Finding Life Beyond Trauma: Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress and Trauma-Related Problems

By Victoria M. Follette and Jacqueline Pistorello, Ph.Ds

Because it views experiential avoidance as a central problem in a range of psychological problems, acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is especially well suited to the treatment of trauma-related problems, which often present avoidance as a symptom.

This is the first book to adapt ACT principles to a self-care approach readers can use to help overcome the lingering effects of traumatic events. Helps readers accept the unpleasant feelings they associate with past trauma. Shows why strategies that have them “control” these negative feelings can have severe long-term consequences, such as substance abuse and chronic anxiety – especially when the attempts at control result in the avoidance of normal activities and situations.

Encourages readers to develop psychological flexibility and a willingness to embrace “clean” painful experience that is a necessary and unavoidable part of living. Readers discover that life after trauma is very much worth the bumps and scrapes they receive on the way to living it.

208 pages. 8.5 x 11. June 2007. $34.95.

INH

0922