Hurting, pain and suffering might just be some of the most important things that make you who you are. That pain, though, may be almost invisible to those around you. 

Suffering is often private and difficult to discuss. You can’t hold your pain up to the light for someone else to examine or drape it around their shoulders to see how it might fit. Yet our experience of pain can change the way we think about ourselves and others. 

In an effort to understand how suffering works, Dessa gets burned — literally — and talks pain scales, placebos and the grade school game of sticking gum wrappers to your forehead.

Deeply Human is a BBC World Service and American Public Media coproduction with iHeartMedia.

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