Living Beyond OCD Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Book excerpt: This user-friendly workbook provides adults with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), the tools they need to move beyond their disorder using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and it also serves as compact text for clinicians/practitioners to use with clients suffering from OCD at any point in treatment. The workbook offers readers hands-on ACT and Exposure Response Prevention (ERP) skills for taming disturbing obsessions and filling the gap of where one stands and where one wants to go. Dr. Zurita provides evidence-based exercises to guide adults through the process of ACT. This includes learning to step back from one’s thoughts and memories, opening up to all types of unwanted thoughts and feelings, paying attention to the physical world, observing one’s thoughts and feelings, getting rid of barriers to values-based living, and developing consistent patterns of values-based behavior. Written from the office of a full-time therapist in a simple, uncomplicated, and unpretentious manner, this workbook will be useful for all clients suffering from OCD and for the therapists who work with them.