Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life: The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (A New Harbinger Self-Help Workbook)

I suffer of OCD and panic attacks (if Hell exists, and I believe so, I am sure it has to be something like an eternal panic attack). My life had been, for many years -about 15-, all about my obsessions, compulsions and fears. I lived in a continuous reactive mode to my mind. If my mind was over-curious or stressed I felt fear and just followed it. I would be amazed at myself and my continuous, unstopping over-thinking.I started by reading Tolle's "The Power of Now". The book, instead of helping me, caused me panic attacks (well, the book and my personal circumstances too). I was feeling like "Well, my thougts are different from myself and my self-identity, but... if I am not my mind, if I am not my thoughts, then who am I?". Afterwards, I read "Brain Lock". Great book! Still, I was living in continuous reactive mode: if an obsessive thought would come, I would react with the book methodology (Realize one is having a thought, realize one has OCD, find something else to do and, finally, stop giving importance to the obsessions). The book was a breakthrough for me into CBT. But, walking down a library some day, prey of a depression after a panic attack had spoiled a relationship, I came across this book (Get out of our mind...) I bought it with a bunch of other books.What makes this book so great is that it takes you by hand to ACT (a form of CBT) and actually has compassion at yourself. It goes slowly. It repeats the ideas several times and makes amazing analogies. It explains, in plain English, the mind-trap of trying not to think something and how this is a loophole (the less you try to think on an elephant, the more you think of it). It contains plenty of exercises. I did them (Do them! They actually get yourself out of your talkative mind) and started feeling the change. I had lots of fear at the beginning, to confront my fears -yes: fear of my fears), but after some time I learned -or am learning- to accept my thoughts without fighting them... and then......and then, there was this chapter which actually was called "If I am not my thoughts, then who am I"!! This chapter opened my eyes to living my life not reactively (like, sadly, most people I know do) but proactively: you don't have to follow every little whim and capricious idea that spots on your mind! You can live according to your values and principles!This book changed my life. God knows it did. And OCD and panic have made disasters in my life (destroyed a relationship with a wonderful woman, swamped myself and made me keep stuck on the same laboral position for years, and a very long etcetera), but I am not going to pay attention to them anymore. No matter how much they "yell" inside myself.I got things more important to do than solving my "OCD/Panic" situation. I have some values to live for and some people to love.10/10 (I am re-reading the book now, just after I finished it)

I urge you to get past any shortcomings you find in this book in terms of editing or repetitiveness, of which there are several. What the author has to say is extremely important and could be of great help to readers who struggle with anxiety and obsessive thinking, or those who are grieving traumatic childhoods or lost marriages. Fans of NPR's Invisibilia will recall the first episode in which a therapist worked with a man who had intrusive thoughts of killing a loved one. The therapist did things that seemed crazy, but worked brilliantly. This success was attributed to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and the reporter missed the mark in an otherwise excellent podcast, by attributing CBT to Aaron Beck, when it was originally the work of Albert Ellis, PhD. This book explicates more correctly the type of therapy suggested in that podcast. Rather than talk people out of how they are feeling, Hayes and his ACT cohort argue that we will feel what we are going to feel and we should not flee from that, but instead embrace it and then choose what course we want in life based on our values. Of course that's simplifying things, but the author is scrupulous in telling readers that there are no easy answers and yet there is hope and a meticulously laid-out way to live beyond those fears. If you read one "self-help" book this year, it honestly should be this one. The book can be heavy at times, but so is life. Completing this book won't make life light and airy, but it will help the reader elect to have greater meaning on the journey. And in the end, that's what it's all about.

This is not a bad book. It's a pretty good book. What I find incredibly annoying is that the author doesn't acknowledge his huge debt to Gary Emery, who first coined the acronym "ACT." Hayes' ideas are very close to Emery's, in some cases altered just enough so that it isn't outright plagiarism. Instead of acknowledging Emery or the Zen and Stoic thinkers (Epictetus!) whose ideas and methods are also clearly present, Hayes continually makes claims of being "scientific," and quotes his own "scientific" studies. (Is psychology actually a science?) I have no doubt that studies confirm what earlier philosophies first worked out. Emery's books are also syncretistic, and he also doesn't acknowledge his forerunners, but he belongs to an earlier wave of psychologists drawing on Eastern religions and Stoicism, and much of Hayes' book seems derived from his. It seems to be the culture in self-help psychology to pretend you are the very first prophet.