Freddy Jackson Brown - Acceptance and Commitment Therapy For Dummies

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy For Dummies

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester,www.wiley.com

This edition first published 2016

2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Chichester, West Sussex

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2015960021

ISBN 978-1-119-10628-9 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119- 10629-6 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119- 10630-2 (ebk)

1. Table of Contents

Successful businesses across the world apply this simple principle: focus more on the few things that do a lot, rather than the many things that do a little.

This is such a book.

If you look at the table of contents for this book you will see that after a handful or two of short chapters it bangs through a pretty incredible list of important topics: love, anxiety, depression, anger, pain, addiction, work and even psychosis. And every one of those later chapters shows how psychological flexibility applies.

Is that even possible?

It turns out that it is. ACT is about the few core things in psychology that make an important difference in lots and lots of different areas. Last time I counted there were over 125 controlled studies (and hundreds more of lesser kinds) showing that the small set of skills that ACT targets makes a difference virtually everywhere that human minds go.

This is an ACT For Dummies book, but you could also call it an ACT for When You Are Too Smart for You Own Good book. Minds do not know when to stop! They are figuring it all out even when what they need to do is just be quiet and let people learn new ways of being and doing. There is a conflict between how your analytical mind works and how learning by direct experience works. Our analytical minds are great for doing taxes but they are awful at getting over past hurts. Your minds are great in the role of a tool and lousy when put in the role of being the boss or dictator. What ACT does is to teach you how to put your mind on a leash so you can use it when you want rather than it using you when it wants.

This book will help. There is nothing dumb about that!

Steven C Hayes, PhD

Foundation Professor of Psychology, University of Nevada

Co-developer of ACT

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (said as one word, ACT) is an evidence-based psychological intervention that uses acceptance and mindfulness techniques alongside behaviour change strategies to help you live life according to what really matters to you. Based on recent breakthroughs in understanding how language works, ACT offers a genuinely original perspective on the human condition and the challenge everyone faces in living a life with meaning and purpose.

ACT is all about doing the things that really matter to you and not letting your mind get in the way. Often, without you realising it, your mind what goes on in your head can push you around and interfere with your daily life. Youre so connected with your thoughts that you dont always notice what they do and, importantly, what they stop you doing. But your mind is really just a tool and, like all tools, is good at solving certain problems and pretty hopeless at addressing others. ACT shows you how to use your mind for what its good at and then to set it aside when your thoughts are less helpful.

To help you get on with the life you want to be living, ACT uses a range of exercises to enable you to become more open, aware and active:

• Openness involves stepping forward into life and accepting all that comes with it.
• Awareness means increasing your connection with the world around you rather than living in your head.
• Being active is about doing the things that truly matter to you.

This is an exciting time for ACT. Every month, new research articles and books explore how it can be applied in different settings and to a host of human problems. In fact, so many new applications are being developed that theres insufficient space in this book to cover them all. Rather, we provide a general introduction to ACT with the aim of helping you understand the central principles, ideas and practices that underpin the model. Contrary to popular belief, doing the things that really matter to you can be quite difficult. And the reason for that, according to ACT, is human language. While language enables you to do amazing things, it also allows you to ruminate on the past and worry about the future. And when you become overly entangled in your thoughts you stop living the life you want to be living and instead your life is dictated by your anger, fears, worries and doubts. This insight isnt particularly new, but where ACT differs to other approaches is in how it responds to these events. Rather than tackling this negativity head on, ACT shows you new ways to relate to your thoughts, feelings and emotions so that they have less impact on your day-to-day life.