Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life: The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Author: Steven C. Hayes | Language: English | ISBN:
B0054M063A | Format: EPUB
Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life: The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Description
Get ready to take a different perspective on your problems and your lifeand 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, youll 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; its about developing a willingness to embrace every experience life has to offer. Its not about resisting your emotions; its 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 youre struggling with anxiety, depression, or problem anger, this book can helpclinical 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 complaintit 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.
- File Size: 1750 KB
- Print Length: 221 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1572244259
- Publisher: New Harbinger Publications; 1st edition (November 1, 2005)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B0054M063A
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #15,097 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #4
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Psychology & Counseling > Psychotherapy, TA & NLP - #9
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Mental Health > Mood Disorders - #18
in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Psychology & Counseling > Psychotherapy, TA & NLP
- #4
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Psychology & Counseling > Psychotherapy, TA & NLP - #9
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Mental Health > Mood Disorders - #18
in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Psychology & Counseling > Psychotherapy, TA & NLP
Psychological treatments, like most forms of therapy, have been developing and adapting for centuries. In recent years the best treatment for depression, as well as a host of other psychiatric disorders, has being centered on a combination of medication and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). The behavior therapies largely replaced psychoanalytic theory. The transition from psychoanalysis was not smooth, and as an attempt to ridicule psychoanalytic ideas, some notorious behavior therapists used to train people with mental illness to perform simple actions and then they would watch with amusement as psychoanalytically trained colleagues concocted creative but often bizarre symbolic interpretations of behaviors that had just been created.
We may now be on the cusp another revolution in therapy that could ultimately relegate CBT to the history books, rather in the way that CBT did to psychoanalysis. This new approach has sprung directly from the Buddhist traditions, and revolves around "mindfulness and acceptance". In the Buddhist worldview, each moment is complete by itself, and the world is perfect as it is; That being so, the focus is on acceptance, validation and tolerance, instead of change, and experience rather than experiment as the way to understand the world.
For many patients it feels profoundly liberating to be able to see that thoughts are just thoughts and that they are not "you" or "reality." This realization can free an individual from the distorted reality that they often create and allow for more clarity and a greater sense of control in life.
Buddhism teaches that suffering is part of life and all our attempts to avoid the suffering only make it worse. ACT teaches the same thing. In that sense, Buddhism and ACT are the same. But ACT's intellectual roots are firmly within the Western scientific psychology tradition, so the author did not so much borrow from Buddhism, as arrive at the same result by a different method and then observed the similarity after the fact.
The book begins by stepping you through the science and psychology of how the mind works, inviting you to see the inner workings for yourself through many exercises. Ultimately it leads to a simple conclusion - your anxiety, depression, or whatever ails may not be an "illness" at all, but simply normal mental processes that go awry when used to try to avoid negative thoughts and emotions.
Most therapy attempts to remove the negative thoughts and feelings. ACT differs completely by asking you to ACCEPT negative thoughts and feelings as part of being human. To do this it shows you how to separate the "real you" from the contents of your mind. The negative doesn't go away, you just become more willing and able to live it. Then the focus switch to exploring your values, what's important to you personally. These values orient you on your journey through life. Finally you COMMIT to the course of action you yourself choose in accordance with your own values, and you use the skills you've learned to avoid the pitfalls that stopped you in the past.
ACT bears one more resemblance to Buddhism. 2500 years ago, the Buddha stirred up the Hindu establishment by presenting ideas that were at once radically new and yet based in a deep understanding of Hindu mystical teachings. ACT does the same to western psychology.
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