Russ Harris - ACT with Love: Stop Struggling, Reconcile Differences, and Strengthen Your Relationship with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Dear Reader:

Welcome to New Harbinger Publications. New Harbinger is dedicated to publishing books based on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and its application to specific areas. New Harbinger has a long-standing reputation as a publisher of quality, well-researched books for general and professional audiences.

ACT with Love is perhaps the best book on love and relationships that we have come across in our professional careers. That's because this book is about acting with love in any close personal relationship, including the relationship you have with yourself. This book will help you avoid repeating the mistakes of the past and falling back into patterns of behavior that have not worked for you. It is a beautiful, uplifting book that will benefit you whether you are currently in a good or bad partner relationship, or in no relationship at all. Although the book is written for anyone interested in improving partner relationships or getting back into one, it will also help you improve your relationship with the person you are closest to in the most basic and natural way: yourself.

This book goes beyond the scope of most of the numerous books on love and relationships. Those books typically focus on aspects of relationships that may be in need of improvement by providing well-meaning advice and occasionally some skills. In contrast to books that get bogged down with analyzing relationship patterns, family dynamics, or other complex systems, this book is disarmingly simple (but not at all simplistic) and free of psychological jargon. It gives realistic hope without promising too much or raising false expectations. Like many books in the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Series, this book does not just provide explanations, insights, and advice. It offers you plenty of opportunities to learnin very concrete wayshow to have more open, honest, and fulfilling relationships by innovatively and creatively applying ACT principles to relationships. In just about every chapter, Russ Harris invites you to do a variety of engaging, practical experiential exercises that will bring the material alive and make it personally meaningful to you. The chapter titles are as intriguing and thoughtful as the text that follows. The most important themes are revisited throughout the book so you can consolidate your progress.

Although the book is well grounded in the empirical research base of ACT, it speaks to you from the author's heart as well as his brain.

That is why it can touch you in a profound wayif you stay open to its messages. You can work through the book on your own or with a partner. Some of the exercises are designed to be done with a partner. However, having a (willing) partner is not a prerequisite for benefiting from this book. You can learn the skills by yourself and for yourself. What you learn from this book will enlighten and enrich your life no matter what your current relationship situation is.

As part of New Harbinger's commitment to publishing books based on sound, scientific, clinical research, we oversee all prospective books for the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Series. Serving as series editors, we comment on proposals and offer guidance as needed, and use a gentle hand in making suggestions regarding the content, depth, and scope of each book.

Books in the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Series:

• Have an adequate database, appropriate to the strength of the claims being made.
• Are theoretically coherent. They will fit with the ACT model and underlying behavioral principles as they have evolved at the time of writing.
• Do not overlap needlessly with existing volumes.
• Avoid jargon and unnecessary entanglement with proprietary methods, leaving ACT work open and available.
• Keep the focus always on what is good for the reader.
• Support the further development of the field.
• Provide information in a way that is of practical use to readers.

These guidelines reflect the values of the broader ACT community. You'll see all of them packed into this book. This series is meant to offer information that can truly be helpful in alleviating human suffering. This book certainly fulfills that mission.

Sincerely,

Georg H. Eifert, Ph.D.,

John Forsyth, Ph.D.,

and Steven C. Hayes, Ph.D.