I just finished reading Toni Bernard's How to Be Sick: A Buddhist Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers. I read it to see if this would be a helpful book for clients with chronic illnesses to read. And, I think it is--given the right timing of course. Because I am also "Buddhist inspired" and live with a chronic illness and work with clients with chronic illnesses, most of the material in Bernhard's book was not new to me. However, she brings it together in a user-friendly, personal, believable and non-preachy way that I think both Buddhist-inspired and non-Buddhist-inspired readers would appreciate. The book offers practical tools for dealing emotionally with such difficulties commonly experienced by people with chronic illnesses as people not understanding one's experience or even believing one is ill, frustrations with the medical system, and social isolation. By using examples from her own experience, Bernhard, who is mostly house-bound and bed-bound by her illness, teaches a variety of Buddhist concepts and techniques that have helped her reduce her emotional suffering and increase her sense of well-being over her decade-long illness. At the end of the book, there is a chapter in which common emotional difficulties are reviewed along with the techniques that Bernhard suggests for reducing the suffering they can entail--kind of a handy crib sheet that readers can pull out when in distress in order to remember what to try.Labels: Buddhism, chronic illness, mental health