by russ harris
Please Note: Each book review is intended to provide an overview of the content and it’s main benefit to the reader. Though I recommend reading a book alongside following The Roadmap, I am in no way connected to the author or publisher or them to me or this website.
key elements
– An introduction to, and practical handbook of, ACT: Acceptance & Commitment Therapy
– Happiness given a simple, straightforward definition and related to values.
– Some great practical ways of understanding and dealing with your own feelings and thoughts
– Mindfulness based, connecting your thoughts, feelings and body
why this book is worth reading
For me, self examination, which is what any kind of therapy requires, is commonly a necessary step towards finding peace in yourself and the world. The Happiness Trap is a good place to start if you are wondering how exactly to define happiness, this state we’re all supposedly searching for in life.
It will also help you get to know your thought processes and how you can use mindfulness to listen to yourself without necessarily acting on every thought you have. This being both acting out in the world or acting against (pushing away the thought) in your own mind.
The Happiness Trap is similar in some ways to Not Nice, by also focusing on finding what is important to you – your values – as the way to live a full life. If you are new to self-examination then learning how to listen to yourself is a vital skill to learn. If you have been through years of therapy, especially CBT then ACT’s approach may feel like a release with an Aha moment or two along the line.
What is ACT therapy?
There are many different types of psychological therapy, all aimed at helping us understand ourselves and our actions and to help us live happier more satisfied lives. The most popular and best know is CBT – Cognitive Behavioural Therapy which directs us to look at our thoughts and change them if they are unhelpful. It also looks at our actions in relation to our thoughts and shows that what we do affects how we feel. ACT therapy is a very practical style of therapy that has grown out of the CBT tradition.
However, where CBT can feel like a fight with yourself, always trying to win over negative thoughts and actions, ACT encourages a mindful approach to ourselves. It will help you accept those thoughts & actions that are unhelpful, without the need to go along with such thoughts or try and push them away.
Happiness defined
The Happiness trap is clearly divided into three parts. The second part is all about your thoughts and feelings, your inner world on a day to day basis. The third part is about examining your values and what living your life by your values means and how this benefits you. Part One is about defining Happiness.
The introduction to Part One of the book is titled, “I Just Want To Be Happy!”, surely an exclamation we have all wailed at one time or another, usually at a difficult or stressful time. You’ve also probably heard parents say it about their children – I just want them to be happy. Except what on earth does this look like? What is a happy life anyway?
Harris defines happiness as being less about the short lived thrills of success, glitzy prizes or sensual pleasures and more about “living a rich, full and meaningful life.” His first step towards this, in chapter one, is blowing up four common myths that the “Happiness Trap” is built upon.
Myth 1 – Happiness Is The Natural State of All Human Beings – this is about allowing the fact that life throws curve-balls, has challenges, no matter how rich, beautiful or enlightened you become. No one is happy all the time.
Myth 2 – If You’re Not Happy You’re Defective – We are so often taught that it is bad to feel sad and good to feel happy, rather than looking at these states as being part of the totality of being human.
Myth 3 – To Create A Better Life, We Must Get Rid Of Negative Feelings – Though you may accept the reality that things go wrong (life gets in the way) but still we often say -stiff upper lip, think positive, get through it and get back onto the good happiness track as soon as possible. This is how suppression and repression work.
Myth 4 – You Should Be Able To Control What You Think And Feel – This is a biggie and what Harris points out, most of the world of therapy is built upon. If you could learn to control your actions, thoughts and feelings then you would be happy. learning about just how little control we have of our own thoughts is what Part Two of the book moves onto now.
mindfullness Skills
True happiness – leading a meaningful life, Harris warns us, involves accepting pain. This is both accepting the inevitability of illness but more often it is pain in a mental sense, which comes through challenging ourselves to take risks and reach for what we really value. This is the pain of the fear of rejection for example, or the self-criticism we dole out to ourselves when our actions don’t work out the way we want. ACT has developed six core principles to help people deal with and move through their pain.
These core principles are outlined by Harris in chapter three. They are 1. Diffusion; 2. Expansion; 3. Connection; 4. The Observing Self; 5. Values; 6. Committed Action;
Learning and applying the first four principles, which Harris collectively calls “mindfulness skills” is what Part Two (the bulk of of the book) is all about and there is a great deal of meat here.
the Observing Self
Starting with the final of these mindfulness skills – The Observing Self – Harris describes this in chapter seven. If you have never listened to your thoughts, then this is where to start. The observing self is that part of ourselves that can step back from the action of our usual thoughts and observe them. One of the easiest ways to do this is as Harris says to think to yourself – “I’m having the thought…” and fill in the blank.
Maybe I’m having the thought that no-one likes me. Or I’m having the thought that life is too hard, or I’m having the thought that I will never find a job., or I’m having the thought that I must be strong, or I’m having the thought that if I’m not nice I’m selfish and it’s bad to be selfish.
By getting in touch with our observing self (what IFS calls “Self” and what many, particularly eastern religions and spiritual traditions have mused upon for millennia) we can take a step back from all our, often competing thoughts, both positive and negative. This is key and I explore the Observing Self elsewhere in this website with IFS.
the Storm Within
The three other core principles of Diffusion, Expansion and Connection are all about how to that step back from your thoughts and accept them. Here, as elsewhere with Mate’s 7 A’s of healing (see the article ALIIGNED) you’ll see that acceptance doesn’t mean just going along with any thought that comes along.
However, unlike IFS, ACT sees thoughts, emotions, feelings, urges and memories, that may arise when we want to try something new something which maybe we have feared doing in the past, in a negative light. ACT gives techniques to accept such thoughts etc but more as a way to live with them and act in the world despite these thoughts etc. In IFS you can learn to understand why you are having these thoughts and then heal them fully.
However, the ACT principles of diffusion and expansion are two very useful ways to work with our thoughts. Diffusion is about learning to not “fuse” with your thoughts. So, in the example of suicidal thoughts you learn to step back into the observing self and “see” this thought, thus allowing yourself the space (expansion) to let the thought go or diffuse it.
Fusing with thoughts is very similar to what IFS calls “blending” both being that state where we are taken over by thoughts and feelings, sometimes rapidly and dramatically such as when we experience bursts of anger, fear, shame or passion.
Part Two of The Happiness Trap gives many examples of how to apply these mindfulness principles and will help anyone understand their inner thoughts. What I would urge is for the reader to not dismiss the “unhelpful” thoughts as ACT often does and simply park them for now ready to learn more about these thoughts and where they come from with IFS.
Connection
Connection is ACT’s term for being present in the world – being aware of the here and now, of what is right in front of you. This is about learning to not get lost in/ fused with your thoughts, whether “good” or “bad.”
Becoming aware of your observing self, and your daily thoughts is a big step to being present in the world and seeing this present moment as all their truly is, or needs to be. We’ll come back to this in depth later with Thich Nhat Hanh’s Fear & Eckhart Tolle’s The Power Of Now as well as in the latter stages of The Roadmap.
Values - the missing link
The third and final part of this book is about how to find the actions in life that will make life meaningful for you. This boils down to living by your values as opposed to chasing goals. Harris has nothing against goals as such, as long as they are not the reason for your actions. An example he gives is getting married – that’s a goal. Once you are married the goal is achieved. There is nothing wrong with that, but thinking that getting married will bring happiness is an illusion.
The value behind the goal of getting married is what will bring long term happiness (meaningfulness and satisfaction) and this may be a value such as to understand your partner or to support your partner’s personal growth. Living by our values then means though goals come and go, our values lead us onward and have no fixed endpoint.
Finding your values is a process and some of the ground we’ve already covered with Not Nice in finding what you really like and want in your life, but there is room for more views on values and Harris has lots of real world practical strategies for both finding your values and taking action on those values. He also has a lot to say about how to address the inevitable setbacks you’ll face.
For more on values Marl Manson’s book The Subtle Art Of Not Giving a F*ck is an intelligent and very funny read.
where i see this book in the roadmap
This book primarily aligns with Stages Three and Four of The Roadmap and it is the first book that advocates a particular psycho-therapeutic approach to the challenges of life and living. It is a practical approach and ACT is a good, practical therapy. Following it’s methods will help you know your mind and let go of a lot of what society and your upbringing have told you is important, even if you yourself have not been in agreement.
Where ACT teaches us to accept those parts of ourselves which clamour to be heard but don’t feel particularly useful, like our inner critic, ACT then ignores or dismisses these parts of ourselves. This limiting approach leaves us dangling close but so far away from who we are in totality. It can also be fatal as these unhelpful thoughts often point at truths we need to hear – fears about life and desires for change. in this way, like so many therapies, ACT can can turn your life into one big ongoing therapy session
The Happiness Trap & ACT is a stepping stone for me to IFS – Internal Family Systems, which I consider a much more powerful approach to self examination and which the next two guides No Bad Parts and Self-Therapy are all about. The Happiness Trap is a good starter for self-therapy and for defining happiness and getting to know yourself better and in a way that feels safe as it is familiar to how we experience life. IFS moves much deeper, and the next guide, Richard Schwartz, the developer of IFS starts us on that deep dive.