The Reality Slap 2nd Edition

Practical skills grounded in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) to help you bounce back when life knocks you down. Whether it’s the loss of a loved one or a job, the end of a relationship, a pandemic, or a natural disaster—nothing really prepares us for those moments when life hits hard and turns our world upside down. The good news is that you can move forward. There are tools you can use to find your way back from despair and live a fulfilling life. In this candid self-help guide, psychotherapist Russ Harris offers powerful and doable skills grounded in evidence-based ACT to help you recover from grief, loss, and crisis; transcend your pain and suffering; and build a rich and meaningful life—even in the face of adversity. You’ll also find tools to help you deal with painful memories, create your own healing “grief rituals,” and transform difficult emotions into unexpected allies. Finally, you’ll learn how mindfulness and self-compassion can help keep you grounded, even when it seems like your world is in free fall. If you’re ready to start building the resilience needed to heal from loss or thrive in the face adversity, this guide will show you how to get there, one step at a time.

The “reality slap” takes many different forms. Sometimes, it’s more like a punch: the death of a loved one, a serious illness, a divorce, the loss of a job, a freak accident, or a shocking betrayal. Sometimes it’s a little gentler. Envy, loneliness, resentment, failure, disappointment, and rejection can sting just as much. But whatever form your reality slap takes, one thing’s for sure—it hurts! And most of us don’t deal with the pain very well. The Reality Slap offers a four-part path for healing from crises based on acceptance and commitment therapy. In these pages, you will learn how to: • Find peace in the midst of your pain • Rediscover calm in the midst of chaos • Turn difficult emotions into wisdom and compassion • Find fulfillment, even when you can’t get what you want • Heal your wounds and emerge stronger than before Unlike some self-help books that claim you can have everything you ever wanted in life, if you only put your mind to it, this book claims that you can't have everything in life. The hard truth of this world is that we are all going to experience disappointment, frustration, failure, loss, rejection, illness, injury, aging, and death at some point. However, in spite of all this, you can still lead a rich and rewarding life. Let this book be your guide.

A guide to ACT: the revolutionary mindfulness-based program for reducing stress, overcoming fear, and finding fulfilment – now updated. International bestseller, 'The Happiness Trap', has been published in over thirty countries and twenty-two languages. NOW UPDATED. Popular ideas about happiness are misleading, inaccurate, and are directly contributing to our current epidemic of stress, anxiety and depression. And unfortunately, popular psychological approaches are making it even worse! In this easy-to-read, practical and empowering self-help book, Dr Russ Harries, reveals how millions of people are unwittingly caught in the 'The Happiness Trap', where the more they strive for happiness the more they suffer in the long term. He then provides an effective means to escape through the insights and techniques of ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), a groundbreaking new approach based on mindfulness skills. By clarifying your values and developing mindfulness (a technique for living fully in the present moment), ACT helps you escape the happiness trap and find true satisfaction in life. Mindfulness skills are easy to learn and will rapidly and effectively help you to reduce stress, enhance performance, manage emotions, improve health, increase vitality, and generally change your life for the better. The book provides scientifically proven techniques to: reduce stress and worry; rise above fear, doubt and insecurity; handle painful thoughts and feelings far more effectively; break self-defeating habits; improve performance and find fulfilment in your work; build more satisfying relationships; and, create a rich, full and meaningful life.

Build more compassionate, accepting, and loving relationships with acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). Let’s face it: Picture-perfect storybook romances don’t exist in real life. Couples fight. Feelings of love wax and wane through the years. And the stress and tedium of everyday life and work can often drive a wedge between even the most devoted couples. So, how can you reignite passion and intimacy in your relationship, cultivate greater understanding and compassion between yourself and your partner, and bring the joy back to your love life? In this fully revised and updated edition of ACT with Love, therapist and world-renowned ACT expert Russ Harris shows how developing psychological flexibility—the ability to be in the present moment with openness, awareness, and focus, and to take effective action in line with one's values—can help you and your partner strengthen and deepen your relationship. Also included is new information on attachment theory, powerful mindfulness and self-compassion techniques, and assertiveness and boundary-setting skills. ACT with Love will show you how to: Let go of conflict, open up, and live fully in the present Use mindfulness to increase intimacy, connection, and understanding Resolve painful conflicts and reconcile long-standing differences Act on your values to build a rich and meaningful relationship If you’re looking to increase feelings of intimacy, love, and connection with your partner, this book has everything you need to get started—together.

A unique collaboration between cartoonist/author Bev Aisbett and Dr Russ Harris, this is an illustrated, simplified pocketbook version of Russ’s original, international bestseller 'The Happiness Trap'. It’s an easy-to-read introduction to all those powerful life-changing ideas or a great refresher course for those already familiar with the approach.Commonplace ideas about happiness are often misleading, inaccurate and likely to make you miserable in the long term. For example, positive thinking often does not work — and research shows it actually makes some people feel worse! So open 'The Happiness Trap Pocketbook' and learn how a new scientifically proven, mindfulness-based approach called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (better known as ACT) can help you find genuine wellbeing and fulfilment.Whether you’re lacking confidence, facing illness, stressed at work, struggling with low self-esteem, trying to lose weight or quit smoking, or just wanting to be happier, healthier, and more fulfilled — in this book you will learn effectivetechniques to:• reduce stress and worry• rise above fear, doubt and insecurity• handle painful thoughts and feelings more effectively• break self-defeating habits• develop self-acceptance and self-compassion• let go of inaccurate and misleading (but very popular)ideas about happiness, and• create a rich, full and meaningful life.

Sometimes it can feel like there's a gap between what we plan or hope for in our lives and the reality we're faced with - a so-called 'reality gap'. Sometimes it's a startling reality gap caused by the death of a loved one, for example, or a serious illness, a freak accident, divorce or the loss of a job. Sometimes it's a little gentler: envy, loneliness, resentment, failure, disappointment or rejection. But whatever form your 'reality gap' may take, one thing's for sure: it can cause us great distress. Based on the scientifically proven mindfulness-based approach called 'Acceptance and Commitment Therapy' (ACT), this self-help book will teach you how to cope effectively when life hurts and you will learn not only how to survive life's unexpected curve balls, but also how to thrive, despite them.