Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life: The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

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Defusion is like taking off your glasses and holding them out, several inches away from your face; then you can see how they make the world appear to be yellow, instead of seeing only the yellow world” (71) He runs the leading Ph.D program in Behavior Analysis, and coined the term Clinical Behavior Analysis. He is known for devising a behavior analysis of human language and cognition called Relational Frame Theory, and its clinical application to various psychological difficulties, such as anxiety. An author of 38 books and 550 articles, in 1992 he was listed by the Institute for Scientific Information as the 30th "highest impact" psychologist in the world during 1986-1990 based on the citation impact of his writings during that period. Is not: wanting, conditional, trying or effortful, a matter of belief, the self-deception of “yes, if…” If you find yourself entangled in a ‘logical’ but sad story about your life, and why things have to be the way they are, write down the normal story, then take all the descriptive facts and write the same exact facts into a different story” (84)

Life is hard. Life is also many other things. Ultimately your life is what you choose to make it. When the word machine dominates, life works one way. When the verbal evaluative side of you is but one source of input, life works differently. The choices themselves aren’t always easy, but finding the freedom to choose is a liberating experience. It’s your life. It is not the word machine’s - even though (of course) it tells you otherwise. (194) ACT is not about fighting your pain; it’s about developing a willingness to embrace every experience life has to offer. It’s not about resisting your emotions; it’s about feeling them completely and yet not turning your choices over to them. ACT offers you a path out of suffering by helping you choose to live your life based on what matters to you most. If you’re struggling with anxiety, depression, or problem anger, this book can help—clinical trials suggest that ACT is very effective for a whole range of psychological problems. But this is more than a self-help book for a specific complaint—it is a revolutionary approach to living a richer and more rewarding life. Willingness means shifting your agenda from the content of your pain to the content of your life.” (129) In any given moment the issue is the same: Will you feel what you feel when you feel it? This is a yes or no question. It can be answered in only two ways: yes or no.” (128)levels of self: 1. Conceptualized self, 2. Self as ongoing process of self-awareness, 3. Observing self Ask yourself this question when you think you’ve failed: What is buying that thought in the service of? What value does it comport with? Being right? Never failing? Never being vulnerable? Is that what you want your life to be about? If not, take responsibility even for your mind chattering on about what a failure you are. Feel the pain. Learn from it. Then move on.” (162)

As much as I want to agree with the stop-thinking asceticism of cognitive behaviorism meets buddhism ("We're not saying don't feel your feelings! Feel them so deeply you don't care! Um! This makes sense to me sometimes while I'm at ACT therapy seminars!"), it just doesn't work for the more think-y among us. I like being in my mind. Being in my mind is being in my life. Finding varying ways to relate to pain -- sometimes cowering from it and sometimes snuggling up to it -- is what marks me as a human being. I find that ACT self-help book read dogmatically. And I think the mark of any bad self-help book and definitely any bad psychotherapy is a one size fits all approach -- believing so deeply as Hayes does that the tenets of this book repudiate other ways people try to help themselves. Hayes has been President of Division 25 of the American Psychological Association, of the American Association of Applied and Preventive Psychology, the Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy (now known as the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies), and the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science. He was the first Secretary-Treasurer of the American Psychological Society (now known as the Association for Psychological Science), which he helped form. Steven C. Hayes, PhD, is Nevada Foundation Professor in the department of psychology at the University of Nevada. An author of thirty-four books and more than 470 scientific articles, he has shown in his research how language and thought leads to human suffering, and cofounded ACT, a powerful therapy method that is useful in a wide variety of areas. Hayes has been president of several scientific societies and has received several national awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapy. Trying to get rid of your pain only amplifies it, entangles you further in it, and transforms it into something traumatic. Meanwhile, living your life is pushed to the side. (7)

I love ACT, so it pains me to rate this less than 4 or 5 stars, but I would really hesitate to recommend it to any consumer with less than a master’s degree. The appendix includes a note to scientists explaining that the authors dumbed down many of the Relational Frame Theory (RFT) concepts for the sake of the general public, and they did, but still there is much in here that goes way beyond what an average self-help consumer will push through. I find the exercises and quotes useful to me as a practitioner but it’s hard for me to imagine more than a handful of the people I have ever worked with going through this book start to finish. I’m willing to be wrong about that.