Russ Harris

Steven Hayes

Draws on the principles Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to explain how mindfulness can overcome common emotional problems and help individuals escape self-defeating habits and rise above fears to create a richer, more meaningful life.

How to Stop Struggling and Start Living

The Happiness Trap

Over the last 35 years, Steven C. Hayes and his colleagues have developed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) with many hundreds of studies supporting the impact of his approach on everything from chronic pain to weight loss to prejudice and bigotry. A Liberated Mind is the summary of Steven's life's work which will teach readers how to live better, happier and more fulfilled lives by applying the six key processes of ACT. Put together these processes teach us to pivot- to "defuse" rather than fuse with our thoughts; to see life from a new perspective; and to discover our chosen values, those qualities of being that fuel meaning. Steve shares fascinating research results like how ACT techniques decreased typing errors on a clerical test or showed that positive affirmations actually increase negative emotion. And he weaves them with stories of clients and colleagues as well as his own riveting story of healing himself of a severe panic disorder, which is how the idea of psychological flexibility was born. A Liberated Mind is a powerful and important book about a new form of psychology, destined to become a modern classic of narrative psychology on par with Daring Greatly and Rising Strong by Brene Brown, or Carol Dweck's Mindset.

The Essential Guide to ACT

A Liberated Mind

Provides advice, based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, to transform one's relationship with fear and anxiety and develop self-confidence.

A Guide to Overcoming Fear and Self-doubt

The Confidence Gap

Spencer Smith

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a new approach to psychotherapy that rethinks even the most basic assumptions of mental well-being. Starting with the assumption that the normal condition of human existence is suffering and struggle, ACT works by first encouraging individuals to accept their lives as they are in the here and now.

Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life

William O'Donohue

Jane Fisher

Deborah Henderson

Linda Hayes

In this unique work, eighteen of the most influential and significant figures in the various subareas of behavior therapy (from behavior analysis through cognitive therapy) are brought together to discuss their work and the sources and influences that affected it. At times moving, profound, and humorous, it casts a new and perhaps more human light on the most influential movement in behavioral health in the latter part of the 20th century. These intellectual biographies range in tone and intensity as each author uses their own particular style to convey their views about the field and their individual impact on it. For those interested in the behavioral and cognitive movement, this book is a must have since it is the only book to have chronicled the individual histories of the founders of the applied behavioral movement before they are lost forever.

Founders' Personal Histories

A History of the Behavioral Therapies

For a scientist committed to empirical evaluation, it is important to show that materials can be helpful outside the context of a therapeutic relationship, so, generally speaking, we know that a book like this is likely to be helpful. Several of the specific components in this book have been tested, sometimes in a form very similar to the way you are contacting this material. For example, several studies evaluated the impact of short passages drawn nearly word for word from ACT materials (very similar to what you've read) that were recorded on audiotape, read aloud by a research assistant, or were presented to the participants to read. Typically, these studies focused on the ability of participants to tolerate distress of various kinds, such as gas-induced panic-like symptoms, extreme cold, extreme heat, or electric shock. A few studies looked at the distress produced by difficult or intrusive cognitions, or clinically relevant anxiety. Some were done with patients, others with normal populations. The specific ACT components that have been examined so far include defusion, acceptance, mind-fulness, and values. The techniques included exercises, metaphors, and rationales, including several that can be found in this book (e.g., word repetition, physicalizing, leaves on a stream, the quicksand metaphor, the Chinese finger trap metaphor, and so forth). Thus, it seems fair to say that it is known that at least some of what you've read can be helpful at least some of the time outside of the context of a therapeutic relationship, when presented in a form similar to the form in which you have contacted this material.

Steven Hayes

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