Published By: North Atlantic
Pages: 180
Released On: 17/06/2025
Managing the stresses of everyday life can be exhausting and overwhelming. Dr. Jennifer Caspari knows this struggle well—both through her work as a clinical psychologist and her lived experience as a disabled woman with cerebral palsy. You Are More Than Your Body weaves together clinical expertise, personal stories, and practical, evidence-based tools to help readers with chronic health conditions better cope with pain, fatigue, depression, and the emotional vulnerability that comes with living in a world not designed for our bodies.
The methods in this book synthesize a wide range of emotional regulation skills and coping techniques drawn from cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), and mindfulness practices, all of which Dr. Caspari has successfully used with her own clients. In this book, you’ll learn over thirty practical coping skills to help you:
– Tune into internal experience and connect with your body
– Shift mental focus
– Cultivate self-compassion and radical acceptance
– Change your relationship with your thoughts
– Engage the power of the present to get unstuck
– Practice realistic goal-setting
– Tap into your deepest values as a resource
– Tolerate discomfort
– Give yourselves permission to do things differently
Each chapter includes a personal story or experience; a self-reflection exercise; associated coping skills; and practical guidance on how you can start using these tools in your own life. Having a disability or chronic illness does not have to mean accepting a lower quality of life. While we can’t make our issues and challenges disappear, by practicing the exercises in this book, we can learn to better manage challenges that arise and learn how we can live a meaningful life now—whatever our bodies and abilities might be.
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and North Atlantic for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
As someone with a few chronic illnesses and whatnot with no cure, I am interested in finding other potential ways to help me, so this was a really interesting prospect for me.
It’s one thing to read a book like this written by a professional, but if they don’t have personal experience of it, there’s only so much they can write about. But if you have someone with a disability talking about how a disability can affect you, it instantly gives it more power and gravitas.
I really appreciate Jennifer’s talk about positive thinking. Those who don’t have illnesses often say “you just need to be more positive” – if thinking positively was all it took, then the health industry would be so much easier to navigate. If only positive thinking would make my brain work and my legs work.
You can read it like I did which was cover to cover, or you could flick to the topics that interest you most or you need in that current situation.
It is a relatively short book and less than 200 pages which means it’s a quick read. Which is good because I imagine it could be quite an intense book otherwise.
Throughout my health journey, I have learnt a lot of coping mechanisms that Jennifer mentions and so for me, none of it was new. However, I think this would be handy for people early on in their illness or disability, or carers, relatives, and friends.
Books By Your Bedside 