Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Christian Clients


Book Description

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Christian Clients is an indispensable companion to Faith-Based ACT for Christian Clients. The workbook offers a basic overview of the goals of ACT, including concepts that overlap with Christianity. Chapters devoted to each of the six ACT processes include biblical examples, equivalent concepts from the writings of early desert Christians, worksheets for clients to better understand and apply the material, and strategies for clients to integrate a Christian worldview with the ACT-based processes. Each chapter also includes several exercises devoted to contemplative prayer and other psychospiritual interventions.




Faith-Based ACT for Christian Clients


Book Description

Faith-Based ACT for Christian Clients balances empirical evidence with theology to give clinicians a deep understanding of not just the "why" but also the "how" of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Christian clients. Chapters include a detailed exploration of the overlap between ACT and the Christian faith, case studies, and techniques that are explicitly designed to be accessible to non-Christian as well as Christian (including evangelical Christian) counselors and therapists. Chapters present the established research on mindfulness and ACT, including a nuanced, non-dichotomous view of complex issues such as medication, and lay a firm theological foundation through the use of engaging biblical stories and metaphors.




A Practical Guide to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy


Book Description

This book is the most practical clinical guide on Acceptance and Commit ment Therapy (ACT said as one word, not as initials) yet available. It is designed to show how the ACT model and techniques apply to various disorders, settings, and delivery options. The authors of these chapters are experts in applying ACT in these various areas, and it is intriguing how the same core principles of ACT are given a nip here and a tuck there to fit it to so many issues. The purpose of this book, in part, is to emboldened researchers and clinicians to begin to apply ACT wherever it seems to fit. The chapters in the book demonstrate that ACT may be a useful treat ment approach for a very wide range of clinical problems. Already there are controlled data in many of these areas, and soon that database will be much larger. The theory underlying ACT (Relational Frame Theory or "RFT"-and yes, here you say the initials) makes a powerful claim: psy chopathology is, to a significant degree, built into human language. Fur ther, it suggests ways to diminish destructive language-based functions and ways of augmenting helpful ones. To the extent that this model is cor rect, ACT should apply to a very wide variety of behavioral issues because of the centrality of language and cognition in human functioning.




Christian Meditation in Clinical Practice


Book Description

What would it look like to turn to the Christian faith to cultivate meditation practices? Presenting Christian meditation as an alternative to Buddhist-informed mindfulness, this workbook from Dr. Joshua Knabb offers a Christian-sensitive approach to meditation in clinical practice, focusing on both building theory and providing replicable practices for Christian clients and their therapists.




Christ-centered Therapy


Book Description

Help your clients gain access to the transformative grace of God through Christ! All too often, psychology and spirituality are kept in separate boxes, lessening the power of each to work effective changes. Christ-Centered Therapy: Empowering the Self brings together Christian faith with the Internal Family System (IFS) model. This widely accepted paradigm facilitates psychological healing by showing how the self can become the change agent for the dysfunctional internal system. Christ-centered IFS (CCIFS) combines the power of internal system therapy with the healing power of God for lasting change. Therapists with Christian clients, faith-based clients, or clients who need foundational grounding will benefit from the psychological and spiritual dimensions of Christ-Centered Therapy: Empowering the Self. This powerful therapeutic model posits a self surrounded by subpersonalities who carry anger, fear, distrust, and other negative responses. When the client's self takes the leadership role, the self becomes the channel for Christ's grace for all the subpersonalities. One by one they become empowered, center around self and God, and contribute their resources to the functioning of the whole personality. Christ-Centered Therapy: Empowering the Self provides exercises and visual aids to help both client and counselor, including: four tools to teach the self to lead effectively worksheets to serve as a structural and visual guide to understanding, developing, and using each tool a "parts map" for client and counselor to use collaboratively cartoons, structural diagrams, and dialogues to illustrate new concepts and procedures Each chapter of Christ-Centered Therapy: Empowering the Self provides specific help for the counselor, including: case studies showing step-by-step clinical interventions a content summary a clinical outline listing the interventions in sequence an exercise to help counselors discover their own inner and spiritual dynamics Christ-Centered Therapy: Empowering the Self brings together the diagnostic and restorative power of IFS with the transforming power of Christian spirituality. It is essential for Christian counselors and for non-Christian counselors who are seeking more effective ways to treat Christian clients.




ACT for Clergy and Pastoral Counselors


Book Description

For the first time ever, three pioneers in the field of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) present an edited volume that outlines how the core ACT processes can be applied to religious and spiritual care approaches. If you are a clergy leader or pastoral counselor, people struggling with difficult situations or life traumas frequently turn to you for guidance. And while you’re passionate about helping, you may be unprepared for counseling people with certain mental health challenges. On the other hand, if you are a psychotherapist, you may need guidance in supporting your client’s religious belief system in therapy. In either case, this book presents a powerful road map to help you provide the best care. In this book, you’ll find a complete overview of ACT, as well as strategies for integrating ACT and issues related to spirituality. You’ll also learn how the core processes of ACT—such as commitment to change and values-based living—can be seamlessly tied into spiritual and religious counseling, no matter your faith or therapeutic background. By teaching you how to fuse conceptual psychological and spiritual principles, this book will provide you with the tools needed to enhance your counseling skill set.




Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life


Book Description

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a new approach to psychotherapy that rethinks even the most basic assumptions of mental well-being. Starting with the assumption that the normal condition of human existence is suffering and struggle, ACT works by first encouraging individuals to accept their lives as they are in the here and now.




Faith-Based ACT for Christian Clients


Book Description

Faith-Based ACT for Christian Clients balances empirical evidence with theology to give mental health professionals a deep understanding of both the "why" and "how" of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) for Christians. The new edition includes updated discussions in each chapter, more than 20 new and updated exercises, and new chapters on couples and trauma. The book includes a detailed exploration of the overlap between ACT and the Christian faith, case studies, and techniques that are explicitly designed to be accessible to both non-Christian and Christian (including evangelical Christian) counselors and therapists. Chapters also present the established research on Buddhist-influenced mindfulness meditation and newer research on Christian-derived meditative and contemplative practices and lay a firm theological foundation through the use of engaging biblical stories and metaphors.




The Compassion-based Workbook for Christian Clients


Book Description

The Compassion-Based Workbook for Christian Clients integrates contemporary research in clinical psychology on compassion-based approaches to shame with a Christian worldview, offering a wide variety of strategies for Christians to better understand and combat shame and negative self-judgments. Chapters lay out a four-step process to help clients let go of unhelpful thinking patterns that lead to shame, experience God's compassion on a deeper level, and extend this compassion to themselves and others. Readers will find a wealth of Christian-sensitive experiential exercises, journaling assignments, biblical examples, and case examples throughout the workbook. Audio recordings for several guided meditations are also provided to help Christians practice the strategies offered in the workbook.




The Happiness Trap


Book Description

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.