Book

This book is written to teach you how to treat your stress and burnout, depression, and long-term pain problems.
If you’re bothered by just any one of burnout, depression or long-term pain,
I’d be incredibly surprised if you wouldn’t benefit from knowing the facts and implementing the tools in this book.
If you turn to healthcare, most of the help you’ll get might very well be focused on medication. That’s not necessarily what you need or want. Here is a portion of how I think, what I keep in mind and what I do with my coaching clients to get better without pills.
Pills aren’t necessarily wrong, but most science supports the fact that treating the brain – which is what we do with all of these three, even if we sometimes do so through the body – is best done multimodally.
Thus far, I’ve settled with offering this as an E-book for increased convenience.
I felt as if there HAD TO be a book.
I can’t help everyone who suffers from this hands-on – but I’ve got to do what I can to help as many as possible.
That’s got to be why we invented the old goodie, the printing press – and nowadays the automation.
I’ve spoken to clients before I wrote the book and they could rarely find reading they liked on the subjects at hand. There are simple and shallow books about stress and exhaustion, but they were rarely satisfying enough. Sure, books to this target audience ought to be simple enough because a book you can’t manage to read in the first place won’t help – but if you do read it and it still doesn’t help that’s not useful either. There are books about CBT for depression – but they miss the point if the depressive part is there because of stress or long-term pain. Books about pain are often focused on the purely physical parts and on what happens in the brain and nervous system rather than what we call “pain science” – which is mainly the part I discuss in the book because it’s what’s often most relevant in these cases.
The book is quite broad because when I help people with these things, it’s often a mix of life coaching and therapy. If life is the reason as of why things ended up this way, that’s often completely necessary. If life is what stresses you out, you’re not bothered by some pathology in isolation. Caring for the reason is absolutely crucial.
The book consists of four main parts, Basics, which are meant to be useful for everyone, and then a separate part for every one of the big three, Burnout, Depression, and Long-term Pain, with information, thoughts, tips, and tools for those specifically. Some would say that it’s long, wide, and broad. That’s because it had to touch on all of the “Big Three”, rather than just one of them as many other books would.
Burnout comes from long-term stress and can cause both depression and physical pain.
Depression is a chronic stressor and might have physical pain as a symptom.
Long-term pain turns into chronic stress and depressive issues.
One issue bothers two others where those two bother the first… and they’re all affected by plenty of other areas.
This is written to look at the interesting and exciting part –
how does one reason when treating this stuff?
Below, you’ll find the parts and topics of the book as they’re presented in the Table of Contents. I don’t want you to be surprised when you get it, that’s not the point. Here’s what you get:
- Introduction
- 1.1 Introduction Pre-text
- 1.2 Introduction – Intro
- 1.3 Introduction – How you should read the book
- 1.4 Introduction – Why a book about all three?!
- 1.5 Introduction – Questions
- 1.6 Introduction – Acceptance
- 1.7 Introduction – Stop digging.
- 1.8 Introduction – Would you describe yourself as humble?
- Basics
- 2.1 The basics – Mapping out life
- 2.2 The basics – Dolor Detection Diary
- 2.3 The basics – Where’s life taking you? …Or where are you taking life?
- 2.4 The basics – What do you really want?
- 2.5 The basics – Behaviors and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
- 2.6 The basics – Learned helplessness
- 2.7 The basics – Analysis of the Dolor Detection Diary
- 2.8 The basics – Consequence analysis
- 2.9 The basics – Mindfulness
- 2.10 The basics – Exercise and its more relevant effects
- Burnout
- 3.1 Burnout – A few words to start with…
- 3.2 Burnout – Alex
- 3.3 Burnout – What is stress?
- 3.4 Burnout – Consequences of stress
- 3.5 Burnout – The balance between work and everything else.
- 3.6 Burnout – Performing!
- 3.7 Burnout – Saying no
- 3.8 Burnout – Tending to Maslow’s first two steps – “Basic needs”.
- 3.9 Burnout – Pacing
- 3.10 Burnout – What GIVES energy and what TAKES energy?
- 3.11 Burnout – Values
- 3.12 Burnout – What can you control?
- Depression
- 4.1 Depression – A few words to start with…
- 4.2 Depression – Anne
- 4.3 Depression – Thoughts, emotions and behaviors
- 4.4 Depression – Noting and change your language and thinking
- 4.5 Depression – Happiness
- 4.6 Depression – Behavioral activation
- 4.7 Depression – Emotional regulation
- 4.8 Depression – Premeditatio Malorum
- Pain
- 5.1 Pain – A few words to start with…
- 5.2 Pain – Ulle
- 5.3 Pain and long-term pain? What’s the difference?
- 5.4 What is central sensitization?
- 5.5 Physical aspects
- 5.6 How, and with what, is different kinds of pain usually treated?
- 5.7 Pain science
- 5.8 Psycho-social aspects
- 5.9 Getting better from long-term pain
- 6 Finishing words
There are a lot of different subjects because life is complex. This is just a PIECE of it all because I can’t possibly cover everything. At first, I thought about making it into a “short read”… But that just doesn’t cover anything well enough. It would be shallow enough to be completely meaningless, so I changed my mind. I spent the time to create something I found worth reading rather than just something.
As I wrote the book, I also kept the idea of making three different books to get each one shorter and perhaps with even more depth. But that would, without a doubt, kill the entire point of it. My theory, my view on this, is that these three things go hand in hand which is why all of them need to be kept in mind when we treat this – so all three need to be kept within the same book. Stress, depression, and long-term pain seem to go hand in hand, just like the three aspects of the biopsychosocial approach. One or the other is often more important, but they must all be kept in mind to get a great result.
This is a long read because I had to get enough in there for it to truly help you. Coaching could be one option if the pure length is annoying or you need more hands-on help because you really can’t read and do it on your own. Another solution if the book looks insurmountable could be to just go at it step by step, as we all do with everything.
The coaching is a big step and if you don’t know me and what I do, getting through the book is a great way to get a decent insight into how I work since the point of the book is to give you the fundamental structure and idea of how I help clients one on one – for you to be able to do it on your own. That doesn’t mean you’ll feel as if you’re a therapist once you’re done, but I’d say it’s a great start if you’re interested in learning how to care for yourself.
If you want to get to know me better BEFORE getting the book:
Feel free to click around the website or the blog.
Chat me up on Facebook if you can’t find answers to your questions.
My ambition is for it to be easy enough to read but with quite some work to implement.
I’ve done my best to keep the paragraphs short and to include enough subheadings for this to be easy on the eyes. The enter button has been kept warm to make it easier to read for those with trouble focusing and doing hard stuff for too long. It’s not childish and kept to a low level, but I’ve tried to implement a lot of air to fit all those it’s mainly for.
This isn’t a complete Done For You solution because we’ve all got different lives. All of my clients differ. I can never just copy-paste a solution to the next one “because this one is like the one I met a month ago”. So, to help you, I’ll have to help you think as I do, share systems, frameworks, thoughts, ideas, experience, and wisdom enough for you to think well enough to be able to change what’s necessary.
I’ve aimed to include the most common tools, tips, tricks, and themes I discuss with those I help – for you to be able to reflect on these things on your own rather than relying on me as a companion…
The plan is to keep it easy on the eyes, but I don’t hesitate to add hard words – because a lot of this is based on hard and complicated things.
Hopefully, it’ll be a book you read once to progress, change, reflect and then ACT to change things…
… To then leave for a while –
… And get back to, here and there to repeat something and get back to the subject to get even BETTER.
My goal is to set you on the right path regardless of if it’s burnout, depression, or long-term pain that bothers you most.
To then keep you going that way.
This is my perspective, and it’s a mishmash because that’s what’s usually required to make a difference. There’s…
- Part information
- Part philosophy
- Part thoughts and reasoning
- Part things to reflect on yourself
- Part actionable things to DO
- Part stories
- Part experience
- Part really dry information to explain complicated things I think you need to understand decently if this book is for you.
One thing leads to another, giving consequences that make you do something, which turns into…
Plenty of people are too busy. They’ve got so much to do they:
- Can’t sleep
- Forget to eat or overeats – and often the wrong things.
- Feel overwhelmed.
- Become irritated and emotionally bothered by the stress.
- Always plan ahead rather than stay present.
- Lose their self-esteem and, through that, feel lonely and worthless.
- Become pessimistic.
- Lose their interest in sex – and perhaps their ability.
- Tense up, shrug their shoulders and start clenching their teeth, get headaches, and migraines.
- Cut out their social life.
- Turn to drinking, smoking, or drugs to manage life.
They get:
- Low energy.
- Forgetful and disorganized.
- Pains and aches, like headache and gastrointestinal issues – but ignore them; “I don’t have time to tend to those!”
- Anxiety and chest pains.
- Unnecessary infections from a bothered immune system.
Over time it turns more severe and into things you really don’t want, like:
- Getting exhausted enough to LEAVE work and lose most of their identity, capacity, and health.
- Mental health issues such as depression or anxiety disorders, with or without panic attacks.
- Cardiovascular disease
- Obesity, metabolic syndrome, eating disorders, or diabetes
- Autoimmune issues
That goes for all of these three things. The list above is relevant for the stress aspect, but the mechanics – behaviors and how things work and progress – are similar for depression and long-term pain, which are stressful in and of themselves.
One thing leads to another where you adapt, and things turn for the worse. It doesn’t have to escalate exactly there as in the example – and situations generally don’t do so QUICKLY – but if you start on a slippery slope and don’t do anything about it, things might get over your head.
So this is about changing LIFE and getting out of that negative trend.
Books generally focus on one topic, and I’m doing my best to cover three major issues. I hope to share some of the knowledge and experience I’ve accumulated over the years, show you what works, and give you more than a book about just one of them (or three books focusing on one topic each). I’ve written this with the feeling that I can’t afford the luxury of focusing on just one part.
Again, if you’re bothered by just any one of the three,
I’d be surprised if you wouldn’t benefit from knowing the facts and implementing the tools in this book.
Good luck!