A Different Kind of Health: Finding Well-Being Despite Illness [Hardcover]

Blair Justice (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1998 | ISBN-10: 0960537643 | ISBN-13: 978-0960537648 | Edition: 1st

Well documented, well-researched, and well-written, this book concerns people who have a sense of well-being even though they are sick or disabled. Their perspective is certain to help even people with incurable diseases or disabilities acquire "a different kind of health".

Editorial Reviews

Review

Congratulations on your new book. It's wonderful. You have much to be proud of! -- Luke Seaward; reader; May 4, 1998

I have just begun to read A Different Kind of Health: Finding Well-Being Despite Illness, and I find myself saying, "Yes, that is certainly true" when I read each page. My older daughter is experiencing what your book teaches - that it is possible to find well being despite illness. Her "spirit" is in a good place. Your book is a wonderful gift to the chronically ill or disable. -- Ann Baker; reader; March 25, 1998

I read chapter 6 Friday, and then started at the beginning, now up through chapter 4. What beautiful writing, plus you seem to have found the very core of so many other writers, poets, and thinkers in the quotations. You are a very learned person, but, even more important, you have great understanding, the spiritual sense. -- Gay Robertson; reader; March 25, 1998

I read your book on the way home from Houston...I was so impressed with how you authentically presented your vision of true well being. Your book is a very powerful work of true understanding - born from the personal pain and suffering you share with us. It takes us farther along with you. -- Gregory L. Fricchione, M.D.; Harvard Medical School; March 30, 1998

I wanted to let you know that I have almost completed training to work as a volunteer in a hospice in San Francisco, which is utterly surprising to me. I came to a sudden decision, which felt more like being picked up by a speeding train, that I really wanted to do this work. I don't know what causes us to wake up one day ready to serve, but I do think your wonderful book helped that day come sooner for me. -- Claudia Smelser; reader; April 20, 1998

Many will be helped and encouraged by this perceptive book, which challenges many common assumptions about our living and our dying, and suggests how true healing may be sought and sickness and pain redeemed. -- The Very Reverend Michael Mayne, KCVO; Dean Emeritus of Westminster Abbey, London; October 31, 1997

Thank you so much for giving a wonderful presentation on your book. We were delighted that you chose the M.D. Anderson Network P.I.K.N.I.C. program to discuss your recently published book, A Different Kind of Health: Finding Well-Being Despite Illness. The evaluations of your presentation were excellent; to quote some of the participants' responses: "Excellent, informative, helpful, needed by all patients, family members and health care professionals," "I am so happy to have had the opportunity to attend this lecture," and "I really need to hear this..."

I believe the topic proved beneficial for many who attended. Thank you for spending the time to answer individual questions generated by your discussion. I know that is something the participants really appreciate. -- Felicia Gonzalez; M.D. Anderson Cancer Center; April 23, 1998

This is a book I want all of my patients to read. I would like them to have it around, to open to any chapter, to think about themselves, their problems and the helpful way Dr. Justice suggests we could think about ourselves, our pains and problems, and our lives.

Dr. Justice has taken current thinking and research on health and coping and translated this into understandable language for patients, and I dare say for professionals who would be more understanding about the ways they can be helpful in supporting and counseling their patients.

We all will have to cope with threats, traumas, disappointments and challenges to our bodies and lives, and Dr. Justice has offered us ways of thinking about these and seeing positive approaches. -- Jock Murray, OC, MD, FRCPC, MACP; Chairman Emeritus, American College of Physicians, Director, Dalhousie Multiple Sclerosis Research Unit, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada; February 26, 1998

We know first hand what an extraordinary gift you have created in writing A Different Kind of Health. It became our point of reference in talking with our friend who is so seriously ill with a brain tumor. It brought healing to all of us as we talked on the salient Points in your book. And we saw a dramatic transformation in our friend in physical and mental health in that period of time together.

Thank you for bringing health and well being to each of us - and to the many who have the joy ahead of reading your book. -- Susan and Gene Vaughan; readers; April 9, 1998

You have created such an important and deeply personal work, and I will buy it for those who can't and recommend it to everyone. Each page radiates love and care, and I will do my best to see that it gains the special place, which it deserves. -- Jerry M. Kaiser, Director; Health Services Divisions, HeartMath, LLC; April 11, 1998

From the Back Cover

Early Praise for A Different Kind of Health: Finding Well-Being Despite Illness

"This splendid book taught me much, and assured me that thinks I want to believe were in fact true. I wish I had written it myself. Read it!" -RABBI HAROLD KUSHNER, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People and How Good Do We Have to Be?

"A terrific book-as lyrical as it is powerful-that will bring great comfort to those managing serious disease. I plan to recommend it to anyone dealing with serious illness, their own or that of their family as an antidote to the guilt and feelings of inadequacy that can come when recovery is difficult-or even impossible." -CANDACE PERT, Ph.D., Research Professor, Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Georgetown University Medical Center, and author of Molecules of Emotions

"This book beautifully shows us how to turn pains into gains, woes into well-being...it will strike universal chords with all who are sick or disabled and their families." -DR. ROBERT SCHULLER, Founding Pastor, Crystal Cathedral Ministries

"Of all the current visionaries who are leading us to an expanded view of health, Blair Justice has one of the keenest eyes...This is a banquet for the soul-lovingly prepared, beautifully served." -LARRY DOSSEY, M.D., author of Be Careful What You Pray For and Healing Words; Executive Editor, Alternatives Therapies in Health and Medicine

"Blair Justice does a masterful job of bringing the ageless wisdom of healing to our everyday understanding. His insights, stories and wisdom make A Different Kind of Health the only kind of health worth knowing." -BRIAN LUKE SEAWARD, Ph.D., University of Colorado, and author of Stand Like Mountain, Flow Like Water and Managing Stress

"This is a stimulating and thought-provoking book. It should be read by those who are ill, by their caregivers, indeed by all who wish to gain a deeper understanding of quality of life and what it means to be 'fully alive.'" -BALFOUR M. MOUNT, CM, OQ, MD, FRCSC, Eric M. Flanders Professor, and Chairman, Palliative Care, Department of Oncology, McGill University

"Blair Justice deepens and clarifies...the meaning of health and human wholeness.... This is a book of great personal authority and will help many." -DOM LAURENCE FREEMAN, head of the World Community for Christian Meditation and author of Light Within

"This book deserves the widest distribution...schools of medicine, nursing, psychology and social work should all use it.... It is a valuable resource for all of us." -CURTIS A. STEELE, M.D., Diplomate APBN (P), Dalhousie Medical School, Halifax, N.S. INSIDE FLAP:"I, for one, will be prescribing this book for many and taking its lessons in large doses." -PORTER STOREY, M.D., Medical Director of University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center consultant in neuro-oncology.

How can a person with recurring cancer or any chronic disease or disability-a situation millions of people are faced with day in and day out-gain a sense of well-being in the very presence of their illness and pain?

In this fascinating and life-enhancing book, Blair Justice, Ph.D., a Professor of Psychology, draws on his own research as well as other findings from both scientific and spiritual literature to present the ways to such people can "get out of themselves" and transcend pain and distress. In doing so, they find a core health deeper than the physical.

Along with telling the moving stories of people with this different kind of health, the book gives evidence on how those with chronic illness or physical impairment, though "sick" by medical standards, can experience themselves as "well," based on the deeper sense of well-being they achieve. Dr. Justice, who is among the "sick but well" himself, clearly explains a wide spectrum of useful health-related findings, including:

* How the sick but well get beyond their illness and pain by identifying with something bigger than themselves and their problem.

* What five ways there are to find a subjective health and an abiding sense that life is good despite pain and illness.

* How getting rid of old conflicts, hurts, and anger relieves physical pain.

* Why subjective health-one's own sense of well-being despite physical infirmity-is a more powerful predictor of longevity and quality of life than are physical examinations by a doctor and laboratory tests.

* How finding some benefit or value in adversity positively affects the cardiovascular and immune systems as well as makes life better.

* Why religion is protective for the chronically ill and injured by reducing the risks of becoming disabled.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Peak Press; 1st edition (May 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0960537643
• ISBN-13: 978-0960537648
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,859,323 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hope, December 9, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: A Different Kind of Health: Finding Well-Being Despite Illness (Hardcover)

Living daily with chronic illness, with the loss of everything familiar, with pain, with the unpredictability of the future, one can become despairing and hopeless. This outstanding book directs one's attention towards a way of living with illness that brings meaning and joy back into one's life. The message of the book has greater meaning because the author speaks from his own pain, and with grace and honesty, shares his own journey back to a life he can embrace. I hope to use the material in this brilliant book in working with groups of people living with chronic illness. Anyone living with illness needs the messages of hope and transformation in this book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Power of Transformational Experience, January 24, 2011

By 

Richard Kownacki (Wichita Falls, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Different Kind of Health: Finding Well-Being Despite Illness (Hardcover)

I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Justice, a colleague of true distinction, at a psychology conference in 2007. Dr. Justice presented a workshop on a subject with which he was intimately familiar-- stroke survival. As a stroke survivor himself, he discovered there were many, many other people like him, who were sick but not sickly, even disabled but not down for the count. According to Dr. Justice, "many persons with chronic disease or disability gain a sense of well-being in the very presence of their disorder." These are people who are happy, hopeful, and enthusiastic about life. They stay connected to other people and become active participants in life. These individuals have discovered that "inner health" and a "sense of well-being" don't depend on your outer circumstances, including even the condition of your body or the state of your health. They don't let infirmity keep them from deriving full meaning and purpose in life. On the contrary, such individuals have found that the disease itself motivates them to change, and that "because of illness or disability they reach deep inside themselves to find ways to be whole."

Dr. Justice clearly practices what he preaches. I call people like him `spunky eldsters," aging individuals who remain full of vitality, stay creative and innovative throughout their entire lives and make the best of diminishing resources. They do not use age or disability as an excuse for living life.

Richard Kownacki, Ph.D. Author of Do Not Go Gentle: Successful Aging for Baby Boomers and All Generations