Take control of your life, take control of your pain Chronic pain can be extremely debilitating; however, it does not need to dominate your life. This self-help book is based on highly effective self-help methods developed by specialists and used in community and hospital pain management programmes. Your experience of pain can be greatly reduced by pacing daily activities, reducing stress, learning relaxation techniques and effective ways to cope with depression, anxiety, worry, anger and frustration. This easy-to-follow book sets out: - Why pain can persist when there's no injury or disease present - How to become fitter and pace your activities - Practical ways to improve sleep and relaxation - Tips for returning to work, study and gaining a life you value Overcoming self-help guides use clinically proven techniques to treat long-standing and disabling conditions, both psychological and physical. This book is recommended by the national Reading Well scheme for England delivered by The Reading Agency and the Society of Chief Librarians with funding from Arts Council England and Wellcome.
Chronic Pain: A Self-Help Guide offers a practical program for coping with chronic pain. Dr. Steven W. Pollard appraises the current methods for managing chronic pain and presents his program for a down-to-earth, flexible menu of coping strategies for fellow sufferers of chronic pain. Walking step-by-step through the stages of pain from denial, anger, bartering, and depression to acceptance, Dr. Pollard leads the sufferer gently on the route towards a clear and simple set of guidelines to enable them to live with, cope with, and take control of their own lives in the midst of chronic pain. In approximately August of 2008, he began developing his own severe chronic lower back pain and suffered with it for the next three years. His experience with severe chronic pain gave him the impetus to develop a program to help him cope with the pain. While he still has some severe pain, he has regained new purpose in his life to help others learn how to cope with their pain. With his professional training in treating severe chronic pain and the added advantage of experiencing severe pain himself, he was able to develop the effective method for managing chronic pain. Now he presents both his story and his methods in hopes of helping others overcome their suffering and build new lives.
This book provides a clinically proven self - help approach to pain management based on the authors' work with sufferers at Bradford Hospital. Chronic pain that has lasted more than six months can be caused by a number of factors including stress, prolonged muscle tension and the fact that nerves carrying the pain message have developed a long - term 'memory' for the pain. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can help patients become more active, relieve negative feelings, reduce their distress and help them to manage pain more effectively.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) has been proven effective at managing various chronic pain conditions, including rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, chronic back pain, and tension/migraine headache. The CBT treatment engages patients in an active coping process aimed at changing maladaptive thoughts and behaviors that can serve to maintain and exacerbate the experience of chronic pain. Overcoming Chronic Pain, Therapist Guide instills all of these empirically validated treatments into one comprehensive, convenient volume that no clinician can do without. By presenting the basic, proven-effective CBT methods used in each treatment, such as stress management, sleep hygiene, relaxation therapy and cognitive restructuring, this guide can be used to treat all chronic pain conditions with success.
A practical, effective, and inspiring guidebook for dealing with chronic pain • Explains how to reduce pain’s grip on the body and mind by changing your personal reaction to pain • Presents successful strategies from the author’s 25 years of coping with her own pain • Includes 55-minute CD of author’s key techniques for controlling pain In 1989, following surgery for a back injury, Jan Sadler was left in constant pain, with no hope of any further conventional treatment and no adequate prescription drug therapy. Rather than settle for a life of chronic suffering, she gave up her career teaching English and began an investigation into the self-treatment of her pain. Building on her skills as a teacher, she incorporated the pain management techniques she discovered into programs that would help other sufferers learn how to cope with pain and find truly effective relief from its debilitating effects. Sadler shows how we can reduce pain’s grip by changing our personal reactions to the pain we are feeling. Chronic pain keeps our attention fixed firmly on our anguish, which then feeds the painful reaction back into our perception of being in pain, creating a vicious cycle. By allowing our reaction to become one of relaxation and acceptance, the pain is dramatically lessened, both by the absence of a negative perception and by the infusion of relaxation into the point of pain. In Pain Relief without Drugs, Sadler provides easy-to-use self-help techniques that offer support and understanding in breaking pain’s cycle--from relaxation, visualization, and breathing techniques to setting goals, building self-esteem, and coping with pain flare-ups. The author’s 25 years of coping with her own pain and 16 years of teaching pain management techniques result in a book that is filled with practical activities and possibilities for a better life. The book is accompanied by a 55-minute CD narrated by the author of key techniques for controlling pain.
Comfort, understanding, and advice for those who are suffering--and those who care for them. Chronic illness creates many challenges, from career crises and relationship issues to struggles with self-blame, personal identity, and isolation. Beloved author Toni Bernhard addresses these challenges and many more, using practical examples to illustrate how mindfulness, equanimity, and compassion can help readers make peace with a life turned upside down. In her characteristic conversational style, Bernhard shows how to cope and make the most of life despite the challenges of chronic illness. Benefit from: • Mindfulness exercises to mitigate physical and emotional pain • Concrete advice for negotiating the everyday hurdles of medical appointments, household chores, and social obligations • Tools for navigating the strains illness can place on relationships Several chapters are directed toward family and friends of the chronically ill, helping them to understand what their loved one is going through and how they can help. Humorous and empathetic, Bernhard shares her own struggles and setbacks with unflinching honesty, offering invaluable support in the search to find peace and well-being.
Contrary to popular belief, the most frequent causes of neuromuscular, joint, or skeletal pain can be traced to your lifestyle: unconscious habits that involve the way you breathe, stand, and move and the way you store physical and emotional stress in your tissues. Given this fact, if you suffer from chronic pain, or treat people suffering from chronic pain, you may need to consider replacing expensive, often inefficient pain treatment with self-help methods for reversing the way physical, mental, and emotional stresses affect your muscles, joints, and bones. Effortless Pain Relief presents a unique mind-body program for overcoming chronic pain, developed by acclaimed alternative health-care practitioner Dr. Ingrid Bacci. In Effortless Pain Relief, you'll find a simple explanation of how stress creates chronic pain, along with clear, simple, and powerful self-help techniques for reducing and even eliminating pain. The guiding principle in this program for self-healing from chronic pain is to develop greater awareness of your body and sensitivity to it. You can change your lifestyle habits -- and eliminate your pain -- by adopting body awareness techniques that eliminate tension. Chapter by chapter, Effortless Pain Relief shows you how to release deep physical, mental, and emotional stresses through simple breathing techniques, to reduce consciously the effort and tension in your muscles, and to master and eliminate stressful emotions like fear and anger by learning to control the physical tensions that these feelings create. Dr. Bacci also guides you in a process that will allow you to let go of mental and emotional attitudes that unconsciously create stress and physical pain. She shows you how to release emotional conflicts that contribute to pain and teaches you how to conquer the fear of physical pain -- which can actually trigger pain. Dr. Bacci cites numerous case studies from the thousands of patients she has helped during the past fifteen years. She also tells the extraordinary story of her own complete recovery from three years of being bedridden and crippled from a severe case of the chronic pain syndrome fibromyalgia. The curative techniques through which she healed herself, and with which she has helped her thousands of clients achieve freedom from pain, are now available for everyone in Effortless Pain Relief. Dr. Bacci's groundbreaking, accessible program offers deceptively simple yet profoundly effective ways to leave pain behind, enhance your vitality, and find an effortless route to a pain-free life.
Researchers from diverse disciplines have identified chronic pain as a critical national problem. Despite its preponderance, however, definitive diagnosis of benign chronic pain is usually elusive and direct medical intervention is often ineffective. Stressing self-management, Drs. Hanson and Gerber offer an alternative approach to biomedical management or simply ``learning to live with it' by presenting a comprehensive description of an integrated treatment approach for chronic pain sufferers. The biopsychosocial perspective on the assessment and treatment of chronic pain that is described in this volume is based on the day-to-day operation of an effective outpatient pain clinic that evaluates clients, about 1/3 of whom are treated in an intensive 21-day patient program. The book opens with an explication of a theoretical model and a detailed description of its clinical implementation. The model's application with patients is described with emphasis on the need for a flexible theoretical approach and individualized treatment, which may include psychotherapy as an integral part of the self-management paradigm. The biomedical and biopsychosocial models are discussed in detail with respect to how they presume pain mechanisms operate, how each views the phenomenology of the pain experience, and what are considered appropriate interventions. It is demonstrated how, rather than focusing on repairing mechanical breakdowns in the body machine, the biopsychosocial model concentrates on the individual with chronic pain. How a person appraises, reacts to, and copes with the problem and its treatment are considered crucial issues. The sociocultural context of the patient is also taken into account. The evaluation and preparation of patients for self-management training is explicated. Topics include the reciprocal interactions among physical sensations, cognitive factors, emotional responses, overt behavior, and socioenvironmental features. The neurophysiological underpinnings of this model are briefly discussed, common self-management goals are summarized, and essential targets for change such as dysfunctional action tendencies, perceptions of uncontrollability, and self-focused attention are delineated. Complete chapters cover the critical issues of physical activity reconditioning, attentional refocusing, and a non-narcotic preventive approach for acute pain episodes. Another chapter addresses administrative, budgetary, and staff issues for operating a comprehensive pain center. Providing a flexible and comprehensive approach that is particularly effective for chronic pain sufferers, but is also applicable to all types of illness, this volume will be of value to psychologists, physicians, nurses, social workers, and physical therapists. Ancillary health care professionals and administrators will also find much of interest.
