Steven C. Hayes

Hayes is the “originator” (his term) of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT. ACT uses six pivots—defusion, perspective-taking, acceptance, presence (i.e., mindfulness), values, and action—to improve a person’s psychological flexibility in the face of adversity. Hayes is deeply enthusiastic about ACT—sometimes to a fault—but there’s a lot to be said for many elements of its approach. Of A Liberated Mind’s three sections, the first, which explains the mental roadblocks show more and misapprehensions that lead to rumination, self-condemnation, and similar mental ruts; and the second, which discusses the six pivots in detail, are the strongest. The third section is ostensibly about applying ACT to various facets of life (e.g. spirituality, work, addiction) but reads more like an extended infomercial for the approach.

ACT owes a lot to other methods for taming the mind, such as CBT, or Zen or metta meditation, and to be honest, the latter work far better for me because I find much of the ACT approach twee (e.g. imagine your difficult thoughts as leaves floating away on a stream, tell yourself “I’m incapable of walking around this room” while walking around the room, write your fears on notecards and carry them with you throughout the day). But my guess is those methods will probably work for people who find other methods too austere or abstract, and as the principles underpinning them all are the same, it can't hurt to have ACT in the arsenal alongside the other methodologies. show less

This book and this method are helping me a lot. I did not expect that. I got the book from Library Thing Early Reviewers as an advance copy. Nothing else really interested me on their list that month so I figured, "Why not?" I do see it for what it is, which is lots of good, proven ideas from different sources, put together as one by one psychologist and packaged as a new idea. I get that. However, it's working for me. Generally, I like when someone who knows more than I do about something show more and has the time, puts something together for me. You kind of have to wade through some stories to get to things sometimes. Almost like a too chatty but helpful friend or coworker. (I'm not criticizing. I'm too chatty myself but hopefully helpful). He gives some good strategies to deal with things I'm actually dealing with, and it's working. Right away too. show less

Suppose you need therapy. How do you start? This book may be the answer -- if you meet the conditions....

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is a relatively recent form of therapy, using some tools of Cognitive Behavior Therapy but adding some aspects of its own, particularly with reference to language and how it distracts and drives us. Steven C. Hayes is the primary creator of ACT, although others have been involved. The therapists of the local Autism Society with whom I work are fond of show more ACT, so I decided to request this book when it was offered.

We should probably be clear that this is not a book about ACT; there are several such (which Dr. Hayes will try to sell you if you go to his web site https://stevenchayes.com/), but this is informal -- a self-help book. That doesn't make it a quick or easy read -- it's actually longer than the primary ACT textbook, Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life: The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy by Hayes and Spencer Smith. And I'll freely admit that I found it a slog.

There are several reasons for this. Hayes isn't a great writer. Also a roadblock for me Hayes's attitude toward himself and his work. He freely admits to having had an anxiety disorder and panic attacks. This sounds disarming and vulnerable -- but the rest of the time, he is pretty full of himself. ACT is perfect; it's everywhere, it's working; the results are all positive. Maybe they are -- but anything that gets hyped that much gets my hackles up. Hasn't it ever failed?

This is problematic because I can tell you one person for whom the approach failed: Me. For a very specific reason. Time and again, Dr. Hayes tells us to envision something. Envision a parade of people with signs. Envision... well, it doesn't matter what, because I can't envision. I don't have a mind's eye. (Current estimates are that about 2-4% of the population have this condition; it has been proposed to call this condition "aphantasia.") So I sit there and try and obtain no results. That's not really a knock on the therapy; it's just that it has to be adapted for people with aphantasia.

Or try this one. We are told to stand up and walk around the room we are in while saying, "I cannot walk around this room."

That, Dr. Hayes, is a lie. A patent falsehood. You, in your neurotypical narcissistic way may be willing to tell lies. I don't tell lies. Not on purpose, anyway. I make mistakes and get things wrong a lot, but that's different. I'm not interested in your stupid deceptions.

The other thing that grated was some of the popular knowledge that... isn't right. For example, Chapter 9 ("The First Pivot") early on claims that "But is an ancient contraction of be out." But it's not. It's from Middle English bute/but, itself from Old English būtan/būte. Want to see it in Middle English? Look up the Hengwrt manuscript of Chaucer, the earliest and best manuscript of the Canterbury Tales, from around 1400. Line 73 starts wth "But." Not "Be out," "But." I've seen the photo.

Oy.

Yes, I know I am an incredibly obnoxious nitpicker! But the point is, for a nitpicker like me, and someone with my limits, this book doesn't work. Is ACT good? I trust the people at the Autism Society who like it, so it probably is. But I suspect it works better if you have an actual therapist who can adjust it to meet your peculiar limitations -- or, at least, if you're a more typical person than I am.

[Correction 6/30/2019: added a missing quotation mark after be out. Also, I should perhaps stress that I'm not out to criticize ACT, which is apparently a good form of therapy. It's just that this book calls for tools that I, as a person with autism, don't have. That's not a knock on ACT; it's a peculiar failure of this particular implementation to work for a person like me. The other things that irked me would probably have irked me a lot less if I hadn't been expected to be a liar who could visualize things in my head.] show less

Summary: An introduction to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a psychological counseling approach that develops psychological flexibility through learning acceptance rather than resistance or flight from painful thoughts and reality, and how we may pivot toward commitments rooted in what we value most deeply.

Steven C. Hayes proposes we all have a Dictator Within. We all have thoughts that cause us problems. We try not to think about pink elephants, painful experiences, messages that show more tell us all sorts of negative things about ourselves, or that raise our anxieties. We try to argue with those thoughts or avoid them or get rid of them, often in inflexible ruts where we go round and round with little success. At very least, we struggle with lack of peace of mind. At worst, these ways of thinking hamstring the way we live and the relationships we form.

Hayes, one of the pioneers of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) proposes a very different approach. He describes an approach that begins with acceptance of our thoughts. He proposes that one of the things that defuses the power of our thoughts is simply to stop trying to get rid of them and notice them. There is a sense that we step outside these mental processes and take perspective. And it means acceptance of the painful and approaching that pain with curiosity and openness where our goal no longer is feeling GOOD but FEELING good.

Moving from Acceptance to Commitment we learn the practice of presence, of living in the now, the present rather than a painful past or a yearned for future. We identify what we value and then identify actions to which we may commit that support our values.

After tracing the development of this approach in Part 1 and the idea of developing psychological flexibility rather than rigidity through crucial pivots in our lives, in Part 2, he describes the six pivots in greater depth:

1. Defusion--Putting the Mind on a Leash
2. Self--The Art of Perspective Taking
3. Acceptance--Learning from Pain
4. Presence--Living in the Now
5. Values--Caring by Choice
6. Action--Committing to Change

He devotes a chapter to each, sharing, and even walking us through exercises for each pivot.

In Part 3, Hayes applies ACT principles to a variety of aspects of life including healthy behaviors, mental health, nurturing relationships, various types of performance, including sports performance, spiritual well-being, and coping with illness. Here and elsewhere Hayes cites studies showing the superior effectiveness of ACT to other counseling approaches.

I cannot assess his claims. I do have two criticisms. One is how often he repeats the claim of the superiority of this approach, to a point that I found tiresome. The second is that there seemed to be an inadequate "cutting room floor" and I felt that at times, his central ideas and arguments were obscured by excessive verbiage.

Nevertheless, the ideas of acceptance, of defusing, of perspective-taking, of becoming attentive and curious, even about pain, are at the heart of contemplative spirituality that has been helpful to many. To couple this with learning to be present and to live in the now, and to allow our values to shape our commitments seem to reflect the wisdom of many approaches toward transformation. I appreciated Hayes receptiveness to religious faith and an approach that recognized the complementary character of his therapeutic approach and the formational practices in religious traditions.

Perhaps the founder of this approach may be forgiven what I criticized as excesses. He's talking about his baby! What is evident throughout the pages of this book is the author's personal embrace and passion for ACT principles, his extensive clinical practice, and the deep care he has for clients and for seeing people flourish in their lives through applying the psychological flexibility skills he teaches in this work.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program. The opinions I have expressed are my own. show less