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Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Seven Proven Steps to Less Pain and More Energy Paperback – June 1, 2006
| Fred Friedberg (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
A Lifestyle Balance Program for Less Pain and More Energy
If you're struggling with fibromyalgia or CFS, this book can help you. It offers an evidence-based improvement program that can help you achieve a healthy balance between activity, rest, and leisure-a balance that can significantly reduce pain and fatigue and increase your energy. In this book, author Fred Friedberg, a clinical psychologist and a leading researcher in chronic fatigue, first explains how lifestyle impacts the severity and persistence of fibromyalgia and CFS. He then goes on to show how the seven step lifestyle balance program can help you to function and feel better.
In step one, you'll learn how to use active relaxation techniques to lessen ongoing stress. Better sleep, anger management, and activity pacing make up steps two, three, and four. Step five focuses on overcoming worry and guilt, and you'll learn how low-effort pleasurable activities can ease pain and fatigue in step six. Finally, in step seven, the importance of finding and maintaining personal support is covered. This effective lifestyle-focused program has brought relief to many others like you who have struggled with these misunderstood illnesses-illnesses that modern medicine cannot cure. You can start on the path to a better quality of life today!
- Print length200 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherNew Harbinger Publications
- Publication dateJune 1, 2006
- Dimensions5.75 x 0.25 x 8.75 inches
- ISBN-101572244593
- ISBN-13978-1572244597
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Product details
- Publisher : New Harbinger Publications; 1st edition (June 1, 2006)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 200 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1572244593
- ISBN-13 : 978-1572244597
- Item Weight : 10.9 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.75 x 0.25 x 8.75 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,846,762 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,830 in Pain Management (Books)
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This book was a light for me in what I thought would be the dismal remaining years of my life. It gave me basic, good information to increase my overall health, stamina and ensure that I was at the most fit I could be despite the constraints of my illness. I would recommend that any person newly diagnosed, or even, as in my case, any person that has had a chronic fatiguing illness for years, should have this book in their library.
This book is especially for those who've reached a coping plateau, ready to concede, at least a little, we have influence about how we feel and react emotionally, intellectually, and physically. Acknowledging and using that influence leads to more capacity to deal with our extraordinary physical challenges. Within each one of the practical Steps are several things to consider, implement, and/or practice. Personal stories illustrate the benefits. Each time I pick up this book, I find something interesting, helpful, or supportive. So has every other person with CFS/FM I've shown it to whether it be about why doctor visits go wrong, why vacations are not necessarily helpful, or how to think differently about anger and guilt.
The author is one of us and writes with such easy going, yet profound, honesty. Its easy to identify with the examples. It also feels like Fred is a friend on the journey with us, especially important if support is lacking from friends and family. I identified with Fred as he describes the pedometer experiment. I did that! I have done all of the "9 Ways to Make Yourself Miserable" in Chapter 16. Having progressed from that place, reading the list makes me laugh. I've read the 'miserable' list to others to a mix of laughter, silence, and groans as people recognize and reveal where they are in their coping.
The cognitively, visually impaired will appreciate the book's signifcant white space and small, clearly marked sections. You can skip around and not get lost. There is no index, so I'll be adding sticky notes to my copy to more easily show items to people in my CFS/FM support groups.
Fred and the 7 Steps book are good companions on the CFS/FM journey. I find there is so much good here I won't be bothered by statements requiring all the steps and promises of this or that percentage improvement. Do what you can, do what you are drawn to. You may get less improvement that way, or you may get more since you are honoring yourself. It may take you more or less time, but the author and book provide encouragement and experience of a professional who lives with and works with these conditions which is amazing. Physiological improvement can and often does follow seeking balance and managing activity. Fred has witnessed and experienced that. I have experienced that in my life. This kind of approach is worth it!
Elly Brosius
Northern VA CFS/FMS Support Group
CFSupport at Yahoo! Groups
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The advice on coping is top notch. I've read a lot of self-help guides in my time, and this is an excellent beginner's guide. However, I was disappointed that Friedberg chose to offer a personal view of aetiology (causes) rather than reflect the more prevalent attitude amongst colleagues, and the CDC, namely, that the term CFS covers a number of conditions. My reading of the literature, combined with clinical experience, suggests that some cases of CFS develop following chronic stress which can seriously mess up the immune system (as noted by Friedberg). However, other cases occur out of the blue as a result of an infection (being in the wrong place at the wrong time as in 1955 and 1984-5 when there were various outbreaks around the world), whilst there is also a group where one can speculate about a combination of factors which may have predisposed to the illness or impaired recovery (including stress, trying to fight the illness, denial etc). In my view, Friedberg slightly overstates the role of stress. For example, in stressed populations, e.g. Holocaust survivors, the incidence of CFS is no greater than that found in the general population. Also, horses, cats, dogs and cows have a condition almost identical to CFS. They were all infected, but I don't think that they became ill, or were predisposed to CFS, because of their busy lifestyles.
In short, if you want an authoritative view of the causes of CFS, this is not the only book you should read. The text also contains some factual errors: Friedberg mistakes me for someone else on p.16 (to be removed in the reprint), Van Houdenhove whose research he cites, is a psychiatrist, not a psychologist, and Edward Shorter is a PhD, not a MD.
Whilst the details of the scientific aspects of CFS are not as accurate and reliable as his articles for colleagues, the advice on coping is sound. In a nutshell, it's no-nonsense, sensible, essential information. For that alone, I recommend it.


