If you’ve been ill or injured and are having a tough time feeling like yourself again, it may be because your feelings have been ignored. Dr. Foster’s book, Feel Better Fast, provides an in-depth look at why tending to only the body ignores half the patient and impedes total recovery. He proposes that proper handling of the emotional and spiritual issues that accompany physical problems can contribute to more rapid, thorough and lasting healing.
Doubt, depression, frustration, fear, guilt, anger, shock, impatience or tentativeness -- these emotions are just some the post-injury or illness fallout that people experience. Dr. Foster introduces the impact of these emotions through case studies and then quantifies the risks of such fallout for anyone. Foster’s descriptive insights are targeted to you if your illness or injury:
- is especially intense
- will last indefinitely
- has significantly changed your quality of life
- creates generalized or specific uncertainty
Modern medicine can be miraculous. Cure rates and functional recovery benchmarks are continuously on the rise. But the person inside the illness must also be treated in order for total healing to occur. This book is designed to help you understand and take advantage of the healing aspects of your mind-body relationship. Dr. Foster intends for you to feel that through this book he is coming along side to help you:
- feel less helpless and more hopeful
- understand and control churning, painful emotions
- cope with symptoms and gain relief
- deal with your fears related to the symptoms
- feel better and increase your emotional energy
- make positive health-care decisions
- feel taken care of and listened to by your health care practitioners
- use spirituality to speed your recovery
Dr. Foster explains that injury and illness trigger feelings of helplessness. This, in turn, makes you feel you have no control -- a very stressful state. All too soon, a constant feedback loop of negativity that Dr. Foster calls the stress/discouragement response (S/DR) is firmly in place. To fight this S/DR cycle, Dr. Foster describes how readers can tap into the fundamental powers that everyone can use. They are:
- self-knowledge
- saying no
- asking questions or requesting help
- learning and seeking new information
- determination
- imagination
- pragmatism
Dr. Foster carefully presents his case for using these powers to identify and manage realistic expectations. Injury and illness may force a new set of life goals. According to Foster, unplanned change is not a tragedy, it’s really where life begins. He touts the power of Plan B. Coming up with a more positive, accurate view of reality is an almost certain cure for the negative emotions that distort perspective and hinder healing and growth.
Through Feel Better Fast, Foster defines and explains how to overcome the most common emotional states that you struggle with when ill or injured, including:
- obsession over the worst-case scenario; fear of ‘what-if’
- angry cow disease (flooded with helplessness at being helpless)
- bye-bye blues (depression about what used to be)
Accentuate the positive. Eliminate (or at least diminish) the negative. Do that, says Dr. Foster, and you will feel better. But it’s harder than it sounds. To that end, Dr. Foster offers a wide variety of feel-better options. The book offers you ideas on how to:
- overcome feeling overwhelmed
- feel better about yourself
- make decisions you feel good about
- surmount obstacles
- listen to what your body is really saying
- feel good when you’re feeling bad
- take power over your symptoms
- find hope and anticipate specifically
- create new options
- let go of your old future
You’ll be particularly interested in the Eight Steps to Living without Anxiety. Posed as questions for self-quizzing, these steps will initiate careful self-analysis while providing a program for eliminating the burden of fear about the future. Eliminating fear frees emotional energy. Dr. Foster explains how to gain the greatest possible amount of emotional energy by:
- understanding the role of emotional energy in your life
- concentrating on what you can do
- avoiding stressful situations
- eliminating worry
- taking care of the basics
