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OPEN TO CURE: Illuminating the Emotional Trauma Expressed in Chronic Pain
OPEN TO CURE explores the crisis of chronic pain in this country and attempts to reveal how the response by both the medical establishment and the suffering patients themselves is often unhelpful to the healing process. This book shows how the attainment of greater awareness and understanding of our emotional world, and how it is expressed in physical pain, can become an invaluable tool in finding relief from that pain.
135 pages, Paperback
Published May 7, 2019
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July 3, 2026
The book was a kind gift from one of the authors whose practice I recently began going to. I went to the office for EMDR and if you’re not familiar, if you look it up, I’m sure you’ll find it fascinating. When I found out they’re also a pain clinic, I was interested because of my chronic neuropathy discomfort and very occasional sharp pain.
Back to the book. He calls our mind the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Always present and impossible to ignore whether or not we know it. The mindbody connection is widely known and studied but not as well understood as physical diagnoses are because we can’t see emotions on an MRI. Through treatment of thousands of patients, Dr Halpern has seen time and again how unaddressed trauma in our lives, often from childhood, can affect us our whole lives — until we decide to uncover it and face the source of our pain and misguided beliefs about ourselves head on. He gives many case studies. Pain is often caused by unconscious emotional pain. I knew someone who’s a classic example of this in my life. Tragically, they didn’t believe in therapy and died by suicide in their 60s. I have a “physical” explanation for my sensory critical illness neuropathy, but I’m hopeful and open to the possibility of my pain improving or even going away. Finding this practice for EMDR was extra fortuitous for me.
The book is packed with helpful and enlightening information, easy to read and understand, and well written. I highly recommend!
Back to the book. He calls our mind the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Always present and impossible to ignore whether or not we know it. The mindbody connection is widely known and studied but not as well understood as physical diagnoses are because we can’t see emotions on an MRI. Through treatment of thousands of patients, Dr Halpern has seen time and again how unaddressed trauma in our lives, often from childhood, can affect us our whole lives — until we decide to uncover it and face the source of our pain and misguided beliefs about ourselves head on. He gives many case studies. Pain is often caused by unconscious emotional pain. I knew someone who’s a classic example of this in my life. Tragically, they didn’t believe in therapy and died by suicide in their 60s. I have a “physical” explanation for my sensory critical illness neuropathy, but I’m hopeful and open to the possibility of my pain improving or even going away. Finding this practice for EMDR was extra fortuitous for me.
The book is packed with helpful and enlightening information, easy to read and understand, and well written. I highly recommend!
Displaying 1 of 1 review