The Way Out: A Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven Approach to Healing Chronic Pain
Alan Gordon
Your rating:
The Way Out: A Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven Approach to Healing Chronic Pain
Alan Gordon
A groundbreaking mind-body protocol to heal chronic pain, backed by new research.Chronic pain is an epidemic. Fifty million Americans struggle with back pain, headaches, or some other pain that resists all treatment. Desperate pain sufferers are told again and again that there is no cure for chronic pain.Alan Gordon, a psychotherapist and the founder of the Pain Psychology Center in Los Angeles, was in grad school when he started experiencing chronic pain and it completely derailed his life. He saw multiple doctors and received many diagnoses, but none of the medical treatments helped. Frustrated with conventional pain management, he developed Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), a mind-body protocol that eliminated his own chronic pain and has transformed the lives of thousands of his patients.PRT is rooted in neuroscience, which has shown that while chronic pain feels like it's coming from the body, in most cases it's generated by misfiring pain circuits in the brain. PRT is a system of psychological techniques that rewires the brain to break out of the cycle of chronic pain.The University of Colorado-Boulder recently conducted a large randomized controlled study on PRT, and the results are remarkable. By the end of the study, the majority of patients were pain-free or nearly pain-free. What's more, these dramatic changes held up over time. The Way Out brings PRT to readers. It combines accessible science with a concrete, step-by-step plan to teach sufferers how to heal their own chronic pain.
No posts yet
Kick off the convo with a theory, question, musing, or update
Your rating:
I suppose I'm not the only pain-patient who has picked up this book while sipping a cocktail of desperation, bitterness and a sprinkling of scepticism. After 1.5 years of long-covid I have been explained in detail everything that is scientifically wrong with my body, including a dozen more assumptions and educated guesses of what could be happening. On the other end of the spectrum I have been told meditation and spiritualism can heal it all (spoiler alert: it couldn't)
Needless to say, when hearing 'mindbody connection' and 'behavioral therapy' I see some red flags.
This book guides the reader through the Process (capitalized for importance, because it is important) of getting out of chronic pain. But although Trust the Process is a common phrase in the book, it doesn't just treat it as a 'you gotta just trust this thing I tell you for it to work' It gives actual scientific evidence for the method, explains doubts, questions, the right mindset in a way that fun and easy to read. It's one of the first 'self-help' books (if it can be classed thus) where I didn't feel myself getting irritated or defensive. It was a warm blanket of validation, with many many usable tactics and exercises.
Whether it will cure me, remains to be seen. I feel confident enough to give it five stars even so. Because it made me feel nice, even when I wasn't reading it. And feeling nice will heal me eventually, I have now learned.
0
© 2024 Pagebound