The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Depression: Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to Move Through Depression and Create a Life Worth Living (A New Harbinger Self-Help Workbook) Paperback – May 1, 2017

This book is more than a typical 'self help book'; it follows the tenets of Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) where acceptance of depressed thinking and mindfulness is used to understand how an individual has entered a continually reinforcing depression loop. ACT is a a clinical behavior analysis used by many therapists in treating depression with or without drug intervention.I have found this book useful in identifying many of the harmful strategies I've been using to deal with a number of personal losses. I am not yet finished with the book, but I am finding it increasingly useful in working with my therapist to identify my challenges so we can work on finding better strategies that do not reinforce my depressed thought cycle. It is written for a wide audience and is easy to understand, providing well-defined milestones for the reader to use in order to increase awareness of his/her thoughts and behaviors.It is difficult to say whether this process will work for everyone. I have, however, had minimal success with other treatment strategies like cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), so this is a welcome alternative that seems to be benefiting me at the moment.

Strosahl and Robinson follow in the path of "Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life" but focus specifically on depression. A little New Age-y here & there, which initially might or might not be a turn-off, depending on how you feel about such things - but stick with it, because there's lots of powerful material here:- Strong and useful explanation of why we get depressed in the first place. Blaming biology or history doesn't help us; a more useful stance, as the authors explain, is to look not just at the pain in our lives, but at how we react to that pain. Avoidance pushes us into depression, acceptance and action pull us back into life.- A full chapter on how our mind tricks us with reasons & stories that seem to "make sense," but actually keep us stuck.- Nice accompanying CD with guided meditation exercises of various sorts, some for learning mindfulness skills, others for getting in touch with our intuition about what we really want to do in life.- Good closing chapters on building ACT habits that will last rather than fizzle.See full review on my blog - [...] - or just check it out for yourself. You'll be challenged, but you won't be sorry.

I'm just starting out with the workbook and, I must admit, I haven't gotten into it as much as I probably should have by this point... It's not the book's fault, but mine: motivation lacking. My counselor recommended this title, and what I have read is good and useful information. I just need to crank up the motivation, and probably, once I get further into it, I'll be able to generate more motivation. At least, that's what I'm hoping. Best wishes to you if you are in the same place I am!! Love and peace!

This book is the first one I have come across that explores the idea that depression may not need to be treated with medication. Being a life-long "sufferer" of depression, I have read numerous books, seen several different doctors, and have tried several medications.The authors point out that most doctors simply try to throw medication at depression thinking that will be the only thing that helps, while never actually addressing the underlying cause. They also point out that some depression is quite normal, being a normal human reaction to sad and tragic events. For once, someone points out that wearing rose-colored glasses may not be the only "normal" way to go through life, as others would have you think. Rather than thinking of depression as some sort of disease, it can be thought as something quite useful,The book comes with a disk that has electronic copies of worksheets you can print out and use.Truthfully, I never even bothered to try one of the worksheets because I simply don't have the luxury of free time to work through items, but simply reading the theories put forth was very helpful.

Three months ago I bought this book and I was in a really bad place. I was depressed and filled with anxiety. I decided it was time to invest in some therapy and my therapist recommended this workbook to me. Man, did this change my life for the better. I have only gotten through half the book, but I have seen a major improvement so far in learning about the mindfulness methodologies presented in this book. I'm literally rewiring my brain so when challenges do come along that would debilitate me in the past, I can now approach with a more observant point of view where my feelings are not the driving force anymore. I highly recommend this book for anyone who has or is struggling in their life!

I use this book to guide my mindfulness group and I find that the chapters provide sufficient material to send me in the right direction. The examples are clear and interesting to participants, per their feedback and their evident discussion.ACT based therapy is certainly the way to go. This book is a cut above the rest since it describes the concepts in a way that is easy to grasp across multiple populations (including SMI) without watering down the material.

Time is scarce these days for me so choosing to read a book is something I do very carefully. From when I first skimmed through this book I could tell there were many valuable insights that I could apply in my life.Further the book has many useful exercises that have been tested and I found to be very worthwhile.It is really a book to learn about yourself and to create a vision / context for your life and make your life a success.I recommend it.

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