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

JoAnne Dahl PhD (Author), Tobias Lundgren MS (Author), Steven C. Hayes PhD (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 3, 2006

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

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Chronic pain is like a weed that can take over the landscape of your life if you let it. Yet, it doesn’t have to be this way. This remarkable and beautifully written book offers a fresh approach to a life defined by chronic pain and its management. Readers will learn how to get out of a life consumed with pain and pain management and back into a life where pain takes a backseat. This book, filled with many well-crafted examples and exercises, will teach you skills that will help you learn to be with your pain and live a vital life. You will learn how to bring compassion and acceptance to your pain and hurt while engaging in actions that you care deeply about. This book is a vital resource for those suffering from chronic pain, their loved ones, and professionals who work to help people who are stuck and suffering in a cycle of pain and misery.”
—John P. Forsyth, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology and faculty director of the Anxiety Disorders Research Program, State University of New York at Albany

From the Publisher

Using mindfulness-based techniques and cognitive behavioral tools, a leading expert on the use of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) teaches readers to transcend the experience of chronic pain by reconnecting with other, more valued aspects of their lives.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: New Harbinger Publications; 1 Workbook edition (May 3, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1572244097
• ISBN-13: 978-1572244092
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 0.4 x 11 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #50,194 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #9 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Diseases & Physical Ailments > Chronic Pain
  • #75 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Diseases & Physical Ailments > Pain Management

More About the Author

JoAnne Dahl was born 1951 in Bennington Vermont where she spent her first 18 years. During her Earlham College years in Indiana, JoAnne attended a foreign study program in Scandinavia, where she moved after graduating, tempted by love but more so free graduate school. After learning Swedish JoAnne relished the clinical psychology program at Uppsala University in Sweden, followed by clinical work and research in behavioral treatments of physical illnesses, such as epilepsy, intestinal disorders, chronic pain, asthma and obesity. She was the first woman to receive a doctorate in clinical psychology at Uppsala University, 1987. Besides a busy clinical and research schedule, JoAnne has brought up 3 children, mostly as a single mom, who are now grown up but live nearby. After the twin boys graduated and left home, JoAnne sold her home and worked periodically in India and South Africa, bringing effective self-help therapies such as Acceptance and Commitment therapy to poor institutions. JoAnne lives at present in central Uppsala Sweden and holds a tenured professorship at the department of psychology at Uppsala University.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Values and Action-based Pain Management November 9, 2006

By B. F. Thompson

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book uses ACT as a basis for helping a person experiencing persistent pain to live a life full of what is really important rather than with futile attempts to control the uncontrollable.

It's quite easy to follow and has both short and simple readings alongside exercises that can be used to reflect upon the concepts that are introduced.

I think a person experiencing pain would need to be at a certain stage of motivation to be ready to stop seeking pain reduction before beginning on the journey that this approach offers - but if ready, the book certainly covers the ground and is user-friendly enough for most people who read self-help books to follow.

If the person experiencing pain has the support of a therapist either familiar with ACT, or prepared to suspend judgement and follow the process, the process this book uses would work well. I'm not so sure that an individual who was working alone would find it as easy!

As an introductory book for a therapist working in pain management, this book provides great tools to use, and a logical process to follow. It also has some good references if the therapist is keen to read more.

Recommended.

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Dangerous Without a GREAT Therapist May 15, 2011

By Hedy

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I have an ACT psychologist with three books coming out this year. If it weren't for him, ACT would seem Sadistic. All the workbooks of ACT that I have used are great in theory, but there is something missing in the written works: compassion for yourself. ACT comes across as "Just suck it up and do it anyway." It doesn't give very good resources for managing the pain of depression, PTSD or fibromyaglia. I do love that there is a focus on my values for MYSELF, without any therapist's secret agenda forced on me, and so the therapy is focused on what I value and who I want to be, not my diagnosis. That's ACT's strength. The value and goal focused work is wonderful. The acceptance is great too, but if you did a DBT day program for a week or read an article on Buddhism, you already learned radical acceptance. Unfortunately, ACT in workbooks always comes across as harsh and unsympathetic. My psychologist also agrees - He teaches ACT at a psych grad school and the students even think it sounds cruel, like you just force people to do what makes them feel awful.
If you have a real ACT therapist, not just a workshop attendee or book reader, ACT is great, because the "Just do it" message of ACT gets toned down with human kindness.
The hopeful part of ACT - and this is why in partnership with self compssion work - is that it allowed me to live a life in spite of having severe PTSD. Instead of the epic wait most of us with any diagnosis do - searching for the CURE so we can be people again - ACT gives the tools to be a person who has a diagnosis that may or may not get worse or get better. It doesn't fix the diagnosis, it focuses on the person. For someone who has been a DSM4 diagnosis most of her life, that is awesome.
So I bought this book with my new diagnosis fibromyalgia.... This books seems very out of date about pain management. Yeah, some drugs are given to me, but all my allopathic doctors suggest acupuncture, meditation, tai chi, yoga, swimming, relaxation, body work, trigger point physical therapy, diet change, and so much more. No one today thinks that FM can be solved with drugs alone - There's massive life style changes and different treatments done in conjuction with the medications. So the first section about how all pain medication cannot help you and you're doomed if you rely on the medical treatments is very scary to read and very very wrong. There are treatments that can help, unfortunately with something as weird as FM, you have to do hit and miss for a long time til you find them, and since each day is different, you have to be very flexible with your life plans.
One key thing with FM is PACING. Listening to the pain so you know when you're overdoing or underdoing it, which is a skill I have not yet begun to master.
However, if I were to just go by this workbook I'd be forcing myself to do everything no matter what my pain level. I'd be creating a lot of unnecessary sufferings I could have avoided. In the cognitive therapy world, like DBT and ACT, avoidance is seen as something horrible. That led me to a nervous breakdown when I did the DBT and ACT treatments for fear which is to approach everything that scares me and never let my terror control me. ACT really seems far too all or none in this way. Without a very well trained psychologist this really comes across as "no matter how much it harms you, don't be a wuss and do it!"
This book could have been so much better if it intergrated all the treatments for pain management into it instead of having two pages of why medicine won't help you. If it showed more respect for the need to listen to your pain, to pace yourself, to avoid things that make you worse, I'd give it 5 stars. But if I were to follow this book I would be doing things that could literally kill me. I'd be in much more pain. There are a lot of things I have to avoid for a higher quality of life and other things I cannot physically do or I might die. To ignore that is insanity. The need for honoring the pain, not seeing it as a MONSTER, as ACT tells us to, is the healthier way to live. I am not going to battle with my pain. I am not going to chose an either/or attitude rigid dogma about how I must live.
This book is far too simplistic, very outdated, and eally doesn't understand pain management techniques. Yes, pain doesn't have to rule and ruin your life (not totally), but it also needs to be respected. You have to take care of yourself with rest, solitude, and learning to say NO to doing things, the hardest part for FM folks. It makes no sense for me to do things I know will cause a flare.
Dangerous unless you have an ACT therapist who is highly trained in doing this work without it feeling like a drill sargent demanding that you listen to him and not yourself. It caused me so much anxiety, I want to burn it. The worst ACT workbook on the market, which says a lot. ACT is a great therapy, and has horrible workbooks because it just cannot be understood by reading it. It'll be interesting to read the workbooks my psychologist has coming out this year and see how he avoided this problem, one that he himself says is the main problem with ACT. Read more ›

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Pick up your life! June 23, 2007

By E. R. Lutzke

Format:Paperback

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!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, inspiring workbook April 7, 2010

By Jennifer Plumb

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

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.