Re: Re: Need to buy an ACT book..:-)

[Guest guest]

, you inspire me.

 

@ , Randy, Russ , Lou, Darrell, Rajesh & Search136why

JAZAKALLAH KHAIR for all your replies & all your wonderful advice:-)

FORTUNATELY,I (accidentally) already bought ACT made Simple (kindle on pc) last night, I was downloading kindle ap & trying to c how u purchase books online, and did the whole purchase by mistake. I started reading it yesterday and looooooooooooovin it:-). But if i had not read some of the Happiness Trap first , i can imagine having a tough time trying to understand Act Made Simple. Hence i am also going to buy Reality Slap. Plus i wanted to read it anyway so i could help my little bro who has MS:-)

As far as jumping from one book to another, and not going through one all the way b4 starting another. i had done 1/2 of Get out of mind..last year, but left it as i was having difficulty following it, then picked up the happiness trap, and then after that, started reading the same topics from get out of your mind.., i loooooooooove it(GOYM)..now i can't keep the book down, coz now i understand dr. hayes style of describing so much better. plus i loooooove how each one has a diff. style of presenting any act concept, diff. metaphors and egs, it makes reading very interesting and ACT very fascinating for me. So i would like to read kelly wilsons book too.

e.g. when dr. steven hayes posted about 'self as context' here, i was a bit lost, then when he posted the other dr. SAC worksheet, i GOT IT! then i went back to dr. steven hayes, and post and re-read it and it made sense, and i loooved it. i needed BOTH to get a better understanding of this concept.

As far as reading the book all the way first without doing the exercises first, & then re-reading & doin the exercises, shoot! i actually take those lines 'very seriously' when russ harris and steven hayes say " DON'T MOVE TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH UNLESS u do the exercise FIRST!! " :-):-). I dunno, but to tell you the truth doing it this way perhaps helped ME the most, coz if u think about it in this group of 10000, i am probably the one who read the least. But i can say that i still understand ACT, even if it's just the basics, & use it daily, it has had a huge impact on my life,despite not even knowing every single detail or having indepth knowledge about ACT.

i wake up every morning and feel like there is nothing stopping me to move forward, whether it is baby steps or to take huge leaps. I do have days when i am all down & depressed about something, but the ironic thing is i am able to differenciate between my pain & my reaction to pain. e.g. sometimes when i am overwhelmed and down my hubby is like, " u have gone through 2 sessions of joaann, by now u should know how to get out of this depressed mood everytime u get like this " ..and the funny thing is i tell my husband " i feel down and depressed, & i am 'choosing' to feel sorry for myself for being down, and i am choosing to dwell over it! " ..:-) hehee, so i know that with my hands and feet i can still take effective action, and let that sad emotion just be there, but sometimes i just feel like i want to feel sorry for myself. the great thing is a am able to get out of it much easily now, sooner too, and i can distinguish between what is really not in my control and what actually is. the ultimate feeling of control is the feeling of being free WITH anxiety!:-)

All those act exercises i did in the book , each and every one of them, i felt like it made me jump to the end of the book, even though i didn;t read up to the end, but helped me get in touch with that sense of a 'life of vitality', which is the whole purpose of ACT.

so basically i wish i could go through the book first all the way, and then re read it and then do exercises, but personally i might not be able to understand anything if i don't do each and every exercise the first time around when i am reading it. But i absolutelty do appreciate that advice too:-)

my way of doing this will take me foreever to finish even a single book, but that's where i practise my difusion;) when i get caught up in how slow i am, coz i have to remind myself that it's not the no. but what i learn from it that matters, even if it's simply 1 book, or 1/2 of 5 books. what i learn and then what i can share to my community and to my family who suffer. that is my purpose. So i would like to do the easy reads first and definately eventually get to the ones which r for therapists too.

THANKYOU guys for clarifying about the new act books too. I guess i was thinking how act evolved from cbt, now the new act editions r evolving with slightly diff. concepts. But now i understand concepts and preinciples r the same, they r just perhaps being explained differenly with every new book, so it is easier and clearer for the audeince to grasp em.

SHOOT, my thank you email is soooo long!

@ Lou:-) to tell ya honestly my expertise is FLUENT 'gibberish'...but i also speak Urdu. have studied French for 10 yrs, and can understand some languages spoken in India. But looks like ur arabic is awesome, 'Shukran, wa alaikum salaam'...woow...masha'allah, i am impressed:-)also i am gonna eventually get audio versions of the mindfulness books you mentioned. jzk:-)

wasalaam:-)