Leave Your Mind Behind: The Everyday Practice of Finding Stillness Amid Rushing Thoughts
About this ebook
Leave Your Mind Behind offers a collection of light-hearted practices readers can use to learn to observe their thoughts without getting caught up in them. Each practice is grounded in a component of the new acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) called cognitive defusion: the process of de-fusing or not identifying or becoming one with your thoughts. Sometimes downright strange—imagine yourself hearing your thoughts in the voice of a headless monster!—these activities don't seek to stop or control problematic thinking. Instead, they work to show readers how to observe thoughts without judgment and learn to live with the confounding and marvellous word-making, story-telling machine that is the human mind.
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About the author
Matthew McKay, PhD, is a professor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, CA. He is coauthor of The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook, The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook, Thoughts and Feelings, When Anger Hurts, and others. His books combined have sold more than five million copies. He received his PhD in clinical psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology. In private practice, he specializes in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and anxiety. He lives and works in the greater San Francisco Bay Area.
Catharine Sutker is a freelance writer living in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the coauthor of The Self-Esteem Companion and The Self-Nourishment Companion.
