This book was a team effort. To all those who read and provided feedback on drafts of these chapters, thank you. The exercises were particularly improved by those who piloted chapters of this book, including Mary Englert, Anne Shankar, Lianna Evans, Ross Leonard, Brendan Sillifant, Kevin Handley, Laura Meyers, Joanne Hersh, Jennifer Boulanger, and Jennifer Plumb. Thanks to the Portland ACT peer consultation group for their ideas about how to organize the book, exercises, and videos. Thanks to Joe Parsons for discussions about shaping therapist behavior, which influenced the exercises in this book. Thanks to those who provided feedback on the first edition including Donna Read, Ana Gallego, Miguel Lewis, Hiba Giacoletto, Brady Henderson, Petra Berg, Andrea Sieg, Kathleen Thorndike, Fred Kane, Magda Permut, Kaylin Jones, Sonia Combs, and the therapists at Lutheran Community Services of Spokane. Your input resulted in some large improvements in this edition, and your efforts will touch the lives of thousands of future readers and their hundreds of thousands of clients. All those people will never know that they should thank you for the time you put into improving the book.
To all of our clients who have honored us with their presence, trust, and courage. Without all of you, this book would not have been possible.
Thanks to those students and professionals who allowed themselves to be supervised by us and who taught their supervisors so much. Thanks to our editors, Jude Berman and Jasmine Star, for smoothing out our language and making our jargon more understandable.
Acknowledgment from individual authors:
Thank you to all those who helped me (JBL) learn ACT. When I first began studying ACT, I was blown away by the rigor and scope of the theory and was thoroughly confused by the technical language. I was rapidly able to utilize many of the metaphors and exercises, but didn’t really understand how it all tied together. I needed a book about the in between moments. This is my attempt to write that book.
I (SCH) would like to thank my wife, Jacqueline Pistorello, for her support, advice, and patience throughout, and to thank my lab for their input and encouragement.
I (RDW) would like to thank my mom for providing some of the illustrations in this book. They look great, Mom! We appreciate your willingness and action on short notice. I love and miss you. And thank you to my brothers for being there in times of need and as well times of joy, much love to you and your families.