Living Beyond Your Pain: Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to Ease Chronic Pain / JoAnne Dahl PhD, Tobias Lundgren MS

Here is an approach to living with chronic pain unlike any you’ve seen before, one that breaks through pain to help you live the rich and full life you deserve. Based on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), one of the most promising and fastest growing psychotherapies in use today, this book breaks with conventional notions of pain management, the traditional “feel good” approaches—including the use of pain-killing medication—that work to prevent painful sensations.

But the ACT approach to living with pain is different. It helps you recognize pain as an event in your life that doesn’t need to interfere with the way you live. In fact, attempts to avoid pain can often cause more harm than good, both to your body and to your peace of mind. By accepting and learning to live with pain, you can limit the control it exerts over your life. Mindfulness exercises, in particular, can help you transform pain from a life-defining preoccupation to a simple experience. From this strong position, you can make choices that will lead you to the life you’ve always wanted. Committed action is the way to make it happen.

Use this step-by-step program to:

• Discover why painkillers are not the answer
• Clarify what you value and how you want to live your life
• Stop your thoughts from holding you back
• Develop mindfulness skills to keep pain in perspective
• Commit to meaningful actions that lead to richer, more fulfilling experiences