This book reviews the research and philosophical foundations for using mindfulness, acceptance, and Buddhist psychology in couple and family therapy. It also provides a detailed and practical approach for putting these ideas into action in the therapy room, including a mindful approach to therapeutic relationships, case conceptualization, treatment planning, teaching meditation, and intervention.

All of us want to be fully accepted in our relationships, yet it can be difficult to fully accept our partners for who they are. This insightful guide for couples is based on a simple concept: Act out of kindness, love, and acceptance, and you will open your relationship for the creation of greater kindness, love, and acceptance. With strategies drawn from acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), a powerful therapeutic approach, this book will help you identify your core values and discover, as a couple, the beauty that is available to you and your partner when you bring greater awareness and values-guided behavior to your relationship. Each chapter explores a key issue, such as passion, fidelity, and the balance between dependence and independence, and includes specific practices you can do alone or with your partner to help you build a vital relationship.

Relationships take work. In this much-anticipated book, best-selling author Matthew McKay and psychologist Avigail Lev present the ten most common relationship schemas, and provide an evidence-based acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) treatment protocol for professionals to help clients overcome the barriers that hold them back in their relationships. Romantic relationships are a huge challenge for many of us, as evidenced by our high divorce rates. But what is it that causes so much pain and discord in many relationships? In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Couples, Matthew McKay and Avigail Lev provide the first ACT-based treatment protocol for couples that identifies the ten most common relationship schemas—and the coping behaviors they drive—to help you guide clients through their pain and toward solutions that reflect the needs and values of the couple. Rather than working to stop relationship schemas from being triggered or to reduce schema pain, you’ll be able to help your clients observe and name what triggers their rigid coping behaviors when their schemas are activated. And by learning new skills when they’re triggered, your clients will be able to replace avoidant and coping behaviors with values-based action for the betterment of the relationship. By making your clients’ avoidant behavior the target of treatment— as opposed to their thoughts and beliefs—this skills-based guide provides the tools you need to help your clients change how they respond to their partner.

This volume examines the role of mindfulness principles and practices in a range of well-established cognitive and behavioral treatment approaches. Leading scientist-practitioners describe how their respective modalities incorporate such nontraditional themes as mindfulness, acceptance, values, spirituality, being in relationship, focusing on the present moment, and emotional deepening. Coverage includes acceptance and commitment therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, integrative behavioral couple therapy, behavioral activation, and functional analytic psychotherapy. In every chapter, the authors describe their clinical methods and goals, articulate their theoretical models, and examine similarities to and differences from other approaches both inside and outside behavior therapy.

An ideal text for all students of marital dynamics.

Bringing together clinical expertise with the latest findings from social, affective, and cognitive neuroscience, this accessible guide outlines how basic concepts of neuroscience and family therapy can be highly relevant to all mental health treatment. This expanded second edition includes content on a range of areas including effects of racism, poverty, violence, and childhood abuse on the brain; substance abuse; and advances in the treatment of depression, bipolar disorder, and anxiety. Grounded in five key tenets of neuroscience, the approaches highlighted in this book focus on the safety of secure bonds for children, adolescents, couples, and families, as well as how an understanding of neuroscience can be utilized by professionals during trauma therapy. The stages of brain development provide a map for practitioners that illustrates dozens of practical, daily interventions. Chapters discuss neuroscience in light of a range of contemporary dilemmas for client engagement, accompanied throughout by fresh case examples, worksheets, clinical guidelines, and step-by-step interventions. Written in a jargon-free style, The Transparent Brain in Couple and Family Therapy, second edition is an essential resource for mental health professionals using neuroscientific principles to bring relief to clients from diverse backgrounds.

Mindfulness for your marriage is a tool book to be used by couples who want to gain the skill of relationship wellness. Each chapter offers evidence-based, and therapist verified techniques to gain insight into yourself and your partners world. Mindfulness for your marriage offers skills-based interventions that draw upon the fields of mindfulness and behavioral psychology, both recognized as pathways to enrichment. Each segment of this text builds upon the previous in an effort to lead the reader toward a mastery of relationship wellness. Divorce, separation, or disconnection do not always need to be the solution, a new approach to your problems will empower your path to reconnection. Prepare to break down specific methods of mindfulness and apply them during each chapter’s exercises as you practice to enhance your relationship. Each segment ends with practical exercises to do together or independently. In this unique text, you are offered thoughtful meditations that make relationship improvement understandable and easy. The writer houses an intimate understanding of human emotions and connections that she intersects in a meaningful way. It is not necessary to wait to improve your love until it is ailing, but here and now, relationship enhancement is offered as a preventative strategy in the attainment of interconnected wellbeing.