Visualize Comfort: Healing and the Unconscious Mind

Generous books are rare but Kristin Prevallet has written a book that helps right away. “Visualize Comfort” offers many different paths to relieve pain, anxiety, and suffering. You can use this book and unlike most self-help books, Prevallet doesn’t talk down to the reader. “Visualize Comfort” talks about relief practices, language, and psychology. Prevallet provides a compete picture of the ways to reduce pain and stress as well as links to a lot of other practices that help–right away.

This small book contains powerful ways of dealing with pain. The author establishes an intimacy that makes the reader want to try the various techniques she introduces. I tried a few of these techniques and was amazed at how effective they were. That’s not to say I now experience no pain; but know that when in pain, I have a path to follow, options to consider. This book will be one I will return to again and again.

Reading Ms. Prevallet’s book feels like getting a fun and digestible lesson on neuroscience and sitting with a kind and funny hypnotherapist at the same time. She writes clearly, fluidly and beautifully. It taught me so much about the brain science of managing pain of any kind, why the mind-body angle is worth contemplating and may actually be astoundingly effective. I will return to this book over and over again and would highly recommend this book to anyone dealing with pain, not only physical but also emotional.

This is a straightforward explanation of how to use your mind to manage pain. Simple, easy-to-use exercises are included. You can actually try some of the techniques as you read. I recommend it for anyone interested in healthy ways to deal with physical pain and discomfort. Prevallet is an experienced and certified hypnotherapist as well as a respected poet, and her writing is clear and strong.

This is a straight forward book that get right to the chase rather than spending 100 pages on theory and case histories.

This book explains the pathology of pain, both physical and emotional trauma, in a simple an easy to read fashion, and more importantly, how to manage and govern what ails you. The author, Kristin Prevallet, uses this book as a vehicle to apply your own form of self-therapy to reduce stress and also overcome the voices in your head that can plague you with doubt and low self esteem. These techniques work. When incorporated correctly and diligently followed, I believe anyone can benefit from the methods that Prevallet offers here in Pain Management.

Paraphrasing what she puts forth, our moods are created by both your thoughts and stimuli in the world around us. Prevallet’s exercises in this book helps harness once unmanageable thoughts and offers multiple solutions to managing your moods. I loved this because of the exercises the book comes with. Intellectual, abstract rationalizations from reading other self-help books are not enough. Her techniques, ALONG WITH an academic analysis of mental disequilibrium, make for an easy, effective start in treating things like anxiety, depression, addiction, goal-setting, past trauma, and most types of emotional blockages or triggers. I can’t recommend this e-book enough. It’s a quick, easy read, and you start feeling a certain lightness within the first few pages. When you’re done you feel steered in the right direction. As a Physician Assistant with a background in Clinical Psychology, I was both engaged and inspired while reading the work of a poet-hypnotherapist with the skill and insight of Kristin Prevallet. She speaks of the importance of having “an empathetic understanding of physical and emotional pain”, of coming to know the anatomical and causal relationship they have to one another. Embracing what she calls our “latent capacity” to understand the interconnectedness between these repositories of pain potentiates relief. She teaches the reader how our emotional response to physical pain can either exacerbate or soften it. She invites the reader to be “a listener unto yourself” so that our own immune systems can bring the healing we then become capable of. She suggests strategies, techniques, practices that allow us to move into a new, unfettered space. It’s a book that will be a frequent companion of mind, heart and soul. I heartily recommend it.

Kristin Prevallet transcends the usual self-help category & deftly teases out the ways in which we can alter the flow of our internal streams of consciousness. We can cultivate our own placebos, find our own inner resources, rewire our brains, return to the meadow of the mind…. yes.

I read feel the author, Kristen Prevallet did an excellent job with the subject. I was intrigued by her description of events prompted by the Amygdala. Kristin writes clear and concise. Lots of good stuff in this package.

I highly recommend reading this book. It was well written, thoughtful and completely relevant for anyone looking to improve their life, outlook, and perspective. The book helped me to look at how I can change old behaviors that no longer serve me and be more aware of my physical reactions when I am feeling emotional triggers. Kristin Prevallet offers a lot of insight as to how our minds and bodies are connected and gives great examples and exercises for the reader to use right away. I look forward to reading more books from this author.

Simply powerful. Like the placebo effect Prevallet explores in one of her many wise chapters on how to overcome the negative habits that often rule our lives, this book is both deceptively simple and surprisingly effective. As I read it, I found myself nodding and thinking, “Yes, yes, that makes sense,” without feeling I was reading something radically new. But then, days later, I found myself inadvertently putting her suggestions into practice, into action, and immediately felt my life was shifting in the right direction. Prevallet’s sneaky little sugar pill of a book was working its magic. Although I think Prevallet might say that I was working my own magic since a lot of what she suggests has to do with how we can make small but significant changes in the way we think about our lives–changes in perception that can dramatically improve our ability to be content, peaceful, and fulfilled. Saying that Prevallet’s book is like the sugar pill of the placebo is not to say that it sugar coats anything. It doesn’t. She reminds us that we will, of course, continue to have hard times and even to suffer, but also that we don’t need to keep on suffering. She tells us that we can be resourceful when things can get tough and reminds us of the tools we, in fact, already have available to us. Along with all the useful strategies, Prevallet also offers us something just as wonderful: each chapter includes some beautiful and amazing poetry that helps us think about the issues at hand in a different way, on another plane. I loved these moments of embedded meditation. They seemed to let the other information just sink in. As I write this, in the back of my mind, I’m remembering her passages on the power of joyful memories and I know I will return to this thoughtful and helpful book again and again.

I loved reading this book. It spoke to my curiosity about my mind and how it creates the feeling body. From the beginning I was asking myself: how does my thinking affect me? What is powerful about the way I see the world? And how can I use the person I already am to put an end to physical and psychological pain? This book gave me tools to reflect my humanity back to me. What I think of right now, and this isn’t a trite metaphor (because it’s mine, and therefore useful) is the film “The Wizard of Oz.” Dorothy has those ruby slippers on her feet for the entire movie but doesn’t know how to use them. It isn’t until the end that she understands she may go home — simply by voicing her wish (and clicking those shoes together.) Intentions are powerful when translated into images. Where are the rainbows? Where are the ribbons of rain? This book helps one to communicate with oneself – and encourages a personal path towards recognition (which is truly awesome!).

Short and to the point, this therapist from the Center for Mind/Body Studies in NYC details how to let things go: “if you’ve lost your bag why are you still carrying it?” and rebuild or reconnect to our resource states for the benefit of our mental and physical health: “cells that fire together wire together.” It’s a must-have for anyone who’s seeking to make a change, and a beautifully written book by a formidable therapist who is also fearless poet. A rare combination.

Full of common sense information, but also medical facts — aptly blended with a larger and much more ancient historical knowledge of human healing, which in our society we too often forget or suppress. I love the way the author melds poetry with medical and chemical terms. She brings self-healing down to earth and makes it available inside us all.

This engaging book by poet/scholar/hypnotist Kristin Prevallet provides a fascinating, easy to understand overview of the brain’s processes, and gives concrete suggestions for dealing with negative thoughts and behaviors. The book contains helpful personal anecdotes and segments of poetry that complement the points being presented. It stresses the power of the creative mind to influence behavior. Well-researched and clearly presented, it is an informative, inspiring, and empowering work.

With a poet's keen sensitivity to the power of metaphor, Kristin Prevallet offers helpful, practical cues for a "creative re-wiring" of the energies we expend dealing with the daily stresses of over-loaded lives. Her style is engaging, fresh, and lively, and I truly enjoyed following her path into my own experience. I found myself lightened by the creativity and humor, gaining insight into some quite simple ways my own imagination can come to the rescue. Combining science, psychology, poetry and a heap of common-sense-wisdom, the book holds out to us the possibility of loosening some of the knotty "stuff" that can entangle our inner freedom and it can be fun!

This handy little book gets right to the heart of concerns and offers a refreshing (and candid) review of the stresses and stressors that seem to consciously, unconsciously and/or subconsciously control us… or the way we feel. Worth every cent.

This easy-to-read book describes in straightforward language how to harness the power of the imagination to make positive changes in your life. Kristin Prevallet presents research from psychology, neuroscience, and hypnotherapy in a clear and simple way that can be utilized by anyone who truly wants to tap in to the inner resources that we all have. As a poet, she understands the power of metaphor and how language can rewire a person's internal narrative. Our internal narrative is the story we tell ourselves about how we live in the world, and the message that we often send out subconsciously to other people. The book explains how to recognize your internal narratives and is chock full of techniques that use your natural creativity to live the life you want to live. I highly recommend this book for everyone.

Kristin Prevallet has written a little book with massive implications. Bringing a poet’s eye to the unconscious, she beautifully simplifies the complexities of the mind and makes practical the path to change. This book is an active metaphor we will all do well to walk within.