Harris - The happiness trap: stop struggling, start living

There is a tremendous irony in happiness. It comes from a root word meaning by chance or an occurrence, which in a positive sense connotes a sense of newness, wonder, and appreciation of chance occurrences. The irony is that people not only seek it, they try to hold on to itespecially to avoid any sense of unhappiness. Unfortunately, these very control efforts can become heavy, planned, closed, rigid and fixed.

Happiness is not just a matter of feeling good. If it were, drug abusers would be the happiest people on the planet. Indeed, feeling good can be a very unhappy pursuit. It is not by accident that drug users call their methods of doing so a fixbecause they are chemically trying to hold something in place. Like a butterfly pinned to a table, however, happiness dies unless it is held lightly. Drug abusers are not the only ones. In the name of producing an emotional result we call happiness, most of us tend to engage in behaviour that is the exact opposite and then feel awful and inadequate with the inevitable result. Until we wise up, we are all generally trying to get a fix on happiness.

This book is based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which is an empirically supported approach that takes a new and unexpected tack in dealing with the issue of happiness and life satisfaction. Instead of teaching new techniques to pursue happiness, ACT teaches ways to undermine struggle, avoidance, and loss of the moment. Russ Harris has very carefully and creatively presented this approach in an accessible way. In 33 bite-sized chapters he systematically explores how we get into the Happiness Trap and how mindfulness, acceptance, cognitive defusion, and values can release us from it.

The joyful message in these pages is that there is no reason to continue to wait for life to start. That waiting game can end. Now. Like a lion placed in a paper cage, human beings are generally most trapped by the illusions of their own mind. But despite the appearance the cage is not really a barrier that can contain the human spirit. There is another way forward, and with this book Dr Harris shines a powerful and loving beacon forward into the night, lighting that path.

Enjoy the journey. You are in excellent hands.

Just suppose for a moment that almost everything you believed about finding happiness turned out to be inaccurate, misleading or false. And suppose that those very beliefs were making you miserable. What if your very efforts to find happiness were actually preventing you from achieving it? And what if almost everyone you knew turned out to be in the same boatincluding all those psychologists, psychiatrists and self-help gurus who claim to have all the answers?

Im not posing these questions just to grab your attention. This book is based on a growing body of scientific research that suggests we are all caught in a powerful psychological trap. We lead our lives ruled by many unhelpful and inaccurate beliefs about happinessideas widely accepted by society because everyone knows they are true. On the surface, these beliefs seem to make good sensethats why you encounter them again and again in nearly every self-help book you ever read. But these erroneous beliefs are both the cause of and the fuel for a vicious cycle, in which the more we try to find happiness, the more we suffer. And this psychological trap is so well hidden, we dont even have a clue that were caught and controlled by it.

Thats the bad news.

The good news is theres hope. You can learn how to recognise the happiness trap and, more importantly, you can learn how to climb out of itand stay out. This book will give you all the skills and knowledge you need to do it. Its based on a revolutionary new development in human psychology: a powerful model for change known as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).

ACT (pronounced as the word act) was created in the United States of America by psychologist Steven Hayes, and was further developed by a number of his colleagues, including Kelly Wilson and Kirk Stroshal. ACT has been astoundingly effective in helping patients with a wide range of problems: from depression and anxiety to chronic pain and even drug addiction. For example, in one remarkable study, psychologists Patty Bach and Steven Hayes used ACT with patients suffering from chronic schizophrenia and found that only four hours of therapy were sufficient to reduce hospital readmission rates by half! ACT has also proved highly effective for the less dramatic problems that millions of us encounter, such as quitting smoking and reducing stress in the workplace. Unlike the vast majority of other therapies, ACT has a firm basis in scientific research and, because of this, it is rapidly growing in popularity among psychologists all around the world.

The aim of ACT is to help you live a rich, full and meaningful life, while effectively handling the pain that inevitably comes your way. ACT achieves this through the use of six powerful principles, which are very different from the so-called commonsense strategies suggested in most self-help books.

In the western world we now have a higher standard of living than humans have ever known before. We have better medical treatment, more and better food, better housing conditions, better sanitation, more money, more welfare services and more access to education, justice, travel, entertainment and career opportunities. Indeed, todays middle class lives better than did the royalty of not so long ago, and yet, human misery is everywhere.

The psychology and personal development sections of bookstores are growing at a rate never seen before, and the bookshelves are groaning under the strain. The titles cover depression, anxiety, anorexia nervosa, overeating, anger management, divorce, relationship problems, sexual problems, drug addictions, alcoholism, low self-esteem, loneliness, grief, gamblingif you can name it, there s a book on it. Meanwhile, on the television and radio, and in magazines and newspapers, the experts bombard us daily with advice on how to improve our lives. This is why the numbers of psychologists, psychiatrists, marriage and family counsellors, social workers and life coaches are increasing with every year. And yetnow, think about thiswith all this help and advice and worldly wisdom, human misery is not diminishing but growing by leaps and bounds! Isnt there something wrong with this picture?

The statistics are staggering: In any given year almost 30 per cent of the adult population will suffer from a recognised psychiatric disorder. The World Health Organization estimates that depression is currently the fourth biggest, costliest and most debilitating disease in the world, and by the year 2020 it will be the second biggest. In any given week, one-tenth of the adult population is suffering from clinical depression, and one in five people will suffer from it at some point in their lifetime. Furthermore, one in four adults, at some stage in their life, will suffer from drug or alcohol addiction, which is why there are now over twenty million alcoholics in the United States of America alone!