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Outsmart Your Pain: Mindfulness and Self-Compassion to Help You Leave Chronic Pain Behind
Radically clear, evidence-based mental strategies to relieve chronic pain
Pain can be overwhelming. We tend to lump everything related to it—stressful thoughts, negative emotions, distracting sensations—into one big, unwieldy box that we struggle to carry all day. But what if we could put down this box, unpack it, and tackle the contents one by one? Outsmart Your Pain is Dr. Christiane Wolf’s transformative guide to finding relief with mindfulness. Easy, guided meditations reinforce each helpful strategy, including: rewriting the “pain story” you tell yourselfpracticing loving acceptance of your body as it ismindfully working through negative emotionsstrengthening your inner and outer support systems. By changing our brains little by little, day by day, we can leave behind the burden of our pain—and once we do, we’ll live fuller, freer, and more joyful lives.
Pain can be overwhelming. We tend to lump everything related to it—stressful thoughts, negative emotions, distracting sensations—into one big, unwieldy box that we struggle to carry all day. But what if we could put down this box, unpack it, and tackle the contents one by one? Outsmart Your Pain is Dr. Christiane Wolf’s transformative guide to finding relief with mindfulness. Easy, guided meditations reinforce each helpful strategy, including: rewriting the “pain story” you tell yourselfpracticing loving acceptance of your body as it ismindfully working through negative emotionsstrengthening your inner and outer support systems. By changing our brains little by little, day by day, we can leave behind the burden of our pain—and once we do, we’ll live fuller, freer, and more joyful lives.
240 pages, Hardcover
Published May 25, 2021
64 people are currently reading
257 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
February 26, 2021
This has so much potential as a tool for wellness. As a chronic pain sufferer, this is not my first foray into "mind over medicine" wellness healthcare. I am a firm advocate that it has a place in everyone's toolbox, and not just sick people, or chronic pain sufferers. My issue with this particular book (that I REALLY wanted to love) is that while it spends *almost* enough time getting into the actual substance, the how-to of feeling better and using it as a tool - it spends entirely too much time giving case-study instances and "I did this" and "this was the author's experience" and "this is what I had for breakfast this morning"... Not quite that bad, but you get the idea. Like I find with most non-fiction books, it spends too much time getting stuck in the weeds and not giving a user-friendly, easy to break down, every day guide to actually being able to incorporate these techniques into an effective, long term self care routine. Because let's face it. When you are in pain, and can't sleep, and are irritable, and can't focus, and hear about this FANTASTIC new way to help cope with pain, the last thing you want is to read about the author moving to Los Angeles. It could have probably been half of the size and more effective.
February 24, 2025
I am definitely not someone who grabs for a self help read, (ignorance, stubborn, annoyed with any mention of positive reinforcement, etc.. go ahead and roll your eyes with me 🙄)
I've actively been in a chronic pain hell on earth experience for the past.... it'll be 5 years this coming August. I am legit half the person I used to be. Chronic migraines and severe neck pain has made living pretty much unbearable.. with that being said. I have had so much positive reinforcement in my life from my family and my boyfriend, but to be honest, I still wake up everyday feeling worse than I did the night before. This book felt like that. I listened to it expecting some type of positive bullshit to make life sting a little bit less.... but I was left with useless quotes and being mindful and giving myself self compassion.
Honestly, I'm tired of my nerve damaged neck and I'd take a new one yesterday but being fucking positive, NEVER.... never got me anywhere. So fuck you and your mindfulness. 🫠🖕(and I will continue to ignore the world one audiobook at a time to cope 🫡)
I've actively been in a chronic pain hell on earth experience for the past.... it'll be 5 years this coming August. I am legit half the person I used to be. Chronic migraines and severe neck pain has made living pretty much unbearable.. with that being said. I have had so much positive reinforcement in my life from my family and my boyfriend, but to be honest, I still wake up everyday feeling worse than I did the night before. This book felt like that. I listened to it expecting some type of positive bullshit to make life sting a little bit less.... but I was left with useless quotes and being mindful and giving myself self compassion.
Honestly, I'm tired of my nerve damaged neck and I'd take a new one yesterday but being fucking positive, NEVER.... never got me anywhere. So fuck you and your mindfulness. 🫠🖕(and I will continue to ignore the world one audiobook at a time to cope 🫡)
May 27, 2021
I liked Dr. Christiane Wolf’s compassionate approach to working with the physical, emotional, and cognitive aspects of pain. Her approach includes techniques from mindfulness meditation, neuroscience, and psychotherapy. The book consists of 20 short, easy to understand chapters, each of which explains one concept, provides a patient’s story with pain, and offers a relevant guided meditation. Many chapters also include questions for reflection. The practices in this book might not eliminate your pain, but they will improve your quality of life.
I appreciated the author’s explanations of concepts such as compassion versus empathy versus pity or acceptance and surrender versus defeat. I found her suggestions for handling big emotions such as depression, grief, and anger very helpful. She provides wonderful suggestions for avoiding comparing yourself to others, dealing with other people’s ignorance of chronic pain, and learning to accept and be present with your pain without letting it take over your life.
The author provides downloadable MP3s of herself reading the meditations on her website, which is a very helpful resource. Additional resources, such as recommended reading and meditation apps, are listed in a Resources section at the back of the book.
I recommend this for anyone dealing with chronic pain or illness.
Thanks to The Experiment for providing me with an unproofed ARC through NetGalley that I volunteered to review.
I appreciated the author’s explanations of concepts such as compassion versus empathy versus pity or acceptance and surrender versus defeat. I found her suggestions for handling big emotions such as depression, grief, and anger very helpful. She provides wonderful suggestions for avoiding comparing yourself to others, dealing with other people’s ignorance of chronic pain, and learning to accept and be present with your pain without letting it take over your life.
The author provides downloadable MP3s of herself reading the meditations on her website, which is a very helpful resource. Additional resources, such as recommended reading and meditation apps, are listed in a Resources section at the back of the book.
I recommend this for anyone dealing with chronic pain or illness.
Thanks to The Experiment for providing me with an unproofed ARC through NetGalley that I volunteered to review.
May 13, 2025
Transformative, validating, and practical. I’ll be coming back to read this again soon.
January 5, 2021
Thank you to NetGalley and The Experiment for providing me an e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Between chronic pain I’m still getting used to and a budding mindfulness practice, this is exactly the book I needed right now.
Dr. Wolf has been teaching mindfulness classes to people who suffer from chronic pain since 2005 and in Outsmart Your Pain: Mindfulness and Self-Compassion to Help You Leave Chronic Pain Behind she shares many guided meditations and insights into how mindfulness can help people cope with and even reduce their pain.
She discusses how mindfulness can be used for everything from restructuring relationships with pain to managing relationships with others when pain complicates them. There is so much good information in this book and Wolf makes her points thoroughly, eloquently, and with real word and scientifically based examples. A few of my favorite take-aways were:
that people tend to unconsciously define themselves by their pain and redefining that relationship can ease a lot of emotional burden
we also tend to lump physical pain, the emotional pain it causes, and thoughts about it into one big box labeled “pain,” making it bigger and harder to deal with than it needs to be
and that mindfulness can help people suffering from chronic pain by teaching how to to better direct attention and chose what thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations are in the spotlight
The biggest downside of this book is that the texts of the guided meditations are hard to use. When the book is officially published it appears that there will be a link to the audio of all the meditations, if this tool were included and easy to access and navigate I’d give this book a full five stars so I’ve rounded up this review. As it was, in the text-only version I had, I would still rate it with four stars.
Between chronic pain I’m still getting used to and a budding mindfulness practice, this is exactly the book I needed right now.
Dr. Wolf has been teaching mindfulness classes to people who suffer from chronic pain since 2005 and in Outsmart Your Pain: Mindfulness and Self-Compassion to Help You Leave Chronic Pain Behind she shares many guided meditations and insights into how mindfulness can help people cope with and even reduce their pain.
She discusses how mindfulness can be used for everything from restructuring relationships with pain to managing relationships with others when pain complicates them. There is so much good information in this book and Wolf makes her points thoroughly, eloquently, and with real word and scientifically based examples. A few of my favorite take-aways were:
that people tend to unconsciously define themselves by their pain and redefining that relationship can ease a lot of emotional burden
we also tend to lump physical pain, the emotional pain it causes, and thoughts about it into one big box labeled “pain,” making it bigger and harder to deal with than it needs to be
and that mindfulness can help people suffering from chronic pain by teaching how to to better direct attention and chose what thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations are in the spotlight
The biggest downside of this book is that the texts of the guided meditations are hard to use. When the book is officially published it appears that there will be a link to the audio of all the meditations, if this tool were included and easy to access and navigate I’d give this book a full five stars so I’ve rounded up this review. As it was, in the text-only version I had, I would still rate it with four stars.
Read
February 3, 2024The key feature of this book is how targeted it is. Other books offer a more in-depth exploration of chronic pain or mindfulness, but Wolf writes simple and digestible chapters followed by a focused meditation. This basic structure fully integrates the learning material and the mindfulness in a natural and accessible way. This book may be best experienced by reading (and meditating) a chapter a day over the course of a month. I found some of the meditations themselves to be a little too literal. “Remember a time you felt…” prompts weren't always productive for me, and I often found myself wanting more depth from both the meditation and the learning content. (And I hate the book's title, which does not reflect the nuance and difficult reality of its complicated subject.) Reading it, however, was still a beneficial and worthwhile exercise.
Notes
We learn not to take emotions personally; they will change and disappear if we don’t reinforce them.
The philosopher Ken Wilber writes in his book No Boundary that “Suffering smashes to pieces the complacency of our normal fictions about reality and forces us to become alive in a special sense—to see carefully, to feel deeply, to touch ourselves and our worlds in ways we have heretofore avoided.
One of the hallmarks of depression is negative and ruminating thoughts, such as “I’m useless” or “I am beyond help” or “This will only get worse from here.” Mindfulness practice teaches us to see thoughts like these as part of our experience.
The boom-bust cycle is a well-known phenomenon with chronic health conditions: We tend to overdo it in times when there are few or no symptoms (boom), which often triggers a flare-up and then causes underdoing (bust).
Mindfulness invites us to ask: “What is here right now?” and “What is the right thing to do right now?”
We associate grief with the loss of something meaningful for us. Grief always involves coming to terms with the process of ending. It is itself a kind of death—of an identity we have been holding or our lens to the world (for example, “I’m the one who always took care of my sister”). Grief is a painful human feeling. There is nothing wrong with hurting this way. Grief happens because we value what we lost or fear what we could lose for good. Grief is a form of honoring. We feel pain because we care.
We start by using mindfulness like a flashlight that shines a beam of curiosity on craving and addictive behavior. The combination of curiosity and moment-by-moment awareness is quite powerful. Curiosity counterbalances resistance. Instead of pushing an experience like pain or a craving away, we can instead become curious about it: What is it like right now? Can we stay with whatever is happening in this moment?
Shifting to curiosity from a fear-based automatic reactive behavior pattern is something neuroscientists can locate in patterns of brain activation and deactivation in a brain scan. They can see the deactivation of centers related to craving and compulsive behavior. The MBRP program developed a powerful mindfulness practice called “urge surfing,” through which people learn to stay with the rise and fall of an urge or impulse until it passes.
Anger gives us a sense of power when we we’re not in control. Anger can energize us to take action; for example, to speak up with a health-care provider who is not giving us adequate attention, who is not really hearing us. However, anger often distracts from the feelings that lie behind it—like fear, grief, and hopelessness.
Anger is often the “hard” emotion in front of those “soft” ones.
Remember that labeling an experience as what it is allows us to step back a little from identifying with it: to be aware of an experience instead of being the experience!
When the internal noise level of the pain becomes incredibly loud, it drowns out everything else and we stop listening to others. We may start to hear and see those close to us through the lens of our own pain, which makes their actions seem careless or disrespectful of our feelings. Disconnection and loneliness deepen.
As neurologist, psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl wrote, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
We learn through our own direct experience how much effort is too much—where the effort tips into an attempt to force ourselves into a different experience than the one we’re already having. It’s natural to wish for the pain to go away and even to meditate in order for it to stop. We can apply curiosity and mindful awareness and notice: How does that feel to strive and apply force? Where does that kind of effort show up in my experience—as tension in my head, shoulders, jaw? And most of all: Is it helpful? Do I end up with the wished-for experience? Does it make the pain go away? As soon as we meditate with an agenda it will make itself known in the overall experience.
Meditation teacher Jack Kornfield says that peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control. Here is how I define surrender: It is the deliberate opening, allowing, or accepting of something that is difficult, painful, stressful, or unwanted in order to decrease the overall negative impact on ourselves and those around us. The relief of surrender is like letting yourself be joyfully carried downstream after having fought long and hard to swim upstream.
The goal of mindfulness is not to relax—the goal is to be present with whatever is arising, moment by moment. It’s OK to not be relaxed.
The philosopher S. Kay Toombs, who herself suffered from multiple sclerosis, asks us to consider healing as a restoration of wholeness, which may include the curing of the disease but is not limited to it. Wholeness relates to the ability to preserve one’s integrity in the face of the pain or the disease. We can choose to live well in the presence of our condition, rather than being defined by its absence.
Relating to pain through the lens of kind awareness opens space and releases stories and emotions that are not serving us anymore.
Notes
We learn not to take emotions personally; they will change and disappear if we don’t reinforce them.
The philosopher Ken Wilber writes in his book No Boundary that “Suffering smashes to pieces the complacency of our normal fictions about reality and forces us to become alive in a special sense—to see carefully, to feel deeply, to touch ourselves and our worlds in ways we have heretofore avoided.
One of the hallmarks of depression is negative and ruminating thoughts, such as “I’m useless” or “I am beyond help” or “This will only get worse from here.” Mindfulness practice teaches us to see thoughts like these as part of our experience.
The boom-bust cycle is a well-known phenomenon with chronic health conditions: We tend to overdo it in times when there are few or no symptoms (boom), which often triggers a flare-up and then causes underdoing (bust).
Mindfulness invites us to ask: “What is here right now?” and “What is the right thing to do right now?”
We associate grief with the loss of something meaningful for us. Grief always involves coming to terms with the process of ending. It is itself a kind of death—of an identity we have been holding or our lens to the world (for example, “I’m the one who always took care of my sister”). Grief is a painful human feeling. There is nothing wrong with hurting this way. Grief happens because we value what we lost or fear what we could lose for good. Grief is a form of honoring. We feel pain because we care.
We start by using mindfulness like a flashlight that shines a beam of curiosity on craving and addictive behavior. The combination of curiosity and moment-by-moment awareness is quite powerful. Curiosity counterbalances resistance. Instead of pushing an experience like pain or a craving away, we can instead become curious about it: What is it like right now? Can we stay with whatever is happening in this moment?
Shifting to curiosity from a fear-based automatic reactive behavior pattern is something neuroscientists can locate in patterns of brain activation and deactivation in a brain scan. They can see the deactivation of centers related to craving and compulsive behavior. The MBRP program developed a powerful mindfulness practice called “urge surfing,” through which people learn to stay with the rise and fall of an urge or impulse until it passes.
Anger gives us a sense of power when we we’re not in control. Anger can energize us to take action; for example, to speak up with a health-care provider who is not giving us adequate attention, who is not really hearing us. However, anger often distracts from the feelings that lie behind it—like fear, grief, and hopelessness.
Anger is often the “hard” emotion in front of those “soft” ones.
Remember that labeling an experience as what it is allows us to step back a little from identifying with it: to be aware of an experience instead of being the experience!
When the internal noise level of the pain becomes incredibly loud, it drowns out everything else and we stop listening to others. We may start to hear and see those close to us through the lens of our own pain, which makes their actions seem careless or disrespectful of our feelings. Disconnection and loneliness deepen.
As neurologist, psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl wrote, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
We learn through our own direct experience how much effort is too much—where the effort tips into an attempt to force ourselves into a different experience than the one we’re already having. It’s natural to wish for the pain to go away and even to meditate in order for it to stop. We can apply curiosity and mindful awareness and notice: How does that feel to strive and apply force? Where does that kind of effort show up in my experience—as tension in my head, shoulders, jaw? And most of all: Is it helpful? Do I end up with the wished-for experience? Does it make the pain go away? As soon as we meditate with an agenda it will make itself known in the overall experience.
Meditation teacher Jack Kornfield says that peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control. Here is how I define surrender: It is the deliberate opening, allowing, or accepting of something that is difficult, painful, stressful, or unwanted in order to decrease the overall negative impact on ourselves and those around us. The relief of surrender is like letting yourself be joyfully carried downstream after having fought long and hard to swim upstream.
The goal of mindfulness is not to relax—the goal is to be present with whatever is arising, moment by moment. It’s OK to not be relaxed.
The philosopher S. Kay Toombs, who herself suffered from multiple sclerosis, asks us to consider healing as a restoration of wholeness, which may include the curing of the disease but is not limited to it. Wholeness relates to the ability to preserve one’s integrity in the face of the pain or the disease. We can choose to live well in the presence of our condition, rather than being defined by its absence.
Relating to pain through the lens of kind awareness opens space and releases stories and emotions that are not serving us anymore.
January 14, 2021
This book was received as an ARC from The Experiment in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own.
I learned so much from this book. I always knew pain was just as much psychological than it is physical and once the psychological is mastered, the physical doesn't seem so bad. We always see pain as negative and whenever we feel it in its many forms, we always think negative. Christiane Wolf demonstrates how to relax with insightful meditations that I was fortunate enough to try while reading while feeling a little stress and getting a sudden headache and once I finished, I was relaxed and my headache started to subside. I know this book will circulate well and we will have many who will benefit from this book.
We will consider adding this title to our R Non-Fiction collection at our library. That is why we give this book 5 stars.
I learned so much from this book. I always knew pain was just as much psychological than it is physical and once the psychological is mastered, the physical doesn't seem so bad. We always see pain as negative and whenever we feel it in its many forms, we always think negative. Christiane Wolf demonstrates how to relax with insightful meditations that I was fortunate enough to try while reading while feeling a little stress and getting a sudden headache and once I finished, I was relaxed and my headache started to subside. I know this book will circulate well and we will have many who will benefit from this book.
We will consider adding this title to our R Non-Fiction collection at our library. That is why we give this book 5 stars.
July 25, 2023
I do use positive thoughts and guided meditations as a way of trying to escape chronic pain if I cant get to sleep. It can work sometimes for a short while so you can get to sleep but it can take some time to master. Take your time to focus on just you and the words that are said and the music or noises being played. Being able to ease the pain for even short periods of time can be a welcome break.
I was hoping to learn something new in this book because as a chronic pain sufferer I look for anything that can help my situation. I find it very difficult to “accept my pain”. I understand the concept but when your body is constantly hurting and preventing you from doing the things you want to do, its hard to ignore it. Your mind automatically goes to that area needing relief.
I do appreciate her kindness and understanding as it is not something shown to many sufferers. I hope another sufferer can use the power of their mind better than myself!
I was hoping to learn something new in this book because as a chronic pain sufferer I look for anything that can help my situation. I find it very difficult to “accept my pain”. I understand the concept but when your body is constantly hurting and preventing you from doing the things you want to do, its hard to ignore it. Your mind automatically goes to that area needing relief.
I do appreciate her kindness and understanding as it is not something shown to many sufferers. I hope another sufferer can use the power of their mind better than myself!
September 4, 2022
I have picked up this book after a week long silent meditation retreat where I discovered how much pain I am in on a daily basis. My usual methods of dealing with pain: ignoring it, hating it, or distracting from it (with so called “good” distractions like hard work too). None of them really helpful in the long run - bringing only more stress, tension and unhappiness. I have never been kind to myself and my body - but I am willing to change it after the combination of insight gained at the retreat and reading this book. I think the book itself might not be sufficient without getting more meditation practice but it may be a good first step in learning a different way of dealing with chronic pain. May we all be well and live with ease ❤️
November 21, 2024
This is the type of book that you want to read over and over again. You can still do any medical treatments you hope will help, AND having a compassionate relationship to yourself and your pain absolutely can only help. The thing this book taught me that was most helpful in reducing my chronic pain was to experience it without the “story” of its past or the worries of its future. I can do this AND continue to work towards physical healing. It’s just easier without “the story” weighing me down.
December 27, 2023
A solid, accessible, clear introduction to mindfulness as a helpful tool for working with pain. There’s a fair bit of repetition- or maybe it could be better described as “reminding” the reader of something already covered, as the chapters touch on different aspects of the same problem. The ebook provides link/ QR codes to recordings of the guided meditations in the book, and additional resources as well. I’ll definitely keep this in my list of recommendations and resources.
March 12, 2022
3.5 stars. What really shines in this book is the QR code to the audio recordings of the guided meditations. The preface before each one was interesting but I found the actual meditations to be the most helpful.
July 12, 2021
Informative, realistic, compassionate - such a refreshing book in the "overcome your chronic pain" catalog. I really liked the way Wolf explained things and laid out these mindfulness exercises, and I plan to try many of them.
May 13, 2022
Interesting
August 18, 2022
This book shared a lot of helpful methods in dealing with my chronic pain and helpful ways of interpreting the pain that I experience.
September 2, 2022
Helpful information. I highly recommend "You are not your pain" by V Burch.
July 16, 2023
Tired of being in pain all the time? This book is essential reading for those looking to move beyond pain we all experience, towards a path of healing and wellness.
Read
August 8, 2025Encouraging and helpful
February 12, 2025
Suffering = pain x resistance
- we cant change the pain that often, but we can change the resistance
Meditation files: https://www.christianewolf.com/oyp/au...
Caring for yourself
- YOU ARE NOT YOUR PAIN. The pain is a part of the experience, but it is not defining you or reducing you.
- Experience pain? Answer: thank you, not now.
- Redirect attention, fex to the breath
- One of the hardest parts of living with chronic pain is the loneliness that comes from the repeated sense that other people dont't understand what we're going through.
- Pain is complex, made up by three components:
1. The physical or sensory
2. The emotional or affective
3. The cognitive or analytical
Making peace
- Acknowledge --> allow --> accept --> appreciate
Handling big emotions:
- Mindfulness invites us to ask: "What is here right now?" and "What is the right thing to do right now?"
- There are no right or wrong feelings, just feelings
- Combination of curiosity and moment-by-moment awareness is quite powerful
Anger
- It's ok to feel anger. Being made to feel guilty about anger brings no relief. What you feel is not your responsibility, but what you do with it is - and what counts!
- Use curiosity and openness no change the anger experience.
- Listen to anger as a consultant: we need to listen to what it has to say but we decide if we want or need it act on it
Freeing Yourself
- Forgiveness is a practice and freeing your own heart from the prison of pain and resentment. Forgiveness doesn't mean you have to condone what happened to you or agree with it.
- Forgiveness is giving up all hope for a better past!!!!!!!!!
- Please be patient with yourself. The first step is to realize that forgive might be a good idea start by setting the intention to learn to forgive.
FEEDBACK or comments about pain:
If you're the one receiving the insensitive remark
- How much does it matter to me that this person understands why what they said or did was hurtful?
- If I speak up, can I expect the person to listen and be open to what I say or have to say, or will they get defensive and hide behind "That's not what I meant" or "You are too sensitive"?
- If I don't speak up, will I regret it?
If you're the one having made the insensitive remark
- Listen and don't defend yourself
- Don't hide behind your good intentions.
- Listen and trying to understand.
- Summary: Validate, get curious, try to learn what's really going on, and don't give advice.
Shifting perspective
- Self-care is important
- Shared joy is twice the joy, and shared pain is half the pain.
- Surround yourself with people who have earned your trust.
- When we suffer from chronic pain, this comparing mind easily becomes a means of self-torture.
- We can't choose if we have pain, but we can choose how we relate to it. We can either see uselves as victim or if we're open to using all of our life experiences, including pain, to grow as humas beings. PTSG!
- Frankl: "When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves".
- We don't have a choice about loss or pain that happened to us, but we can choose how we want to learn - over time - to relate to it.
- The secret to happiness is acknowledge and transform suffering, not to run away from it" - Nhat Hanh
Doing nothing
- Be with whatever arises in the present moment
- Effort in mindfulness works best when it's balanced; not too much, but not too little either.
- Doing nothing is really about. Inviting a sense of ease and letting insights and results come to you, rather than being laze and avoiding what needs to be done.
- Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control
- Surrender: it is the deliberate opening, allowing, or accepting of something that is difficult, painful, stressful, or unwanted in order to decrease the overall negative impact on ourselves and those around us.
Stop trying to get better
- "Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness cannot be pursued... Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: You have to let it happen by not caring about it. - Frankl
- "The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change".
- Research says that The more relaxed and stress free we are, the fast we can heal.
○ Can we allow ourselves to stop working so desperately on healing in order to promote healing?
○ If healing might nit be possible, can we still learn to be OK wherever we are?
- The overarching stressor may be the fear that our condition will not get better and might get worse.
- Wholeness. We can choose to live well in the presence of our condition, rather than being defined by its absence.
Conclusion
- Openness and ease, staying mostly there, in the present moment, and making the best of it.
Be awake and alive with meaning and joy.
- we cant change the pain that often, but we can change the resistance
Meditation files: https://www.christianewolf.com/oyp/au...
Caring for yourself
- YOU ARE NOT YOUR PAIN. The pain is a part of the experience, but it is not defining you or reducing you.
- Experience pain? Answer: thank you, not now.
- Redirect attention, fex to the breath
- One of the hardest parts of living with chronic pain is the loneliness that comes from the repeated sense that other people dont't understand what we're going through.
- Pain is complex, made up by three components:
1. The physical or sensory
2. The emotional or affective
3. The cognitive or analytical
Making peace
- Acknowledge --> allow --> accept --> appreciate
Handling big emotions:
- Mindfulness invites us to ask: "What is here right now?" and "What is the right thing to do right now?"
- There are no right or wrong feelings, just feelings
- Combination of curiosity and moment-by-moment awareness is quite powerful
Anger
- It's ok to feel anger. Being made to feel guilty about anger brings no relief. What you feel is not your responsibility, but what you do with it is - and what counts!
- Use curiosity and openness no change the anger experience.
- Listen to anger as a consultant: we need to listen to what it has to say but we decide if we want or need it act on it
Freeing Yourself
- Forgiveness is a practice and freeing your own heart from the prison of pain and resentment. Forgiveness doesn't mean you have to condone what happened to you or agree with it.
- Forgiveness is giving up all hope for a better past!!!!!!!!!
- Please be patient with yourself. The first step is to realize that forgive might be a good idea start by setting the intention to learn to forgive.
FEEDBACK or comments about pain:
If you're the one receiving the insensitive remark
- How much does it matter to me that this person understands why what they said or did was hurtful?
- If I speak up, can I expect the person to listen and be open to what I say or have to say, or will they get defensive and hide behind "That's not what I meant" or "You are too sensitive"?
- If I don't speak up, will I regret it?
If you're the one having made the insensitive remark
- Listen and don't defend yourself
- Don't hide behind your good intentions.
- Listen and trying to understand.
- Summary: Validate, get curious, try to learn what's really going on, and don't give advice.
Shifting perspective
- Self-care is important
- Shared joy is twice the joy, and shared pain is half the pain.
- Surround yourself with people who have earned your trust.
- When we suffer from chronic pain, this comparing mind easily becomes a means of self-torture.
- We can't choose if we have pain, but we can choose how we relate to it. We can either see uselves as victim or if we're open to using all of our life experiences, including pain, to grow as humas beings. PTSG!
- Frankl: "When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves".
- We don't have a choice about loss or pain that happened to us, but we can choose how we want to learn - over time - to relate to it.
- The secret to happiness is acknowledge and transform suffering, not to run away from it" - Nhat Hanh
Doing nothing
- Be with whatever arises in the present moment
- Effort in mindfulness works best when it's balanced; not too much, but not too little either.
- Doing nothing is really about. Inviting a sense of ease and letting insights and results come to you, rather than being laze and avoiding what needs to be done.
- Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control
- Surrender: it is the deliberate opening, allowing, or accepting of something that is difficult, painful, stressful, or unwanted in order to decrease the overall negative impact on ourselves and those around us.
Stop trying to get better
- "Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness cannot be pursued... Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: You have to let it happen by not caring about it. - Frankl
- "The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change".
- Research says that The more relaxed and stress free we are, the fast we can heal.
○ Can we allow ourselves to stop working so desperately on healing in order to promote healing?
○ If healing might nit be possible, can we still learn to be OK wherever we are?
- The overarching stressor may be the fear that our condition will not get better and might get worse.
- Wholeness. We can choose to live well in the presence of our condition, rather than being defined by its absence.
Conclusion
- Openness and ease, staying mostly there, in the present moment, and making the best of it.
Be awake and alive with meaning and joy.
April 7, 2021
This was a great read for someone with chronic pain that cannot be resolved....in other words my husband! I enjoyed all the examples and advice on what to do to ease chronic pain. Thanks!
December 1, 2022
I found this really helpful, ans encouraged me to do more (not try!) with mindfulness. I was drawn more towards the scientific reasoning for each chapter, but some of the questions in the mindful section were applicable and ones I can use in my own life.
January 28, 2024
excellent book
Wonderful book. The author is a Dr, MBSR and MSC teacher as am I and she writes beautifully of these mindfulness and self compassion practices that help deal with chronic pain.
Wonderful book. The author is a Dr, MBSR and MSC teacher as am I and she writes beautifully of these mindfulness and self compassion practices that help deal with chronic pain.
June 8, 2021
It may be helpful for someone new to mindfulness and self-compassion, but you can skip it if you're looking for something more in-depth.
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