Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Interpersonal Problems presents a complete treatment protocol for therapists working with clients who repeatedly fall into unhealthy patterns in their relationships with friends, family members, coworkers, and romantic partners. These clients may blame others, withdraw when feeling threatened, react defensively in conflicts, or have a deep-seated sense of distrust—all interpersonal problems that damage relationships and cause enormous suffering. This book presents an acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) approach—utilizing a schema-based formulation—to help these clients overcome maladaptive interpersonal behavior. First, clients learn how schema avoidance behavior damages their relationships. Second, clients face “creative hopelessness” and practice new mindfulness skills. Third, clients examine what they value in their relationships and what they hope to gain from them, and translate their values into clear intentions for acting differently in the future. And lastly, clients face the cognitive and emotional barriers standing between them and values-based behavior in their relationships. By learning to act on their values instead of falling into schema-influenced patterns, clients can eventually overcome the interpersonal problems that hold them back.

Acceptance and commitment therapy, or ACT (pronounced as a word rather than letters), is an emerging psychotherapeutic technique first developed into a complete system in the book Acceptance and Commitment Therapy by Steven Hayes, Kirk Strosahl, and Kelly Wilson. ACT marks what some call a third wave in behavior therapy. To understand what this means, it helps to know that the first wave refers to traditional behavior therapy, which works to replace harmful behaviors with constructive ones through a learning principle called conditioning. Cognitive therapy, the second wave of behavior therapy, seeks to change problem behaviors by changing the thoughts that cause and perpetuate them. In the third wave, behavior therapists have begun to explore traditionally nonclinical treatment techniques like acceptance, mindfulness, cognitive defusion, dialectics, values, spirituality, and relationship development. These therapies reexamine the causes and diagnoses of psychological problems, the treatment goals of psychotherapy, and even the definition of mental illness itself. ACT earns its place in the third wave by reevaluating the traditional assumptions and goals of psychotherapy. The theoretical literature on which ACT is based questions our basic understanding of mental illness. It argues that the static condition of even mentally healthy individuals is one of suffering and struggle, so our grounds for calling one behavior 'normal' and another 'disordered' are murky at best. Instead of focusing on diagnosis and symptom etiology as a foundation for treatment-a traditional approach that implies, at least on some level, that there is something 'wrong' with the client-ACT therapists begin treatment by encouraging the client to accept without judgment the circumstances of his or her life as they are. Then therapists guide clients through a process of identifying a set of core values. The focus of therapy thereafter is making short and long term commitments to act in ways that affirm and further this set of values. Generally, the issue of diagnosing and treating a specific mental illness is set aside; in therapy, healing comes as a result of living a value-driven life rather than controlling or eradicating a particular set of symptoms. Emerging therapies like ACT are absolutely the most current clinical techniques available to therapists. They are quickly becoming the focus of major clinical conferences, publications, and research. More importantly, these therapies represent an exciting advance in the treatment of mental illness and, therefore, a real opportunity to alleviate suffering and improve people's lives. Not surprisingly, many therapists are eager to include ACT in their practices. ACT is well supported by theoretical publications and clinical research; what it has lacked, until the publication of this book, is a practical guide showing therapists exactly how to put these powerful new techniques to work for their own clients. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Anxiety Disorders adapts the principles of ACT into practical, step-by-step clinical methods that therapists can easily integrate into their practices. The book focuses on the broad class of anxiety disorders, the most common group of mental illnesses, which includes general anxiety, panic disorder, phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Written with therapists in mind, this book is easy to navigate, allowing busy professionals to find the information they need when they need it. It includes detailed examples of individual therapy sessions as well as many worksheets and exercises, the very important 'homework' clients do at home to reinforce work they do in the office. The book comes with a CD-ROM that includes electronic versions of all of the worksheets in the book as well as PowerPoint and audio features that make learning and teaching these techniques easy and engagin

Interest in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is expanding rapidly. Many of those who are interested in ACT are trained using a mechanistic cognitive behavioral therapy model (or MCBT). Utilizing both ACT and MCBT together can be difficult, because the approaches make different philosophical assumptions and have different theoretical models. The core purpose of the book is to help provide a bridge between ACT and MCBT. The emphasis of this book will be applied psychology, but it will also have important theoretical implications. The book will highlight where ACT and MCBT differ in their predictions, and will suggest directions for future research. It will be grounded in current research and will make clear to the reader what is known and what has yet to be tested. The core theme of A CBT-Practitioner's Guide to ACT is that ACT and CBT can be unified if they share the same philosophical underpinnings (functional contextualism) and theoretical orientation (relational frame theory, or RFT). Thus, from a CBT practitioner's perspective, the mechanistic philosophical core of MCBT can be dropped, and the mechanistic information processing theory of CBT can be held lightly and ignored in contexts where it is not useful. From an ACT practitioner's perspective, the decades of CBT research on cognitive schema and dysfunctional beliefs provides useful information about how clients might be cognitively fused and how this fusion might be undermined. The core premise of the book is that CBT and ACT can be beneficially integrated, provided both are approached from a similar philosophical and theoretical framework. The authors acknowledge that practitioners often have little interest in extended discussions of philosophy and theory. Thus, their discussion of functional contextualism and RFT is grounded clearly in clinical practice. They talk about what functional contextualism means for the practitioner in the room, with a particular client. They describe how RFT can help the practitioner to understand the barriers to effective client action.

Build more compassionate, accepting, and loving relationships with acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). Let’s face it: Picture-perfect storybook romances don’t exist in real life. Couples fight. Feelings of love wax and wane through the years. And the stress and tedium of everyday life and work can often drive a wedge between even the most devoted couples. So, how can you reignite passion and intimacy in your relationship, cultivate greater understanding and compassion between yourself and your partner, and bring the joy back to your love life? In this fully revised and updated edition of ACT with Love, therapist and world-renowned ACT expert Russ Harris shows how developing psychological flexibility—the ability to be in the present moment with openness, awareness, and focus, and to take effective action in line with one's values—can help you and your partner strengthen and deepen your relationship. Also included is new information on attachment theory, powerful mindfulness and self-compassion techniques, and assertiveness and boundary-setting skills. ACT with Love will show you how to: Let go of conflict, open up, and live fully in the present Use mindfulness to increase intimacy, connection, and understanding Resolve painful conflicts and reconcile long-standing differences Act on your values to build a rich and meaningful relationship If you’re looking to increase feelings of intimacy, love, and connection with your partner, this book has everything you need to get started—together.

Drop the Rope in Your Tug-of-War with Anger If you've tried to control problem anger before with little success, this book offers you a fundamentally new approach and new hope. Instead of struggling even harder to manage or eliminate your anger, you can stop anger feelings from determining who you are and how you live your life. Based on a revolutionary psychological approach called acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), the techniques in ACT on Life Not on Anger can help you let go of anger and start living your life to the fullest. Your path begins as you learn to accept your angry feelings as they occur, without judging or trying to manage them. Then, using techniques based in mindfulness practice, you'll discover how to observe your feelings of anger without acting on them. Value-identification exercises help you figure out what truly matters to you so that you can commit to short- and long-term goals that turn your values into reality. In the process, anger will lose power over your life-and, amazingly, you'll gain control over your life by simply letting go of your angry feelings.

People with psychological problems almost always experience difficulties with interpersonal relationships and communication. Are interpersonal difficulties simply the result of psychological disturbance, or can they also precipitate and maintain psychopathology? This book provides an in-depth analysis of interpersonal theories and research findings on frequently encountered mental health problems. It integrates results from hundreds of studies on parent child relations, marital interaction, personal relationships, communication, and related areas. The focus is on elucidating the role of interpersonal difficulties in the development and persistence of the full range of major psychological disorders: depression, schizophrenia, eating disorders, anxiety, alcoholism, bipolar disorder, and personality disorders. In the process, the book provides the most comprehensive discussion to date of the interpersonal paradigm in mental health.

Relationships take work. In this much-anticipated book, best-selling author Matthew McKay and psychologist Avigail Lev present the ten most common relationship schemas, and provide an evidence-based acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) treatment protocol for professionals to help clients overcome the barriers that hold them back in their relationships. Romantic relationships are a huge challenge for many of us, as evidenced by our high divorce rates. But what is it that causes so much pain and discord in many relationships? In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Couples, Matthew McKay and Avigail Lev provide the first ACT-based treatment protocol for couples that identifies the ten most common relationship schemas—and the coping behaviors they drive—to help you guide clients through their pain and toward solutions that reflect the needs and values of the couple. Rather than working to stop relationship schemas from being triggered or to reduce schema pain, you’ll be able to help your clients observe and name what triggers their rigid coping behaviors when their schemas are activated. And by learning new skills when they’re triggered, your clients will be able to replace avoidant and coping behaviors with values-based action for the betterment of the relationship. By making your clients’ avoidant behavior the target of treatment— as opposed to their thoughts and beliefs—this skills-based guide provides the tools you need to help your clients change how they respond to their partner.