Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Interpersonal Problems: Using Mindfulness, Acceptance, and Schema Awareness to Change Interpersonal Behaviors

by Matthew McKay, Avigail Lev, Michelle Skeen

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Interpersonal Problems presents a complete treatment protocol for therapists working with clients who repeatedly fall into unhealthy patterns in their relationships with friends, family members, coworkers, and romantic partners. These clients may blame others, withdraw when feeling threatened, react defensively in conflicts, or have a deep-seated sense of distrust—all interpersonal problems that damage relationships and cause enormous suffering.


This book presents an acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) approach—utilizing a schema-based formulation—to help these clients overcome maladaptive interpersonal behavior. First, clients learn how schema avoidance behavior damages their relationships. Second, clients face “creative hopelessness” and practice new mindfulness skills. Third, clients examine what they value in their relationships and what they hope to gain from them, and translate their values into clear intentions for acting differently in the future. And lastly, clients face the cognitive and emotional barriers standing between them and values-based behavior in their relationships. By learning to act on their values instead of falling into schema-influenced patterns, clients can eventually overcome the interpersonal problems that hold them back.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Self Help, Counselling

216 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 2012

About the author

Matthew McKay, PhD, is a professor of psychology at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, and author of more than 30 professional psychology and self-help books which have sold a combined total of more than 3 million copies. He is co-founder of independent self-help publisher, New Harbinger Publications. He was the clinical director of Haight Ashbury Psychological Services in San Francisco for twenty five years. He is current director of the Berkeley CBT Clinic. An accomplished novelist and poet, his poetry has appeared in two volumes from Plum Branch Press and in more than sixty literary magazines. His most recent novel, Wawona Hotel, was
published by Boaz Press in 2008.

Reviews

[Justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

One could argue many psychological problems arise from interpersonal or attachment issues, so I was eager to see an approach applied to this specific issue. I've read a few books by McKay, and enjoyed them, so I was surprised this one was directed specifically for therapists rather than the general public. I appreciated the scripts, exercises, and dialogues to illustrate the points rather than pure theory. McKay walks us through schemas, the related coping behaviors then ACT concepts such as creative hopelessness, mindfulness, and values clarification. Putting this all together, we develop value-based action, and teach clients how to develop a different relationship with their thoughts and emotions. I also enjoyed the appendices which include a schema assessment and a detailed ACT group plan. If you're new to ACT, this isn't the book to learn the foundations, rather assumes some knowledge of the approach. Nonetheless, I think ACT (with its focus on intentions and values) is a great way to blend behavioral orientations like CBT and DBT with more psychodynamic and existential therapies. Overall, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Interpersonal Problems is a brief, yet substantial guide for putting ACT in practice.

[Choco · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5
It's written in a very simple and concise way that I liked. This book addressed an issue that I have been finding with many approaches of interpersonal therapy. It didn't occur to me to just combine them with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and create values-based directions with clients.
You will get more out of this book if you already have a certain amount of knowledge of Schema Therapy and ACT. Don't expect to be able to learn ST and ACT in detail only from this book.
Loved it.

[Natalie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book by McKay and colleagues is easy to read and provides a guide for individual and group therapy. This book combines parts of Schema Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). McKay et al. do a very good job of combining ACT with schemas, with a focus on how schemas are triggered in interactions with other people and how schema coping behavior can damage relationships. ACT is used to help clients figure out how they actually want to behave in relationships and how they can handle thoughts and emotions that show up when their schema is triggered.

The book describes how to deliver the content in individual therapy (the sequence of content, how many sessions approximatly to spend on which topic, which homework tasks can be assigned, etc.) and also includes a manual for group therapy.

To fully profit from this book, the reader should come with basic to intermediate knowledge in ACT and possibly also in Schema Therapy as the book doesn't cover the ideas behind these two approaches in detail. However, I don't see this as a drawback - just something to keep in mind when you want to work with this approach.

If you are a therapist working with ACT this book is a very good ressource for working with clients who report ongoing problems in relationships with other people.

[Alex Giurgea · Rating 5 out of 5]

O carte care alatura doua scoli terapeutice “Schema therapy” si ACT pentru a ajuta in rezolvarea problemelor in relatiile cu alte persoane. Contine protocoale de lucru individual si in grup.

[Kit · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't realise that this was for therapists, so it was of limited use to me.