Stop Being Your Symptoms and Start Being Yourself: A 6-Week Mind-Body Program to Ease Your Chronic Symptoms

By Arthur J. Barsky, M.D. and Emily C. Deans, M.D.

Do you suffer from ongoing pain or other chronic medical symptoms such as fatigue, lower back pain, arthritis, acid indigestion, insomnia, or migraines? Do you feel as though your symptoms are taking over your life?

Thirty percent of the population suffers from chronic debilitating illnesses and pain that respond only partially to conventional medicine, but this doesn't mean that there is no relief in sight. Dr. Arthur Barsky, psychiatrist and pioneer in the field of mind-body medicine, has found that changing the way you think about your illness can have a remarkable effect on how you experience your symptoms. The groundbreaking program he offers in Stop Being Your Symptoms and Start Being Yourself teaches patients to master the five psychological factors that make chronic symptoms persist through hundreds of exercises, worksheets, and patient examples.

You may not be able to completely eliminate your medical symptoms, but it is possible to control your symptoms rather than letting them control you—and this book shows you how.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Oct 13, 2009
• ISBN: 9780061752865

Arthur J. Barsky, M.D.

Arthur J. Barsky, M.D., is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of psychiatric research at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He is the author of Worried Sick and is a widely recognized authority in his field. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

Reviews for Stop Being Your Symptoms and Start Being Yourself

[kimaoverstreet · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Stop Being Your Symptoms, Start Being Yourself offers a basic common sense approach to dealing with chronic symptoms. Focusing on relaxation, setting reasonable expectations, diverting attention away from symptoms, and appropriate distraction from physical symptoms, it offers simple exercises (the written sort, not physical) to complete over the course of a six week period. I have dealt with chronic pain originating in my spine for nearly a decade. At first, I probably would have argued with anyone who suggested my mental state had anything to do with my perception of the pain I was experiencing. This book doesn't promise or deliver a miracle cure, but it does offer very good advice for living your best life when faced with a chronic medical condition. Highly recommended!