ACT Made Simple: An Easy-To-Read Primer on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Edition 2

Russ Harris

May 2019 · New Harbinger Publications

About this ebook

The bestselling ACT guide for therapists, clinicians, coaches, and mental health professionals—now fully revised and expanded.

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is one of today’s most widely used third-wave behavioral therapies for helping clients build psychological flexibility, get unstuck from painful thoughts and feelings, take meaningful action guided by their values, and create lasting behavior change. But ACT can be difficult to learn from theory alone.

Written by renowned ACT trainer Russ Harris, ACT Made Simple makes the ACT model clear, accessible, and immediately usable. Whether you’re new to ACT or looking for a reliable refresher, this essential guide gives you the language, techniques, metaphors, exercises, and tools you need to bring ACT to life in real-world practice.

With this fully revised and updated edition, you will:

• Gain a clear understanding of the ACT hexaflex and six core processes
• Help clients build psychological flexibility and present-moment awareness
• Use mindfulness and self-as-context to help clients relate differently to thoughts and feelings
• Teach cognitive defusion skills to help clients gain distance from painful thoughts
• Help clients clarify values, make workable choices, and move toward what matter
• Find new and expanded material on self-compassion, flexible perspective taking, and trauma
• Discover practical scripts, metaphors, worksheets, and experiential exercises to use in session
• Adapt ACT for a wide range of clinical applications with confidence, flexibility, and skill

Grounded in mindfulness, acceptance, values, and behavior change, ACT Made Simple helps therapists and clinicians move beyond abstract theory and into practical therapeutic conversations. You’ll learn how to help clients stop struggling with their inner experience, recognize what is and isn’t workable, and take meaningful action aligned with the life they want to build.

Whether you’re working with clients experiencing depression, anxiety, addiction, eating disorders, psychosis, borderline personality disorder (BPD), or trauma, ACT Made Simple is the go-to guide to keep within reach.

NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER: Due to the recent illegal counterfeiting of this book, we cannot guarantee book quality when purchased through third-party sellers.

About the author

Russ Harris is an internationally acclaimed acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) trainer and author of the best-selling ACT-based self-help book The Happiness Trap, which has sold over 600,000 copies and been published in thirty languages. He is widely renowned for his ability to teach ACT in a way that is simple, clear, and fun—yet extremely practical.

Foreword writer Steven C. Hayes, PhD, is Foundation Professor of psychology at the University of Nevada, Reno, and the originator of ACT. He is author of dozens of books and scientific articles, including the successful ACT workbook Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life.