Table of Contents

Foreword xix Legal Disclaimer xxi SECTION ONE xxiii Chapter One - Rebecca's Story 1 My Sleep Problems 1 Chapter Two - The History of Sleep 11 Introduction 11 Definition and Causes of Insomnia 11 Diagnosis of Insomnia 13 Why Sleep is so Important 13 Problems Associated with Lack of Sleep 14 How Much Sleep is Enough? 15 Amount of sleep required by children 16 Do Our Bodies Know When it is Time to Sleep? 16 The Sleep Cycles 17 REM sleep (dream sleep) 17 The Stages of Non-REM Sleep 17 Summary 18 Chapter Three - The Awesome Power of the Mind 21 Introduction 21 Your Conscious Mind 22 Your Unconscious Mind 22 The Power of Hypnosis and Deep Relaxation 25 Perception 26 The Old Lady and the Travellers 28 How You Process Information 29 Cause and Effect 32 Summary 33 Chapter Four - Establishing a Bedtime Routine 35 Introduction 35 Breathing 37 What is a Sleep Switch? 38 Unconscious anchors 38 My sleep switch (anchor) 39 Relax Before Bed 40 Awakening with Natural Light 42 Summary 43 Chapter Five - Diet and Exercise 45 Introduction 45 A Healthy, Balanced Diet 47 Starchy Foods 48 Fibre 48 Insoluble fibre 48 Soluble fibre 49 Fruit and Vegetables 49 Eggs 49 Seeds 50 Pulses and Lentils 49 Nuts 50 Fish, Shellfish and Omega 3 50 Meat 50 Fats 51 Saturated fat 51 Unsaturated fat 51 Trans-fats 52 Fluids 52 Signs of dehydration 52 Water and soft drinks 53 Caffeinated drinks 53 Milk 54 Fruit juice and smoothies 54 Fizzy drinks and sports drinks 54 Alcohol 54 Vitamins 55 Fat-soluble vitamins 55 Water-soluble vitamins 55 Minerals 55 Salt 56 Vegetarians and Vegans 56 Healthy Weight 56 Overeating 56 Under-eating 58 The Marrow Contest 59 Exercise 60 Aerobic exercises 61 Strengthening exercises 62 Yoga 63 Pacing yourself 63 Important points 64 Summary 66 SECTION TWO 69 Chapter Six - Dealing with Stress and Other Negative Emotions 71 The Connection Between Your Emotional State and Sleep 71 Your Emotional State 72 Physiology and Posture 72 Simple Steps to Save Your Day 73 Stress 73 Identify your triggers to stress 74 Lowering your tolerance to stress 77 Controlling stress levels 78 Anger 78 Tapping away anger 79 Guilt 80 Forgiveness 80 Fear 82 Anxiety 83 Stop Talking About It 84 Your Inner Voice 85 Controlling Emotions 87 How I Stopped Worrying 90 My top tips to reduce worrying 91 The worry buster 91 Meditation 93 How I learnt to meditate - step one 94 My meditation - step two 94 My meditation - step three 95 What you can expect to experience 98 Summary 98 Chapter Seven - Sleep Well Every Day 99 Achieving Happiness and Sleeping Every Night 99 Learning to be Happy 100 The happy visualisation from the outside in 101 Life is Not Fair 102 Eye of the Storm 103 Learning to be Flexible 104 Tips to becoming more flexible 105 Challenges 105 Letting Things Wait 106 Don't Try to Change the World 106 Managing Your Time Effectively 107 Big or important events 108 Big-event tips 108 Is There an Easier Way? 109 The Gordian Knot 110 Taking Responsibility for Your Future 111 The Law of Attraction 112 Do You Really Want to Recover? 113 Secondary gains 113 Removing your secondary gain 114 Making Problems Even Worse! 114 The Worst Thing That Could Happen 116 The Present Moment 118 Simple ways to be in the moment 119 Meditation - Step Four (Mindfulness Meditation: Thirty-minute Practice) 120 Look for the Extraordinary 122 Everything Passes 123 Asking Great Questions 123 When the Waters Were Changed 124 Summary 125 Chapter Eight - Higher Self-Esteem Equals Better Sleep 127 What is Self-Esteem? 127 The connection between self-esteem and restful sleep 128 Self-esteem is vital for happiness 129 True confidence and self-esteem 129 Improve your self-esteem 129 Power of Beliefs 130 Limiting beliefs 133 The limiting belief buster 134 Increasing your belief in yourself - step one 135 Increasing your belief in yourself - step two 136 Increasing your belief in yourself - step three 136 The Ugly Duckling 137 Accentuate the Positive 138 Relationships 138 Being the type of person you want to attract 139 Understand others before trying to be understood 139 Your most important relationship 140 Have you trained people how to treat you? 141 Energy vampires 141 Don't take everything on board 142 Saying no 143 Receiving and Giving Feedback (Criticism) 144 Receiving feedback 144 How to give feedback 145 Giving feedback using the feedback sandwich 145 General points 145 Forget About Perfection 146 Become More Determined 146 Determination visualisation 148 Our Deepest Needs 150 Meeting your needs 154 Summary 155 Final Note from the Author 157 Index 159 Glossary of Terms 167 About the Author 173 Other Books in the Series 175

About the Author

Author of several self-help books, Rebecca Richmond has enjoyed a highly successful career within global organisations, later going on to become a coach. Having triumphed over adversity, fibromyalgia and cancer, as a qualified coach, master practitioner of NLP, hypnosis and Time Line Therapy(t), she is ideally equipped to help you overcome insomnia.

Reviews

Review by Diane Donovan, Chief Reviewer, Midwest Book Review: "As the population ages, surely My Guide: Manage Chronic Pain will prove of steady, increasing interest; because with that aging process too often comes chronic pain from one condition or another. Surprisingly, while there's a host of books on the market about pain, too few offer a variety of real, effective management solutions. Now, My Guide: Manage Chronic Pain isn't designed to replace a doctor's advice. It's intended to supplement that advice with specific strategies that worked for author Rebecca Richmond, who suffered some seven years of constant pain and who employed the devices herein to achieve not just pain reduction, but a return to an active and busy lifestyle. Any who have suffered from lasting pain know what an achievement this is, lending credibility to the book's varied approaches and its promise that these different pain management strategies will actually work together to significantly change a sufferer's life. And if this sounds miraculous, keep in mind that Rebecca Richmond is not talking 'cure', but 'management'. There IS a difference. Chapters focus on this process by building a management profile of strategies that include meditation and other mind-body techniques. Right off the bat, Rebecca Richmond advises readers that the process is intended for the open-minded reader (and, having gone through any traditional management process, you'd think any struggling with chronic pain would harbor this willingness to try anything for relief): "This book is for people who understand or who are open to the idea that our minds can have an effect on our well-being, and how we cope with and manage pain. That doesn't mean that the pain you are feeling is imagined, but it is important to accept that there are ways you can reduce the intensity in which you feel it." The program is presented in a step-by-step series of chapters that build upon one another, creating stepping stones of techniques and explanations of the physical and mental challenges of chronic pain. Differences in pain tolerance levels and perception, ways to thwart pain through routines by building endorphins, and understanding how the conscious and unconscious mind are affected by pain make for enlightening discussions that prepare readers for the next step: taking control of mental processes to short-circuit the common pathways of pain. 
Sleep switches, how to live more effectively in the "eye of the storm of everyday events", incorporating flexibility and calmness into one's lifestyle to (most importantly) change reactions to life's daily events may seem like small things; but in the bigger picture of pain management, these attitude adjustments can ultimately play big roles. Even more importantly, My Guide: Manage Chronic Pain points out that there is no single pathway to effective chronic pain management. Together, all these tools work - as Rebecca Richmond has proved with her own life experience. Individually, they are simply pieces and small tools contributing to the larger picture. And that's why My Guide: Manage Chronic Pain needs to be read and absorbed in its entirety. From living 'in the moment' and recognizing physical (and mental) signs of well-being and symptoms of stress to fostering life-enhancing relationships and tackling fear, all the tools are here for lasting, positive change. More importantly, as Rebecca Richmond demonstrates through her own life adjustments, they work. All that's required is a willingness to foster flexibility, try new things, and use the many approaches contained in My Guide: Manage Chronic Pain, a workbook of hope and positive results." ------- Review by Faridah Nassozi for Readers' Favorite (4.0 stars): "My Guide: Manage Chronic Pain by Rebecca Richmond is a self-help book about the factors that escalate chronic pain and how to manage these factors so as to minimize this problem which affects millions of people around the globe. Rebecca Richmond talks about the role of the mind in managing chronic pain, emphasizing the importance of tapping into our 'power of the mind' by exercising positive thoughts and positive beliefs and emotions. The book also elaborates on other factors that play an important role in pain management like perception and stress. Several techniques that can help minimize chronic pain are discussed in the book, including breathing exercises, mind distraction, eating a healthy balanced diet, exercising, and surrounding yourself with positive and supportive relationships. My Guide: Manage Chronic Pain by Rebecca Richmond is a simple and practical book that looks at managing chronic pain from an emotional and behavioral perspective and suggests several techniques that can be used to minimize the pain. By helping you understand chronic pain, the book enables you to gain clear insight on the subject and then goes ahead to suggest practical techniques on how to manage the problem. Rebecca Richmond emphasizes that her advice is not meant to replace the advice of medical practitioner, but if the techniques in the book are followed one can considerably reduce pain and live a better life. Her writing style is friendly and easy to relate to, probably because she is writing about a subject that she is intimately familiar with, having suffered from chronic pain herself for several years." ---------- Review by Bil Howard for Readers' Favorite (5.0 stars): "Can we outsmart chronic pain? Rebecca Richmond says that we can in My Guide: Manage Chronic Pain. Having suffered the chronic and debilitating pain of Fibromyalgia, Rebecca developed her own techniques for managing and overcoming chronic pain. The mind is much more powerful than most of us truly understand. Through relaxation and visualization techniques, as well as other manipulations by the mind, we can keep our pain at bay and lead normal lives. Diet and exercise also play a significant role in helping us to have all the ammunition to fight back. Pain often leads to negative emotions as well, which only further the spread of chronic pain and strengthen its grip. Using our mind to overcome those negative emotions is a significant factor in managing and ridding ourselves of chronic pain. The typical treatment for pain is pharmaceutical in nature and consequently, as the pain advances in strength, so does the strength of the drugs being used to treat it. My Guide: Manage Chronic Pain gives us a viable alternative to the side-effects and risk of addiction to pain medications. Rebecca Richmond, the author, suffered significantly and the story of her own suffering and recovery through her techniques lends a good deal of credibility to her methodology. Having tried a few of the techniques in her book, they actually do help. Practical, straight forward and encouraging, My Guide: Manage Chronic Pain is something that every chronic pain sufferer and therapist ought to consider before becoming a prisoner to medications with possibly dangerous side-effects." -------- Review by Mamta Madhavan for Readers' Favorite (5.0 stars): "In her book My Guide: Manage Chronic Pain, author Rebecca Richmond gives an insight about chronic pain and the techniques that can help one to overcome this. The idea to write this came after her experience of Fibromyalgia, from which she recovered using her own techniques. Pain is something that can cause depression and when you are in pain every aspect of your life is affected. This book works as an excellent guide for those suffering from chronic pain and also for therapists and trainers working around these people. The connection between the mind and body for perfect well-being is an interesting aspect covered in the book. The book is informative. It gives a lot of tips on how to manage pain and stay positive. The author speaks about the different types of pain and how it can be perceived. The book also speaks about the emotional angle when it comes to handling pain. The author has given a few exercises that will help in handling physical and emotional pain in a better way. I found the list of ways to distract your mind from pain very useful. The author has also shared a lot of positive and healing affirmations that are helpful and can be tried out easily. 'Breathing, Visualization and Meditation' is an interesting chapter. The author has put down the Meditation techniques step by step, making it easy for those who want to try it out. I recommend this book to everyone because it helps you in channeling your energy in a positive manner which in turn helps your well-being. A useful and informative book that can guide the readers on how to cope up with pain." ----------- Review by Ray Simmons for Readers' Favorite (5.0 stars): "I am a fan of Rebecca Richmond. I have found her books to be comprehensive, well written, and most of all, useful. My Guide: Manage Chronic Pain is no exception. It starts with a brief description of her life then zooms in on the moment she is diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a debilitating chronic rheumatic condition. It was hard to imagine a condition that makes it impossible to enjoy such basic things as a good night's sleep or a hug from a concerned loved one. I learned a lot about pain, health, hardship, attitude, and overcoming adversity. Somewhere along the way, I became a huge admirer. Her health issues didn't stop with the fibromyalgia, indeed, that was just the beginning. She would deal with a growth in her left kidney, a growth in her pancreas, and a life threatening MRSA infection. Instead of succumbing to despair and self-pity, she sought and found solutions and wrote this book to help others who found themselves in similar situations. My Guide: Manage Chronic Pain is told in a positive, upbeat tone. It is thorough and well organized. There are twelve chapters, starting with her personal story and ending with living well. I have often thought a general course on Life should be taught in schools to give young people guidance and direction as they try to figure out what to do with their lives and how they should strive to live well and contribute to society. Rebecca Richmond would be a perfect candidate to write the book for that course. Great Job! You are fantastic. Keep the books coming." ------- Review by Dr. Oliva Dsouza for Readers' Favorite (5.0 stars): "Rebecca Richmond has struggled with chronic pain due to fibromyalgia/CFS. Ultimately she decides enough is enough. Through extensive research and training, she has developed her own techniques of dealing with fibromyalgia and chronic pain. Techniques like tapping the pain away and thought distraction have been tested and used by the author to successfully treat her own condition. The various methods and techniques are described in detail with examples to help you put into practice the concepts and ideas suggested by the author. Pain is something all of us experience one way or the other as none of us are immune to it. My Guide: Manage Chronic Pain by Rebecca Richmond is a wonderful book that has the power to really help those of us dealing with constant, nagging pain that at times takes away so much from our lives. She teaches through her own example of fighting and emerging victorious from her illness. The various techniques that she has developed, practiced, and found useful have been beautifully explained in an easy to follow manner. Accessing the mind - body connection through positive visualization can help in becoming free from the burden of chronic pain. Her seven-minute meditation technique is something even the most hard pressed for time folks can follow on a daily basis. The importance of good diet, exercise, and sleep is discussed at length. The author makes a strong case for choosing happiness over negativity, anxiety, fear, guilt etc and everything she talks about makes a lot of sense in a very practical and doable way." --------- Review by Madi Preda, Authors PR: "Rebecca Richmond's book provides strategies and coping tips for better pain management based on her own experience. My Guide: Manage Chronic Pain combines the concepts of mind, body and spirit, pointing to the relationship between people who are in pain with their body and mind. The guide helps readers to understand pain and the power of mind. It also provides information on pain-relieving techniques, diet and exercise. Complete with details on support groups and forums, this book offers high-value advice for daily life. People in pain need to take responsibility for their mental and physical health. My Guide: Manage Chronic Pain helps to change your lifestyle and together with medical treatment, it can be your partner against pain. Did I convince you to read this magnificent book? I hope so."