Get Out of Your Mind & Into Your Life

[sabbath92001]

- The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy by Steven C. Hayes, Ph.D.

Just got my copy from Books A Million. ACT is awesome and this is a new self-help book based on ACT. Amazon.com has excerpts from other ACT books.

 

[sabbath92001]

Page 1

Introduction

People suffer. It's not just that they have pain -- suffering is much more than that. Human beings struggle with the forms of psychological pain they have: their difficult emotions and thoughts, their unpleasant memories, and their unwanted urges and sensations. They think about them, worry about them, resent them, anticipate and dread them.
At the same time, human beings demonstrate enormous courage, deep compassion, and a remark­able ability to move ahead even with the most difficult personal histories. Knowing they can be hurt, humans still love others. Knowing they will die, humans still care about the future. Facing the draw of meaninglessness, humans still embrace ideals. At times, humans are fully alive, present, and committed.
This book is about how to move from suffering to engagement with life. Rather than waiting to win the internal struggle with your own self so that your life can begin, this book is about living now and liv­ing fully -- with (not in spite of) your past, with your memories, with your fears, and with your sadness.


ACT: WHAT IT IS AND HOW IT CAN HELP YOU

This book is based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT. ("ACT" is spoken as a single word, not as separate initials.) This is a new, scientifically based psychotherapeutic modality that is part of what is being called the "third wave" in behavioral and cognitive therapy (Hayes 2004). ACT is based on Relational Frame Theory (RFT): a basic research program on how the human mind works (Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, and Roche 2001). This research suggests that many of the tools we use to solve problems lead us into the traps that create suffering. To put it bluntly, human beings are playing a rigged game in which the human mind itself, a wonderful tool for mastering the environment, has been turned on its host.

 

[4myself]

That sounds fascinating, can you type the entire book out for us? :wink: . It has been commented on here a lot about how the human mind can turn against us, which is a very strange thing as you would think that our minds would be geared towards self preservation. Please share anything that you find interesting or helpful with us.

 

[sabbath92001]

ok, page 2

Perhaps you've noticed that some of your most difficult problems have paradoxically become more entrenched and unmanageable, even as you've implemented ideas about how to solve them. This is not an illusion. This results from your own logical mind being asked to do what it was never designed to do. Suffering is one result.
This may seem like a very odd claim, particularly if you picked up this book to help yourself over­come some of your psychological issues. As a rule, people turn to self-help books for tools to solve spe­cific problems: depression, anxiety, substance abuse, trauma, stress, burnout, chronic pain, smoking, to name just a few. For the average person, overcoming these problems implies not just an ultimate end but also an end reached by specific means.
For example, overcoming stress seemingly must first involve eliminating stressful feelings; overcom­ing smoking seemingly must first involve getting rid of urges to smoke; overcoming anxiety disorders seemingly must involve learning how to relax instead, or to dispute and change overblown and worri­some thoughts; and so on. In this book, ends and means are carefully distinguished, and you will learn that many of these common sense routes to a better life are now thought to be both risky and unneces­sary in current psychological theory.
If you are suffering with a psychological problem, you should know that research suggests that ACT helps with many common psychological difficulties (Hayes, Masuda, et al. 2004), and its underlying model has received considerable support (Hayes et al. forthcoming). We will discuss these data through­out this book.
The fact that you are reading an empirically based account is all the more important because this book will take some seemingly strange twists and turns. At times, it may be confusing. To some degree that is unavoidable because ACT challenges some of the most culturally ingrained forms of conventional thinking about human problems. Research indicates that ACT's methods and ideas are generally sound, which provides reassurance that these concepts and procedures are effective. (See the appendix for a partial list of studies on ACT and its components.) That doesn't mean they are easy to grasp. Then again, if these ideas and methods were already well-known to you, this book would probably not be useful.
Here's a sample of some of the unconventional concepts you will be asked to consider:

- Psychological pain is normal, it is important, and everyone has it.

- You cannot deliberately get rid of your psychological pain, although you can take steps to avoid increasing it artificially.

- Pain and suffering are two different states of being.

- You don't have to identify with your suffering.

- Accepting your pain is a step toward ridding yourself of your suffering.

- You can live a life you value, beginning right now, but to do that you will have to learn how to get out of your mind and into your life.

Ultimately, what ACT asks of you is a fundamental change in perspective: a shift in the way you deal with your personal experience. We can't promise that this will quickly change what your depression, anger, anxiety, stress, or low self-esteem looks like, at least, not anytime soon. We can, however, say that our research has demonstrated that the role of these problems as barriers to living can be changed, and sometimes changed quite rapidly. ACT methods provide new ways to approach difficult psychological

 

[Hurricane]

deja vu
you posted the same one socialanxietysupport

can u give us some more details about the book? did it help? is it helping?
I ordered it today at the local bookshop but it will come in just after newyear... hope it's worth the waiting

 

[sabbath92001]

page 3

Hi Hurricane,

Yes the workbook is helping me. ACT in general has helped me a lot. It'll definitely be worth the wait. If you want you can check out the tutorial on Relational Frame Theory (RFT) at www.relationalframetheory.com. This workbook is based on ACT and ACT is based on RFT.

page 3

issues. These new approaches can change the actual substance of your psychological problems and the impact they have on your life.
Metaphorically, the distinction between the function of a psychological disorder and the form it takes in one's life can be likened to someone standing in a battlefield fighting a war. The war is not going well. The person fights harder and harder. Losing is a devastating option; but unless the war is won, the person fighting it thinks that living a worthwhile life will be impossible. So the war goes on.
Unknown to that person, however, is the fact that, at any time, he or she can quit the battlefield and begin to live life now. The war may still go on, and the battlefield may still be visible. The terrain may look very much as it did while the fighting was happening. But the outcome of the war is no longer very important and the seemingly logical sequence of having to win the war before beginning to really live has been abandoned.
This metaphor is intended to illustrate the difference between the appearance of psychological problems and their true substance. In this metaphor, the war looks and sounds much the same whether you are fighting it or simply watching it. Its appearance stays the same. But its impact-its actual sub­stance-is profoundly different. Fighting for your life is not the same as living your life.
Ironically, our research suggests that when the substance changes, the appearance may change as well. When fighters leave the battlefield and let the war take care of itself, it may even subside. As the old slogan from the 1960s put it: "What if they fought a war and nobody came?"
Compare this metaphor with your own emotional life. ACT focuses on the substance, not the appearance, of problems. Learning to approach your distress in a fundamentally different way can quickly change the impact it has on your life. Even if the appearance of distressing feelings or thoughts does not change (and who knows, it might), if you follow the methods described in this book, it is far likelier that the substance of your psychological distress, that is, its impact, will change.
In that sense, this is not a traditional self-help book. We aren't going to help you win the war with your own pain by using new theories. We are going to help you leave the battle that is raging inside your own mind, and to begin to live the kind of life you truly want. Now.


SUFFERING: PSYCHOLOGICAL QUICKSAND

This counterintuitive idea of abandoning the battlefield rather than winning the war may sound strange, and implementing it will require a lot of new learning, but it is not crazy. You know about other situations like this. They are unusual, but not unknown.
Suppose you came across someone standing in the middle of a pool of quicksand. No ropes or tree branches are available to reach the person. The only way you can help is by communicating with him or her. The person is shouting, "Help, get me out", and is beginning to do what people usually do when they are stuck in something they fear: struggle to get out. When people step into something they want to get out of, be it a briar patch or a mud puddle, 99.9 percent of the time the effective action to take is to walk, run, step, hop, or jump out of trouble.
This is not so with quicksand. To step out of something it is necessary to lift one foot and move the other foot forward. When dealing with quicksand, that's a very bad idea. Once one foot is lifted, all of the trapped person's weight rests on only half of the surface area it formerly occupied. This means the downward pressure instantly doubles. In addition, the suction of the quicksand around the foot being lifted provides more downward pressure on the other foot. Only one result can take place: the person will sink deeper into the quicksand.

 

[sabbath92002]

Three years later and ACT is still working for me. I'm no longer housebound and unemployed instead I'm working in an office (sharing a cubicle), back in college (getting A's and B's), going to concerts (Rush, ZZ Top, Heaven & Hell), etc. I'm still learning about mindfulness and being non-judgmental, but my days are not spent managing my anxiety.

I'm also looking forward to another ACT self-help book due out in June called "The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living (Paperback)", here's the amazon.com teaser:

Editorial Reviews
Product Description
What if almost everything you believed about finding happiness turned out to be inaccurate and misleading? What if those very beliefs were in fact making you miserable? Too many of us are caught in the happiness trap: we think that we should be happy all or most of the time, and we believe that we can control the circumstances of our lives in order to avoid unpleasant experiences.

In reality, every life is touched by disappointment and difficulty. Ironically, it is our fear of negative experiences that keeps us trapped in cycles of unhappiness. Based on the insights and techniques of a new form of psychotherapy called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Harris offers key principles and techniques for escaping the “happiness trap” to create a full, rich, and meaningful life.

Harris shows how mindfulness and acceptance can help us to overcome common emotional problems. He presents the six key techniques of ACT that have been proven effective in helping individuals to:

handle painful feelings more effectively

escape the grip of self-defeating habits, including addiction

rise above fears, doubts, and insecurities

create a richer and more meaningful life

About the Author
Dr. Russ Harris is a physician and psychotherapist specializing in stress management. Having used the principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to overcome his own struggles with anxiety, he now trains individuals and mental-health professionals to use the ACT techniques to overcome a range of psychological problems and improve the quality of their lives. He lives in Melbourne, Australia.

 

[streetsk8er794]

I am very much contemplating buying these books. I'm new to ACT, which book is best to start me off? And also, is it better than working with a trained CBT physician?

 

[sabbath92002]

I am very much contemplating buying these books. I'm new to ACT, which book is best to start me off? And also, is it better than working with a trained CBT physician?

The latest ACT self-help workbook is pretty good, it's called The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Anxiety: A Guide to Breaking Free from Anxiety, Phobias, and Worry Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (Paperback) by John P. Forsyth (Author), Georg H. Eifert (Author).

CBT is pretty good too, but it's flawed. In CBT you are supposed to change "negative" or "irrational" thoughts into "positive" or "rational" thoughts. But in ACT we mostly just notice thoughts as being thoughts. CBT didn't work for me, it actually made me worse.