Aimed at professionals working with clients who are stuck in chronic pain, this book provides both a new conceptualization of this difficult problem and practical guidelines about how to treat it from an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) perspective. The book alternates between the story of a chronic pain patient named Elisabeth, and the scientific and clinical reasons to approach her struggle in a new way. The book addresses case formulation and clinical technique in a practical "hands on" way, with frequent therapeutic dialogues as examples. Rehabilitation specialists, psychologists, physicians, nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists, and social workers will all find the volume to be of use. The senior author, JoAnne Dahl, has worked in rehabilitation medicine for over 25 years and more recently with some of the founders of ACT: Steven Hayes, Kelly Wilson, and Carmen Luciano. The ACT model is helping to create a paradigm shift in behavioral and cognitive therapy, behavioral medicine, and the behavioral health disciplines more generally, from a focus on form and content to one on context and function.

Chapters:

-Elisabeth: Getting Stuck

-The Social and Systems Context of Pain

-All this Suffering, Pain, and Disability: What is Wrong?

-Valuing and Pain

-The Therapeutic Relationship in ACT

-Values Assessment

-Identifying Components of an ACT Model through Functional Analysis

-ACT Interventions

-ACT for Therapists and Staff

-A Brief ACT Intervention for Clients with Longstanding Stress and Pain Symptoms

-Elisabeth with an ACT Alternative

-References