Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life: The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (A New Harbinger Self-Help Workbook)
Steven C. Hayes
Language: English
Pages: 224
ISBN: 1572244259
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Get ready to take a different perspective on your problems and your life—and the way you live it.
Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is a new, scientifically based psychotherapy that takes a fresh look at why we suffer and even what it means to be mentally healthy. What if pain were a normal, unavoidable part of the human condition, but avoiding or trying to control painful experience were the cause of suffering and long-term problems that can devastate your quality of life? The ACT process hinges on this distinction between pain and suffering. As you work through this book, you’ll learn to let go of your struggle against pain, assess your values, and then commit to acting in ways that further those values.
ACT is not about fighting your pain; it’s about developing a willingness to embrace every experience life has to offer. It’s not about resisting your emotions; it’s about feeling them completely and yet not turning your choices over to them. ACT offers you a path out of suffering by helping you choose to live your life based on what matters to you most. If you’re struggling with anxiety, depression, or problem anger, this book can help—clinical trials suggest that ACT is very effective for a whole range of psychological problems. But this is more than a self-help book for a specific complaint—it is a revolutionary approach to living a richer and more rewarding life.
- Learn why the very nature of human language can cause suffering
- Escape the trap of avoidance
- Foster willingness to accept painful experience
- Practice mindfulness skills to achieve presence in the moment
- Discover the things you really value most
- Commit to living a vital, meaningful life
This book has been awarded The Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Self-Help Seal of Merit — an award bestowed on outstanding self-help books that are consistent with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) principles and that incorporate scientifically tested strategies for overcoming mental health difficulties. Used alone or in conjunction with therapy, our books offer powerful tools readers can use to jump-start changes in their lives.
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yourself every day.” We’ve identified some of the key larger patterns that language encourages: experiential avoidance, cognitive fusion, attachment to the conceptualized self, and so on. If you do anything different in the presence of events that normally lead to these patterns, you are helping to create more psychological flexibility. In the grandest scheme of things, that is the ultimate goal of ACT—the ability to fit your behavior creatively into the larger patterns you wish to create. Said
self-referential. Imagine you are walking down the street and you notice an ugly pile of trash. Normally you wouldn’t take it to be a sign that you are a horrible person. However, if instead of the pile of trash, you noticed a feeling of self-loathing, you might fuse with that feeling and take it as an indicator that you are a horrible person. But, as you now know, this feeling doesn’t define you any more than the pile of trash you noticed. This exercise takes advantage of that distinction to
see if you can open up to it just a little bit more. Again, see if you can actually get next to this emotion by choice, instead of running away from it. See if right now you can stay with this one emotion. Take a few minutes and sit with that emotion until you sense that you are a little more open to it. Now set that aside and get in touch with your original target. Take about a minute looking for other specific emotions. You can repeat the process as many times as you wish with each different
or will feel the devastation of losing someone they love. Every single person has felt or will feel physical pain. Everybody has felt sadness, shame, anxiety, fear, and loss. We all have memories that are embarrassing, humiliating, or shameful. We all carry painful hidden secrets. We tend to put on shiny, happy faces, pretending that everything is okay, and that life is “all good.” But it isn’t and it can’t be. To be human is to feel pain in ways that are orders of magnitude more pervasive than
the bus is going. Passengers who get on the bus will be taken to that destination. It is not up to the moment-to-moment whims of the passengers to determine where the bus will go—it is up to the owners and drivers who set the destination and then drive there. So, now it is time to look at where you want this bus called your life to be headed. What exactly do you choose to have on that little sign? What is your path? VALUES AS CHOSEN LIFE DIRECTIONS First we need to state a warning. You are
