at in hindsight. Ten thousand foot overview at the bottom, for those who don't want to wade through the whole thing. This might be a little difficult to follow, at this point. Originally, I was planning on posting this at the end of the sequence so that you would have the entire 17 posts worth of explanation to put my moves here into context and help understand where they came from and what I mean when I say jargony things like "bid for attention". You might want to revisit at the end of the sequence, and see if you pick up on more of what is going on. I decided to move it to move it to the front for two reasons. One is that it can help to be primed with examples of the thing to be explained so that you more easily recognize the explanation when it fits. The other is just to demonstrate that when I say things that are very counterintuitive and difficult to believe, there's reason to believe it. It actually works. Picking up where we left off... > other-guy: I suppose I have time now to consider what career path I want to take now and other hobbies to get into. > > > Jimmy: Assuming you can get your nerves and shit working again. Up to this point I have just been indulging in my curiosity. What’s going on here? What kind of hurt is he, and is his relationship to pain actually causing him problems or is it just injury that I can’t really help with? Often, the way to help people complaining about “pain” is to understand that it’s not about the pain, and address the injury (forget the finger, look at the moon to which it points). Accept the pain’s bid for attention, give it, and watch their suffering ease as they follow). My cousin’s burn is an exam