Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Living Beyond Your Pain: Using Acceptance & Commitment Therapy to Ease Chronic Pain Review


This is what cutting-edge psychology has to offer for (chronic) pain! ACT practitioners are aware of the life-saving benefits of medical science. If one goes to one's doctor, one always has hope. But, beyond that, what? I've been in and around 'help-land' often enough, to really get into this work. After initial curiosity and disbelief, I even found it gripping. I was quite amazed to realize how my mind struggles in a maze it creates in response to pain. I realized how much energy I waste in a fruitless struggle to get rid of it. The narrative keeps flowing gently, calling for your attention. What is pleasing is that it keeps blending in concepts already treated. Close to real life, it tackles step by step. There is no harm to look at pain. A lot of emphasis, rightly so, is put on 'value-work'. To see what your life is really about. The chapters on mindfulness and 'defusion' are particularly valuable. Defusion is a technique to show you that you are not your what your thoughts say you are. For that matter, what your pain says you are. Don't get me wrong, there's lot's of work to be done. The work on willingness / acceptance is quite something. You apply your own work and it lifts you. Reading this book saves you from searching for authoritive statements to hold on to. It treats you as an authority in your own right. This one is not just another self-help book. The main author, one of the worlds leading pain-experts, has written a very accessible manual. It is based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a rigorously researched and science based therapy. Honest and sincere, it targets a really wide audience. Once I got into it, I couldn't put it down. It shows us that there's so much value in what we are, it's no longer necessary to be defined by pain.

Recommended!


Buy it here now!

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