I felt compelled to review this book as seeing four stars for a book like this boggles my mind.
I've had a generalised anxiety disorder since 15 and had a nervous breakdown five months ago with intense anxiety and had to be checked in to a mental health hospital to recover, you'd think that I didn't know anything about psychology to get into that state, but I've read an almost silly amount. With this book and other ACT books I am now doing better than ever in my life and am grateful for what I went through as it led me to a life philosophy I will never give up on, in fact i've only just started living at 24 thanks to this. I must have bought every book with even a grain of wisdom on this whole site!
That was just adding to the problem, constantly telling my brain that this anxiety is not acceptable was just sending messages to my brain of how dangerous this anxiety was and the cycle never broke no matter how much insight I got into my own mind.
This book explains brilliantly and in simple terms how to get out of this trap, if you follow the advice and actually act on it then you can't fail to enhance your life.
ACT is definitely borrowed from Buddhism which seems to bug some people, like they stole it or something, which is bizarre, I really don't think the Buddha would be complaining about how his wisdom is being passed on in a different way more appropriate for people with genuine mental health problems. And one reviewers mention of this book's "political correctness" warps my mind, I genuinely have no idea what he's even referring to. Also i'd say that any form of therapy that works incorporates something the Buddha said as he essentially did figure out the crux of human suffering, so whether they notice it or not they will be repeating his theories for a modern age. The word buddhism has a stigma, that despite it's efficiency, turns some people off. Therapy has to stay away from that so as not to alienate people.
All i can say is that I bought probably 100 + books on therapy or ancient wisdom or philosophy and gave them my full attention and all that did was make things worse, had I found this book and realised buying books was part of the problem I could have lived a much fuller life up to this point. Russ Harris reads like a genuinely nice, down to earth guy and this book is also great for people without mental health problems that just want to cope with life a bit better. Don't make the same mistake I made!