Customer Reviews

They Can't Find Anything Wrong!: 7 Keys to Understanding, Treating, and Healing Stress Illness

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I highly recommend this book.

There have been many books about stress induced illness.

Dr. Sarno is probably the most well known in the area of stress induced pain. His book, "Healing Back Pain" has been a best seller. Thousands of people have recovered from back pain without surgery as a result of his books. Many patients have problems accepting his theory because it is somewhat technical. They state that "the pain is real; it is not in my head," which of course is true but misses the point. Dr. Sarno recommends therapy for those who have followed his treatment program but still have pain.

It appears that, although thousands have recovered, many do not recover completely from stress induced pain and remain pain free for the rest of their lives. The pain frequently comes back, moves around and never seems to go away. This situation is a common complaint on the back pain forums. Dr. Clarke's book provides an answer.

Dr. Clarke refers to stress induced pain as "stress illness." His treatment consists of uncovering the emotions that are causing the stress and developing a course of action to react to these emotions and eliminate the pain.

Dr. Clarke interviews his patient until he finds the cause of the stress and then guides his patient to a solution to eliminate the stress. He has been following this procedure with remarkable success at the rate of approximately 400 patients a year for over 20 years.

At the present time, mainstream medicine does not understand stress illness and their patients suffer accordingly.

Neither Dr. Sarno's nor Dr. Clarke's treatments can be considered alternative medicine. The treatments are more appropriately described as procedures to be followed as a result of a correct diagnosis of the patient's problem.

Dr. Clarke doesn't try to convince the patient of Dr. Sarno's theory, that is, that the pain is the result of repressed rage. Dr. Clarke just goes ahead looking for the cause of the stress and suggests a way to eliminate it. He is successful and the patient is cured. This is adequate proof of the correct diagnosis.

The case studies are fascinating. He seems to have the ability and technique of a therapist but his procedures are not too difficult to follow and can be very helpful to the reader. He guides the patient in discovering the cause of the stress and the relationship to the pain.

Dr. Clarke maintains that the emotions that create the stress must be uncovered. Sometimes just the knowledge of the emotions involved is sufficient as illustrated in his case studies, but sometimes further action is required of the patient. This is an excellent book for understanding the complete process of resolving stress illness pain. Dr. Clarke's desire is that it be a self help book.

Mainstream medicine has been slow in accepting the concept that stress causes pain. Dr. Sarno has been the pioneer; Dr. Clarke is continuing the process. Some day, hopefully, mainstream medicine will have the knowledge of the correct diagnosis and cure their patients that are now in the process of continued suffering.

This book is a treat. It is a page turner. It is also one of the most helpful books on the subject of pain from stress. I predict that it will become a classic.

As a fellow digestive disease specialist, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of Dr. Clarke's superb work. Patients with years of distress and negative tests with no answers, hunger for not only relief of their symptoms, but also for respect, understanding, and dignity. The answers to their problems are not easily found, and do not conveniently lie at the tip of yet another endoscope or costly imaging procedure. Instead, sensitive, caring, and sophisticated investigation is required, the kind rarely taught in formal teaching programs. This book is a key for that puzzle; a crucial addition to any physician's library and for anyone dealing with a chronic physical problem. After all, even those of us with identifiable diseases often have superimposed and complicating stress components.
The writing is compelling, touching, and replete with hope,inspiration, and healing via guided self-discovery. Dr. Clarke's book is required reading in understanding the complexities of the human physical condition - theoretically evolved to perfection after thousands of years, only to be brought to its knees by stress illnesses induced by the dysfunction of family systems, abuse, and personal tragedy.

As a Mental Health Clinician it is refreshing to find a physician that can put into words what our patient's having been telling us for years. Dr. Clarke can sit with a patient as well as any therapist and get to the heart of what has been affecting our patients on the physical levels, which also will help to heal the mental and spiritual aspects of out patients. It's refresshing to find an MD that will spend time to hear a patient with empathy, non-judgmentally anf then treat the soul of a person. This book is one of those rare jems that practioners and therapists need to read and use in their practise. Thank you Dr. Clark.

"They Can't Find Anything Wrong" is an exceptional piece of valuable literature meant for all types of readers. Dr. Clarke has done a great job of taking complicated processes of the brain and body and has explained them in a way that anyone can understand. If you read this book you will become a very powerful person because you will finally understand what's causing your stress illness, and how to regain control of your life by implementing skills learned from the book. Every reader is guaranteed to walk away with valuable tools and skills learned from this book that will enable them to lead a more fulfilling life. The #1 piece of information I learned from reading this book is that if you suffer from stress illness you can find a cure. You don't have to settle for the roller coaster ride, the up's and down's and out of control feelings that stress illness causes. Being a health care worker myself I think that all health care workers nation wide should and need to read this book. "They Can't Find Anything Wrong" should be implemented into every medical school across the country so that all healthcare workers of every level can help detect and diagnose stress illness, in hopes that patients everywhere aren't subjected to unecessary testing where doctors "Can't Find Anything Wrong!" Sarah Willett, RN.

Dr. Clarke is obviously the kind of doctor we all wish we had looking after our health concerns, especially those that other doctors have given up on without solving. Can't get your doctor to listen? Have the same awful symtoms with no concrete diagnosis? Going from doctor to doctor, test to test until they tell you you are crazy? Get this book and it will give you the tools to seek appropriate and successful health care, as well as addressing any "issues" that are adversely affecting your physical health. It's simple - but wise.

Finally a book that helped me understand how STRESS, past and present
affected me at a physcial level. My biggest surprise was that the stress
from my childhood was affecting me physically NOW in my fifties.Dr. Clarke's
moving stories helped me see my own painful childhood that I had buried and
minimized. How that pain and fear kept me in an abusive marriage 28 years
and helped me understand that the fatigue, anxiety, depression and weight
problems were ALL part of Stress Illness. To have the words and understand-
ing of how to begin to heal is powerful beyond measure. With much gratitude
I thank Dr. Clarke for his compassion and the wonderful way he has of ex-
pressing himself and the invaluable tools he has given me to begin healing.
It is with great pleasure that I have given copies of his book to friends
and family.

Seeking answers to a strange pain problem I had last year, I checked this book out after it was mentioned on a Discussion Board. I found it to be an easy read and futher reinforcement of my belief that I was experiencing stress overload as the source of my pain.

I was especially fascinated by the concept of childhood stress, as like so many other people I always felt my childhood was good, but I learned some new info that gave me a different perspective on how even some aspects of childhood experiences (not abuse or anything) can shape your future personality and lead to future stress disorders as well. I actually experienced some pain relief while reading the book.

I found the real-life examples very helpful although I would have liked to see more where people had "normal" stress exposure as opposed to a specific traumatic or multiple traumatic events. I wish some of the doctors I had visited had read this book and were open to its ideas as it would have saved me a lot of time, grief and pain.

--Melanie R. Jordan, author of "Have Your Cheeseburger And Keep Your Health Too!" Have Your Cheeseburger And Keep Your Health Too!

I'm one of the lucky few who discovered I had a stress illness. Mine was PTSD, but Dr. Clarke's so clearly illustrates how many of us get seriously ill before we get treatment for the effects of life's traumas. This book is filled with lessons for all of us; it's great medicine.

Deborah Dozier Potter, author of Let Buster Lead, discovering Love, Post-Traumatic Stress and Self-Acceptance

This is the best general-interest book on the subject. It is very readable, with enough medical and research detail to support the conclusions and opinions, but not so much that it becomes ponderous. The real-life stories illustrate the range of problems caused by untreated stress. They also show how severe and life-altering these illnesses can be. The self-help therapies and suggestions are rational and practical, and do a good job of showing us how much we can do on our own and when we need to get professional medical help.

I am delighted to see that a medical doctor has this level of compassion and sensitivity for his patients. This is a rare quality indeed. Dr. Clarke does a wonderful job explaining how childhood stressors and abuse lead to problems later in life with chronic pain and other illnesses that aren't usually thought of as psychologically- induced. The way he speaks to his patients and the way he thinks about their problems shows his compassion and understanding that one would expect from a therapist, but is rarely found in a classically trained gastrointestinal physician.

Thank you Dr. Clarke for illuminating the connection between stress and illness. You have given the power to heal to the patient themselves!