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

This book is easy to understand, and provides wonderful exercises to help people deal with the things that get in the way of living a full and vital life with chronic pain; uncomfortable feelings, negative thoughts, and unhelpful rules about what is possible because of pain. Many of the exercises in the book are powerful -- they really get you thinking about what you want your life to stand for -- and then the authors help you create a path to living that life in simple steps that can be put into practice immediately. I highly recommend this book both for people with chronic pain and as a tool for therapists who treat people with chronic pain.

Yes, that's what I told a few people by the time I got to chapter two. I don't even like using that slang expression! Yet, I did, and I can't think of another way to express how I felt while reading this book. If you've been in chronic pain for a long time, have tried everything, are still in pain, and are at your wit's end (like me), I implore you to get this book. What it isn't: an end to pain. What it is: an opportunity to explore the idea that it's your suffering that is the largest problem; not the pain itself, but your thinking and feeling about the pain. If you've ever noticed that on some days you can "handle" your pain and others you can't, if you've ever wondered why you have good days and bad days, and that no matter what you do to control things, you're still suffering, if you've willing to try something totally new, you owe it to yourself to take a long look at the concepts in this book. A few caveats: I almost gave the book four stars, because I think that as a self-directed workbook, it falls short. There is a lot of "homework" in this book, and it is good. However, I am not entirely sure of the usefulness of this book without a therapist or other helping professional. I am also not entirely sure if the explanations in this book of some of its concepts are in-depth enough for those not already exposed to some of its ideas. I have not read Dahl's more scholarly work on this subject, but I intend to, for I would like to explore what I've read here more deeply. However, It is deeply satisfying to read ideas that provoke such "aha!" moments, that give voice and conceptualize fully things I've only had a sense of. That is what is "mind blowing" about the ACT approach to pain. I read the book all the way through before I started to engage in any of the worksheets and assignments it contains. I wanted to know everything - in the simple act of reading, I felt the glimmering of possibility, of liberation from the suffering my pain causes me (or I cause myself). This alone is worth the price of admission! And, the straightforward tone of this book is a breath of fresh air - no new-agey nonsense, no airy-fairy feel-good promises here. The ideas contained within these pages are both simple and hard to do. Some may be familiar, such as keeping a pain diary. Others may not be, such as the difference between "clean" and "dirty" pain (a concept that really opened my eyes). All of it flies in the face of most accepted ideas about coping with/managing/controlling pain. This book is a challenge. It poses many different questions, including difficult existential questions. It asks of those in pain, "Are you ready to live your life with your pain?" It demands action, attention, and above all, mindfulness. In spite of some reservations, I give it five stars, for I think it's imperative reading for any of us who live with chronic pain and ever feel hopeless or helpless. It doesn't offer easy solutions, but the solutions and challenges it pre

I am a family doctor and find this book excellent to hand out to patients with chronic pain looking for self help ideas

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!

I have had chronic pain for many years and this workbook has excellent tools to use in coping with pain. You don't get rid of the pain, you learn to live your best despite the pain. It takes some effort - you won't just read the book and be a pro. It is worth it.