Essential skills for future of being being better.

ACT therapist, so I've heard (most of) this content. Yet I found this speaking to me personally, challenging me to more regularly and deeply apply flexibility skills for myself.
Sort of wish I'd bought the book or had access to the more diagram-y and exercise-y sections in visual form; narrator does fine, recommend listening to Steve on TED or elsewhere to get a sense of his voice.
Listened once so far, now have to go back n write down exercises one at a time and use them.

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rbinbc

I feel like I’m listening to a man who is related to me and to all of humanity. I appreciate his scientific study. His drive to establish another way of managing struggle and mental challenges. The work plans are easy to relate to and difficult enough to challenge me to improve myself. I keep checking in with it. Every few weeks or months. Thanks for writing this book.

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the best iteration and expression of ACT so far

I did not learn act in grad school and left grad school feeling under equipped for the problems I was treating as a junior therapist. the foundation in values and Value Guided action is the clincher for me. I sometimes integrate interpersonal psychodynamic tools. I am curious and will seek answers from further trainings to see if this practice is consistent with the thinking of the greater ACT community.

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Really great delving into ACT therapy

Anyone who is familiar with CBT, or using it I suggest listening to this! Great listen for anyone who is currently getting mental health help!!

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A liberating book

The new book by Steven Hayes is the culmination of a lifetime’s research and clinical practice. It provides readers with a how-to guide to psychological flexibility, the ability to do what matters, no matter what. It is also a deeply personal book. Read it and it might profoundly change your life. I know, because Steve’s work has profoundly changed my life and that of the people I most care about.

In the first part of the book, Steven Hayes describes how his personal struggles with anxiety and panic disorder yielded key insights into human psychology that would eventually lead him to develop Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). ACT is an evidence-based approach that has had a profound and lasting impact and changed the face of psychotherapy. For years Steve struggled with anxiety. This fight gradually engulfed his personal and professional life. Then one night, in the middle of his most frightening panic attack, Steve discovered that as much as his mind could urge him to rush to the emergency room, it couldn’t make him do it. An observer part of him noticed the ongoing drama of the panic attack, and chose to regain control of his life rather than continue surrendering it to anxiety. As a clinical psychologist and researcher, Steve made it his life’s purpose to investigate what psychological processes his insight were rooted in and how to turn them into a new science-based path to human liberation.

Over the next forty years, Steve became the originator of a new evidence-based approach to cognitive-behavioral therapy. He also helped develop Relational Frame Theory (RFT), a new way to understand human language and cognition. RFT describes what makes language a double-edged sword. We owe it both our uniquely human ability to control the world outside our skin, and our uniquely human ability to suffer—even in the midst of plenty. In a highly relatable way, weaving personal recollections, illuminating accounts of research and experiential explorations, Steve guides his readers through how our minds’ abilities to relate everything to everything undergirds much mental suffering. Crucially, he demonstrates how traditional methods such as trying to understand the historical roots of our difficulties, regulating emotion or disputing unhelpful thought patterns can get us stuck. Far from the path to liberation, these attempts more often entangle us in rigid storytelling and emotional avoidance. They can make what we try not to think about ever more mentally present while diminishing our ability to lead a vital and fulfilling life. ACT in these energy-draining traps, readers are invited to discover six crucial pivots that can help transform the energy of the struggle into the source of a vital life.

Lest you think that RFT is but a new fad in psychology, it has over 30 years of research behind it demonstrating it can help children with autism and development disabilities acquire crucial language, perspective-taking and empathy skills. It can also help increase IQ through the deliberate training of the basic relations that RFT shows underlie much of complex human cognitive abilities.

The second part of the book takes readers onto a practical exploration of six pivots that can help our lives move from stuckness to flexibility. Rooted in six fundamental human yearnings, these pivots are key to liberating our minds from their mental shackles. By learning to distance from our mental chatter and better notice where particular thoughts patterns would take us, we can meet our yearning for coherence—not at the level of dry logic as our minds would push us to, but at the more fundamental level of what truly works for our lives. Through acquiring a broader sense of self, free from the narrow limitations of ego and connecting to our fellow humans, we can meet our yearning for belonging. By compassionately accepting difficult experience, we can meet our yearning for feeling. By mindfully focusing our attention to the present moment and what matters, we can meet our yearning for orientation. By contacting and embodying our most deeply held values, we can meet our yearning to create meaning. Finally, by deliberately engaging in actions in line with our personal values, we can meet our yearning for control and competence. Together, these six skills combine to help us pivot toward psychological flexibility, which turns out to be a meta-skill lying at the core of optimal human functioning.

The third part of the book illustrates how to apply the skills thus far practiced to the broad range of life challenges: adopting and keeping healthy behaviors, facing up to mental disorders, nurturing relationships, helping our children grow, combating abuse and overcoming prejudice. It also shows how to use ACT to improve work and sports performance, overcome procrastination and foster learning. ACT can also help nurture spirituality, cultivate forgiveness and face up to chronic illness, disability and cancer. The book concludes with how ACT could contribute to social transformation.

A Liberated Mind is the most comprehensive exploration of ACT so far, written in the distinct voice of its main originator. It explores ACT’s scientific roots and place in the broader scientific field in a language anyone can understand. Meaningfully, the book offers a deeply personal account of Steve Hayes’s personal and scientific path to liberation from the mind-stoked suffering that makes up our human condition. Steve’s heart resonates in every page. I have known Steve for over 12 years and reading the book felt like an intimate conversation with this towering figure of 21st century psychology.

My only gripe, having been a participant to a number of Steve's workshops and conference is that the book was not read by him. However, the reader is very good and brings the text to life in such a way that after a couple of chapters it felt like a conversation with Steven Hayes himself.

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4 people found this helpful

The War is Over

Great lessons and insights, showing a way to exist in the world that involves loving oneself exactly where you are. I have always battled and waged war with my depression and anxiety, now I see them as messengers, guides sent to me so that I might see what is most important in my life and how I still can grow. Will re listen for sure, so that it really sinks in. Become the hero you wish you had, love yourself the way you want to be loved

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1 person found this helpful

This book has the potential to be life changing

An excellent resource for anyone dealing with an anxiety disorder or other forms of mental illness, as long as you pay attention and engage actively in the mental flexibility exercises detailed in this audiobook. Logical and heartfelt throughout, this book really helped me understand how to address and improve my psychological health.

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Good content

The narration makes this audible very difficult to sift out the content which is quite good. The narrator is comparable to a piece of dry toast... it’s awful!

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1 person found this helpful