Reddit reviews Full Catastrophe Living (Revised Edition): Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness
We found 35 Reddit comments about Full Catastrophe Living (Revised Edition): Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness
It seems to be sloppy reporting--the 2013 PLOS ONE study cited by the author, did not measure the subjects brains before and after a mindfulness program--it just measured correlation between their amygdala volume and their self-reported mindfulness (they filled out a test/questionnaire to measure this).
That paper, however, cites another 2011 paper which did measure increases in grey matter density in certain brain regions (not amygdala) in 16 subjects before/after they completed an unspecified 8-week MBSR program.
As they refer to it as MBSR in the original abstract (full article is behind a pay wall), I'm assuming it's one of the many programs based on John Kabat-Zinn and others' work. If you are interested in that, then his book Full Catastrophe Living is a good place to start--it's a self-guided version of the program and introduces techniques he uses/teaches.
Since this seems to be an emotional eating issue, your best bet is to practice mindfulness based stress reduction (meditation) when you get those snack urges. Look up meditation videos on youtube. I have had great success with Jon Kabat-Zinn.
Every time you feel that out of control urge to snack, try 5-10 minutes of meditation first. When you feel quiet inside, you can allow yourself small, portion controlled snacks.
You can get a lot of mileage out of roasted seaweed for low carbs and calories. I like Trader Joe's Wasabi flavor, because the spiciness slows me down. An entire package is 60 calories and no net carbs.
You might also try replacing your coffee and soda (which can be agitating) with something calming, like green tea or holy basil (tulsi) tea, which have calming properties.
Additionally, with any snacks you are already eating, make them as spicy as you can handle and garnish with fresh herbs, green onions, vinegars, mustards, etc. This will help slow you down and appreciate your snack, and feel fancier and less deprived about it. Good luck!
This is the book
http://www.amazon.com/Full-Catastrophe-Living-Revised-Illness/dp/0345536932/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417262056&sr=8-1&keywords=full+catastrophe+living
This is the CD that goes along with the book (also on pirate bay)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591793599/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_3?pf_rd_p=1944687682&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0739358588&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0FAKHEQ54DFZ3EG2AK6Y
This is the guided body scan on the CD but available on youtube to see if you like it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daU-xneLA0g
I guess you simply don't know and did not bother to look it up. There's actually a tremendous literature on mindfulness techniques and their effectiveness with a broad range of issues folks deal with. I'm struck by your ignorance--like a cult? Focusing on your breathing and really trying to be 'in the moment'
>is cultish?
Read [Full Catastrophe Living] (https://www.amazon.com/Full-Catastrophe-Living-Revised-Illness/dp/0345536932), the book that really moved the approach forward...it originated from psychologists working in hospital settings to reduce stress in cancer patients.
>I seriously doubt you have any basis or proof to show these techniques are "powerful."
[Below one study from British Journal of Psychiatry, published in 2013 that used over 500 kids in 12 schools] (http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/203/2/126):
To assess the acceptability and efficacy of a schools-based universal mindfulness intervention to enhance mental health and well-being.
Method
A total of 522 young people aged 12-16 in 12 secondary schools either participated in the Mindfulness in Schools Programme (intervention) or took part in the usual school curriculum (control).
Results
Rates of acceptability were high. Relative to the controls, and after adjusting for baseline imbalances, children who participated in the intervention reported fewer depressive symptoms post-treatment (P = 0.004) and at follow-up (P = 0.005) and lower stress (P = 0.05) and greater well-being (P = 0.05) at follow-up. The degree to which students in the intervention group practised the mindfulness skills was associated with better well-being (P<0.001) and less stress (P = 0.03) at 3-month follow-up.
>You could probably get better results letting the kids settle their dispute in a boxing ring. Knowing how to defend yourself seems a lot more empowering than being forced to sit still.
...Ah, the internet, where hunches and opinion eclipse data and facts just a click away.
EDIT: added stuff
Wow, what timing. I'm definitely not fine right now either. The past few weeks have been exceptionally challenging for me, too. 😅
Actually...I hadn't made this connection before, but I've just been reminded of an anti-depressive/anxious spiral technique I use pretty often called somatic resourcing. Basically, even when we feel our worst, there is usually something present that does feel "fine", or neutral, or safe. Sometimes this can be a physical sensation; sometimes it can be part of your environment.
Some examples: if my stomach is clenched in fear, shifting my attention to a part of my body that feels okay, that isn't experiencing the same tightness or expressing the same emotional reactivity, and focusing on it for a bit. (Usually my legs and feet, or the physical sensation of the weight of my body on any surface.) Or focusing on an object or location in my environment that feels stable. (My desk, light shining on a surface, the sound of the AC.)
The effectiveness of this technique has kind of made me realize that it's...true, I guess? That our minds, which tend to send out pretty intense this-isn't-fine signals, are not to be fully trusted or believed when they are doing so. This is an exceptionally difficult thing to remember when one is in the throes of a bad emotional spell, but it's so so so true.
NGL I find it hard to connect with this quote sometimes but I still love it—“As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than there is wrong, no matter how ill or how hopeless you may feel.” (x) I hope this can resonate with you even a little bit, OP.
Ooh, this is the post I've been waiting for! I've found bibliotherapy to be very helpful in my healing.
For understanding abuse: Understanding the Borderline Mother
This NPD website
For healing yourself: Will I Ever Be Good Enough?
Adult Children of Abusive Parents
And, what you were really asking for: Full Catastrophe Living
Complex PTSD
You wrote:
>Still, I can't maintain a positive or calm feeling state for more than a few minutes, I feel constant anxiety, I am easily provoked, I get easily upset or angry, and I stay upset for hours or days to come, despite all the work I've put in.
This sounds familiar. What I've learned is that it's hard to build new neural pathways when you're stuck in the old feelings of panic. Re-wiring the brain means practicing being in a state of calmness, and the more time you spend there, the easier it will be to get back. So anything that makes you feel calm, even momentarily, is something you should practice. It's ok if you can only feel it for a short time!
My therapist used to tell me, "Get yourself calm, by ANY MEANS NECESSARY!" I think he was suggesting I get high. ;-) What worked for me was to a little meditation, yoga, and spiritual practice, and a lot of locking myself in my house alone with all the blinds drawn. It was the only way I could feel safe for a long time. I wonder if all the activities you've been doing are, paradoxically, stressing you out more? Maybe giving yourself permission to do less would help?
Hope my super long post is helpful! Good luck, OP.
I had my first panic attack back in Feb 2013. I have always had some sort of social anxiety that causes me to sweat whenever I'm feeling a bit exposed. But I have never had a problem with pushing through my nervousness. I was a stage performer, and nervous butterflies before a show were a common occurrence that I just dealt with until the curtain went up, and then it was all business.
But this panic attack was something I had never imagined possible. I was sitting at a restaurant with a few friends when my stomach started churning a bit. No big deal. But then I felt the blood rush out of my face, and thought, "Hey, this must be how it feels right before someone faints." (I had only ever fainted once before, but I vaguely recall feeling my face flush right before it happened.) Then, my palms became clammy and I started to reallly sweat bullets--out of my forehead, my armpits, down my back. It was sudden and terrifying.
I started to wonder if I had food poisoning. I took a walk outside to get fresh air, but it didn't help. I just felt that everyone was looking at me, that the world was getting smaller and closing in on me. I felt, for the first time, a legitimate "sense of impending doom." I'd always heard that phrase, but now I was experiencing it firsthand, and I was scared out of my mind.
I asked a buddy to drive me home, but when we got to my place, I couldn't exit the car. "Nope. I can't get out" I said. "We need to go to the hospital." So we drove to the nearest emergency room, while I stared out the window with a detached sense of unreality combined with the certainty that my time on Earth was about finished.
The emergency room wait was an excruciating 2 hours. The triage nurse couldn't find anything wrong with me, so the bloody and unconscious patients were, of course, allowed to go first. ("Assholes," I thought. "I'm actually sitting here dying, but nobody can see that because it's just a feeling [a KNOWING] that I have, but oh, no, his pinky is severed, and he gets to cut in line!")
When I was finally allowed to see a doctor, they ran two EKGs, one sitting and one standing. They drew about 10 vials of blood. The doc asked me questions, but the only answer that seemed to strike him as relevant was when I told him my mom has recently died from a sudden, unexpected illness (and the fact that I had had three cups of strong coffee that day).
He ended up giving me a muscle relaxant. When the blood results came back about 3 hours later, everything was negative (meaning I was fine). He then told me that, most likely, I had experienced a panic attack. He showed compassion, and told me that he could give me a prescription for more muscle relaxants. I told him no, because I didn't want to become addicted to pills.
Fast forward to the therapy sessions and psychiatrists meetings. I took antidepressants for about 6 months, during which I wanted to kill myself, but thankfully never did. The talk therapy sort of helped because I was able to identify all the reasons my body thought a great big tiger was out to get me, and all the reasons why my brain interpreted that adrenaline as real threats.
What ended up helping was a cutting edge treatment that actually induced the physical feelings associated with panic attacks, all done in a safe, clinical setting. My doctor would have me take deep, fast breaths to get me to feel lightheaded, then he'd have me stand up and turn in quick circles. FUCK, was it scary. He didn't let me sit down, after, either. He "made" me stand there and feel the physical sensations. He made me pay attention, through the fear, to what my body was telling me. As I watched the sensations with mindful awareness, they changed. They lessened. They became bearable. They faded. Then we talked some more.
After a number of sessions like this, I became comfortable having those sensations arise in my body. The sensations did not stop, but I became able to see them more clearly as non-threatening.
I started a regular practice of mindfulness meditation, and followed the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction program outlined in John Kabat-Zinn's book, Full Catastrophe Living. LINK
Nowadays, my body does all sorts of stuff, and I try to be aware of it all without judging it or interpreting it as "bad" or "negative" or "fatal." :-)
If you're having panic attacks, or even high, anxiety, I believe that you can learn to live happily with your feeling rather than having those feeling control your life. At least, that has been my experience. I feel like, if I can do it, than anyone can. Let me know if I can help. You're not alone.
You're welcome. My dad's a G.P. and he got copies of these for every one in my family. They are amazing.
Other good ones to look at are:
And for a refreshingly new approach:
Rather than engaging you on that, since you could just watch the thing with an open mind and answer that question yourself, I'll give you a piece of advice on dealing with depression: Read "Full Catastrophe Living" by Jon Kabat Zinn.
&#x200B;
https://www.amazon.ca/Full-Catastrophe-Living-Revised-Illness/dp/0345536932
I recommend this https://www.amazon.com/Full-Catastrophe-Living-Revised-Illness/dp/0345536932/ref=pd_sim_14_5?_encoding=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=9KTENFMF9S8WWJ4MY9N3. It changed my life and taught me that my pain will not define me. I hope it can help you come to terms with your pain.
First thing is I would get the depression under control. If the Cymbalta isn't working there are other antidepressant medications that may help the fibro as well. In addition you might find that adding another medication to the AD helps, for example Abilify or Wellbutrin (which is another antidepressant). The antidepressants should also help with the pain a bit. The big problem with ADs is that not everyone responds to them, and, people's responses to ADs in very individual. One that works for me might not work for you, and vice versa. And some just work better for you than others. Unfortunately it can take a bit of experimentation to figure it out. The right AD and/or Wellbutrin might make you more interested in life. You might want to see a psychiatrist because they are more familiar with these drugs and their effects than say a GP.
Either gabapentin or pregabalin can help with pain. A lot of people here have invested in heating pads, electric blankets, warm socks, hats, gloves, etc... to stay warm and less achy.
Back to depression: in addition to meds try looking into Cognitive Behavior Therapy. There are books on the subject plus you can see a therapist. Therapy should take 6 months or so. You learn the technique and then work it on your own. Exercise is good for depression and fibro pain. It takes a while to kick in and you don't want to overdo because you can make your fibro worse. Search for exercise routines for fibro patients. You won't feel better immediately but over time things will improve. You may also want to look into stress reduction techniques for the anxiety. Full Catastrophe Living is a great book for learning meditation and guided relaxation techniques to help the anxiety. The AD should also help the anxiety. I no longer take antidepressants, I have found a big dose of vitamin D every day eliminates my depression. Have you had your vitamin D level tested?
Make sure you get enough sleep at night. Getting a full night's sleep makes a huge difference in energy and pain levels.
I do advocate accepting your illness. Too much emotional energy gets wasted trying to fight it. You don't fight it, you make peace with it and get on with life. That doesn't mean giving up. Yes it sucks that things have changed and won't be going back to the way they were, but you can't change that, but you can change your attitude about it.
As for your marriage, have you thought about couples counseling?
Full Catastrophe Living is a good one if you haven’t already read it.
Probably mindfulness.
Here's a couple books you may be interested in:
A Clinician's Guide to Teaching Mindfulness: The Comprehensive Session-by-Session Program for Mental Health Professionals and Health Care Providers 1st Edition
Full Catastrophe Living (Revised Edition): Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness
If you don't mind reading, I highly recommend the following books for learning how to use mindfulness to work with anxiety, panic, and stress: Calming your anxious mind and Full Catastrophe Living. The first book deals specifically with anxiety and panic, the second book covers both of these but is a little more general. It teaches you the famous "Mindfulness based stress reduction program" (MBSR) created in the 70s by Jon Kabat Zinn and which is now taught in hundreds of universities and hospitals around the world. Decades of scientific research have showed its immense benefits. Essentially both of these books teach you how to use MBSR to work with anxiety, panic and stress.
&nbsp;
You said you have aversion to paying attention to your breath at your nose, have you tried paying attention to the breath at your belly? Diaphramatic breathing can have immense calming benefits. Try practicing taking deep breaths from your belly, each time your mind wanders, simply acklowedge that your mind has wandered and then return your attention to the feeling of deep breaths from your belly. Very calming. Very simply: can be practiced at any time, any place, in any situation.
Lupus here, been there. Even with the therapy and supportive partner.
You know what helps most? A diagnosis and meds.
Barring that, you're taking good steps. You might want to read this "spoon theory" stuff. People with chronic illness have to deal with more responsibilities — doctors, medicine, self-care — while simultaneously being less able to juggle a multitude of tasks daily.
Mindfulness and meditation probably helped me the most in dealing with my disease (after meds of course), specifically Jon Kabat-Zinn's Full Catastrophe Living, which is targeted towards people with chronic disease and chronic pain. It's a 16-week "program" that is basically to get you up and running with mindfulness self-care in the form of meditation and relaxation exercises for 45 minutes a day, as well as a few other things. When I am doing a body scan or meditating for 45 min a day, I'm doing great. It has long-lasting effects, too; I've gone a few months not doing it at all before feeling the positive effects wear off.
My favorite tool learned from all this is "sitting with the pain." If something is hurting bad or just continually distracting you, you don't ignore it. Instead, you rest your attention on it and dwell in it, exploring where it hurts, what it feels like, how big an area it is, its temperature, whether it's sharp or dull, etc. Soon your mind bores of it and it doesn't hurt as much/doesn't stress you as much.
TLDR Practice accepting where you are at right now instead of comparing it to what you were or what you think you should be. Practice self-care as your first priority: get lots of sleep (even 9 or 10 hours or more if you need it), meditate and/or body scan, do yoga if you can, light exercise if you can, if you can't no big, and eat healthy, minimally processed food if you can.
I recommend Wherever You Go, There You Are and Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn. They're about meditation and mindfulness to reduce stress.
Mindfulness is mindfulness. All it is is being in the moment you are in. Say for example you're mindfully walking down the street, you aren't thinking about the past or the future, you aren't daydreaming or lost in thought. You will be, for example, paying attention to the feeling of your feet hitting the pavement, the feeling of your arms and legs moving, looking around and taking in your environment, etc.
You get better at mindfulness by practicing, so the pain ones and any other ones you can do, are really to your benefit. I started with doing the body scan meditation after reading Full Catastrophe Living from Jon Kabat Zinn. There are plenty of shorter ones as well. Check out these 1-minute mindfulness exercises if you're already feeling overwhelmed.
Mindfulness is training your brain to stay in the here and now and not jump around to everywhere else but the here and now. :)
Take good care! :)
I have Full Catastrophe Living byJon Kabat-Zinn. I'll check out those other books. Thanks for the suggestions. I switched from /r/depression to this sub because there's a focus on...well getting over it. This illness is too fucked to figure out on my own. I appreciate your input, as well as everyone elses in this sub.
Have you ever tried or considered meditation or mindfulness? It can do wonders as a mood stabilizing tool. Formal meditation is certainly a longer term thing, but some mindfulness techniques can be put into practice and show results fairly quickly. It's clinically tested and proven stuff. There are some great books to look into, like Full Catastrophe Living or Mindfulness in Plain English.
A good way to stop ruminating is through the practice of mindfulness. If you have issues letting go of negative thoughts, or you dwell on old stuff I recommend you check out this book http://www.amazon.com/Full-Catastrophe-Living-Revised-Edition/dp/0345536932 . It helped me a lot. You simply practice acknowledging your thoughts and then pushing them out.
Mindfulness Meditation, is the most familiar form of meditation, which I mentioned in the original post. Here are some links to various mindfulness meditation recordings.
If you're new to mindfulness meditation, start with one like this, from the Secular Buddhist Association. If it's still too long for you at first, do not worry if you can't get through the whole thing. Try to work up to the whole 20 minutes over as many sessions as it takes.
The UCLA Mindfulness Awareness Research Center, has a set of downloads which include breathing meditations, along with some of the other meditations mentioned in this post. They also have a podcast available on iTunes University which can be streamed on the website, or downloaded via the link.
Though the recordings on his site are the only ones I've listed which are for sale, and not free, I thought some of you might be interested in Jon Kabat-Zinn. His book, Full Catastrophe Living, along with his other books, are perfect for anyone dealing with the emotional disregulation, either themselves or as a person who cares for someone with BPD. He's known for being the person who brought the concept of mindfulness to the west, and in a non-religious way. He offers 3 series of recordings, all available as CD's or MP3 downloads, along with many books, which are available for purchase. I have not heard these recordings myself, so I cannot vouch for them, but I hope to purchase one or more of them in the near future.
I'd suggest learning a bit about mindfulness or mindfulness based cognitive behavioral therapy. There are tons of books on amazon that cover mindfulness in regards to stress/anger management, I'd suggest looking through some of them, reading some of the reviews, and picking one that seems like it might work for you. There are a couple of important core things you get from doing this stuff. One is that you practice techniques and habits that you can reach for to help keep you grounded and in control. Another is that you practice seeing your thoughts and emotions as a stream of things that don't control you and that you have the choice whether or not to let them carry you away. Just because you feel angry or start having angry thoughts doesn't mean you have to hop on the angry thoughts train and get carried away until you break something or do something you regret. You can train yourself to experience it, feel it, and choose to let it go.
It's a very powerful set of techniques and ideas and it doesn't require some great alteration of your consciousness or whatever, it just requires fairly regular persistent practice, it's like a muscle that you build up through reps.
Having an activity you can zone out on or that brings out your feelings of contentment and peace, like riding, taps into a lot of the same underlying mechanisms that mindfulness works with, but in a way that you don't really have control over or understand. Through repetition you've been training your mind to enjoy cycling and be peaceful when cycling, and so on. But because all of this is unconscious it can be frustrating when it doesn't work because there's a violation of expectations, an unfulfilled need, and the sudden realization that you don't know how to get what you desire out of it anymore. But if you begin to understand how your brain works and the mechanisms that those stress relieving activities actually work through, you can gain the upperhand on stress, anger, and avoid the frustration of feeling let down by something you were depending on to help you out.
Hope that helps.
I'm not knowledgeable enough to really expound on the differences, but I'll throw down some resources that helped me:
If this all piques your interest, I really recommend attending a MBSR class to learn a bunch of different techniques and to discuss it with other people who are doing it at the same time. It's similar to exercise in that you can get started on your own, but if you want to get more "skilled" you should look to find a mentor to help you process and suggest new techniques that might help you improve.
Then get into a pain counselor...
There's also a book that may help if you're into that... Full Catastrophic Living: https://www.amazon.com/Full-Catastrophe-Living-Revised-Illness/dp/0345536932/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Full+Catastrophic+Living&amp;qid=1562283091&amp;s=gateway&amp;sr=8-1
This book by Marcus Aurelius has transformed my life from one crippled by generalized anxiety into one that is still troubled, but with a definite method to press on. It is easily the most important book I've ever read. (Make sure you check out the Hays translation, the others are quite stiff. This is normally $10 so it's on sale on Amazon.)
What you are talking about is more properly called mindfulness, which was the first tool I tried. I had some success, in particular with Full Catastrophe Living, and if you find mindfulness effective then I would recommend simple mindfulness meditation (just sitting and letting thoughts pass through you--noticing that you have them and not responding to them or labeling them as good or bad, just resting in the moment and accepting that you have certain thoughts or feelings but also watching them pass by).
However, stoicism takes these ideas further and embues an element of self-trust that was much more effective for me. While mindfulness emphasizes the importance of the present and minimizing your immedate negative emotional responses, stoicism includes these elements but also says: there is nothing that can harm you. All I can do is act best I can, and not worry about the rest. Control what you can, but accept what you can't control. External events are uncontrollable and with practice you can remain completly resilent to them--metnally and emotionally accepting that you are in a certain situation but retaining the ability to deal with it in the best way you can.
It is difficult at first, but your everyday difficulties with anxiety are a perfect opportunity to practice. When you face situations and get through them, you hold the realization in your mind that that situation did not harm you--while it may have been unpleasant, you survived and moved straight through it. The unpleasantness was bearable, and you are no worse a person for dealing with it, in fact you are much the better. You can trust in this realization as you look forward toward future events. These little successes can accumulate in a big way if you take the first big step to accept your current limitations and trust in your current ability.
A fantastic example of the will's ability to persevere in impossible situations is Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Frankl faces this daily horrors without anxiety because of his complete trust in his ability to face it squarely and overcome it.
So a stoic isn't someone who is passive or emotionless, but someone who is resilent and extremely proactive in response to difficulty. In terms of specific negative emotions like anxiety, anger, or fear, it's important to remember that you are not trying to ignore or not feel these things. That is a misconception about stoicism. These feeling are natural and in fact necessary for life. However, you want to domesticate these negative emotions and remain in control in spite of them, as much as you can. Everyone is overcome by anxiety at times, but the Stoic bounces back that much quicker.
tl;dr I have recommended a lot of books but everything I wrote is firmly based on the many times I have read Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. It is truly worth your time.
You really, really need to get this book: Full Catastrophe Living. It is scientifically based, clinically proven. It is a program (you can do it on your own or, if you live in a bigger city, there are people most definitely leading 8-week MBSR classes that you can sign up for) specifically designed for people with chronic pain, and that are struggling with anxiety and depression! Please at least check it out!!
I broke my back many years ago and have some disc issues but nothing like what you've been through. When the pain was bad, I'd just drink until I passed out. It worked, but was temporary.
I read a book by Jon Kabat-Zinn a few years ago that has helped me deal with the emotional aspects. My mother has numerous health issues and she is a fan of this book also.
Sometimes, trying to relax and meditate will help alleviate some of the stress of enduring the physical pain. It's a form or gentle acceptance to the things we can't change right now.
Sorry I can't offer more.
To answer the question more specifically:
https://samharris.org/how-to-meditate/
https://www.amazon.com/Full-Catastrophe-Living-Revised-Illness/dp/0345536932
If that's the approach you prefer (it's mine too) he's right up your alley.
I also think AudioDharma is a really good resource. Although they have a Buddhist tinge to their stuff, it's mild and easy to ignore. They certainly don't force it in any of their materials that I've read/heard.
There are a blizzard of meditative techniques and guides to consider. I tried one in great detail (1) and am considering resuming it in part to improve this problem. It is essentially a close variant of a better known older guide (2).
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mindful-Way-Through-Depression/dp/1593851286
http://www.amazon.com/Full-Catastrophe-Living-Revised-Illness/dp/0345536932/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1415294573&amp;sr=1-3&amp;keywords=MBSR
The guy who developed these meditation techniques for western therapeutic application, Jon Kabat-Zinn, started with Olympic athletes and visualization in the 1970s. I was first introduced to it as an athlete in the 1980s. Ignore the titles. the exercises are the same whatever you seek to accomplish. The meditations help unlock parts of your mind that you don't directly control and free them to solve problems. These skills and the focus you can develop will aid you in absolutely everything you do. Daily practice of 25min a day over 8 weeks has been shown to change both brain function and even physical structure in both novices and experts (no ashram required all can benefit quickly).
It is not a religion. It won't try to sell you on anything. It will seem odd, but if you do it daily you will get valuable results. (They may be realizations regarding anything, so keep an open mind.) if all this sounds too flakey or new age for you, consider that the muscles we hope to better control are involuntary. The study showing the link between meditation and physical brain changes was so groundbreaking it made the cover of the NYT and the researchers won a prize. The studies are out there.
It is the cheapest therapy you will have tried to help with this problem. From my experience, I would expect it to improve awareness of muscle state and activity, from there, you could train yourself to relax the muscles. To build strength, physical exercises will be needed.
http://www.amazon.com/Full-Catastrophe-Living-Revised-Illness/dp/0345536932/ref=la_B000AQ12GA_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1407340987&amp;sr=1-1
I am on the same boat as you, additionally I have "headaches” :-). I went to a CBT counselling etc. They were little helpful. I am doing meditation from past 3 months on and off and its helping a bit.
One of my biggest problem is "headache". My symptoms starts with racing thoughts, anxiety feeling and then a full blown headache. After that I continue worry about my headache/pain for weeks.
Recently I read this wonderful book : http://www.amazon.com/Full-Catastrophe-Living-Revised-Illness/dp/0345536932 and changed my opinion on my headache pain and anxiety symptoms.
This particular quoted changed my way of thinking about pain/thoughts/sensations
“
"if the pain or uncomfortable sensations are already there, “it is already there", denying/rejecting them will make you more suffer, if it is already there welcome/accept it"
Once I accept my pain and anxiety I am feeling a lot better because “thoughts” about them completely gone. I am still getting anxiety symptoms and headaches but I am not worrying anymore about them and they will go away after few hours unlike days previously.
It sounds to me like you have a lot to deal with, which sucks, but a bunch of things you can work on, which means you can probably improve a lot of things about your situation.
Therapy was very helpful to me at a few critical points, but finding the right person and cultivating a helpful relationship was time-consuming and difficult.
I see my chronic problems as a daily challenge, so I live on a daily schedule. Good diet, meditation, lots of stretching, and lots of audio therapy for my tinnitus (which is a bigger problem for me than pain; thankfully my pain issues are not debilitating, the tinnitus can be -- though when it's severe it's like a piercing fire alarm and is physically painful).
Abusing narcotics recreationally can be "fine", but that's a big red flag in general about someone's lifestyle. Stealing drugs from someone you're supposed to love and respect is also a huge red flag. How old are you? This is sort of high-school drama stuff all around.
If you're open to actually making deep structural changes to your life, then pretty much any crappy self-help book will be fine (though I would say start here, personally: https://www.amazon.com/Full-Catastrophe-Living-Revised-Illness/dp/0345536932... if you can't afford this but promise to actually put in the time to read it, I will mail you a copy, PM me).
Any kind of "self help" program is simple but very difficult. You've got to be ready to dig deep, challenge your assumptions about who you are, and try to change what's changeable and live with the rest. It's a tall order. It's much easier to have good intentions than follow-through and end up with a wall full of self-help books (hence my willingness to mail you one)
In my area, there are Mindfulness classes that use a curriculum based on this textbook called "Full Catastrophe Living" https://www.amazon.com/Full-Catastrophe-Living-Revised-Illness/dp/0345536932/
The book is fairly inexpensive and it is very comprehensive. It goes into the science and the history of Mindfulness in addition to having exercises and activities and meditations to do.
I've also heard good things about the Mindfulness For Beginners book here: https://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-Beginners-Reclaiming-Present-Momentand/dp/1604076585/
I'm sorry you're going through this. I have visual snow and tinnitus that ranges from meh to paralyzing. I was suicidal for a few years. And then I switched to thinking "suicide is an option" and started talking about it.
Sounds about like where you are? So, we're basically in a similar place. Yay us.
I don't think about things like "this might get better" or "it might be worth it to hold on." I think about it like "now I eat lunch, turn on music" and "pack the slightly embarrassing way to have noise even in nature."
I finished college with it. I dated with it. I got married. I can hold down a job with it. It's really only problematic when I obsess about it.
You'll get plenty of book recommendations. This is the one that helps me, Full Catastrophe Living:
https://www.amazon.com/Full-Catastrophe-Living-Revised-Illness/dp/0345536932/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
Hoping the best for you.