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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Happiness Trap | 2/2 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Happiness_Trap | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T08:54:00.157027+00:00 | kb-cron |
== Publication History == The Happiness Trap was published on 1 March 2007 in Australia and New Zealand. It was released in the US by Shambhala Publications on 3 June 2008, and continued to spread around the world with publications in UK, Latin America, India, Germany, Korea, France, Sweden and China. The book has sold over 1 million copies worldwide and has been translated into over 30 languages, among them Chinese, German, French and Spanish. Russ Harris went on to publish several more books about acceptance and commitment therapy, including The Happiness Trap Pocketbook, The Happiness Trap Cards, ACT Made Simple, ACT with Love, The Confidence Gap and The Reality Slap. A second edition was released in 2021, featuring over 50% new material with additional exercises, expanded sections on different emotions, perfectionism and a lot of new material on self-compassion.
== Reception == The book was well-received upon its release, with many praising the accessible writing style and way it introduces ACT: "ACT is not a form of meditation or a path to enlightenment—to reap the benefits, action is imperative. More of an ACT primer than anything else, there’s enough interesting content here to keep the reader, um, happy". A review in The Scavenger described it as "easy-to-read, practical and empowering".
Michael L. H. Collins wrote for The British Journal of Psychology:"Harris certainly has broken the mold of the self-help book with this enthusiastic and unique approach to making the most of our lives ... a book like this, with its fresh, innovative and interactive style, might prove to be ‘just what the doctor (Harris) ordered’." The Happiness Trap brought ACT to the mainstream, raising it from fringe psychological field of study to easily understood self-help aid. Oliver Burkeman wrote for The Guardian: "Meditation teaches a similar lesson, as does the still youthful field of "acceptance and commitment therapy", outlined in Russ Harris's excellent book The Happiness Trap. The point isn't to improve your thoughts and feelings, or stamp out negative ones, so much as to "unhook" from them; to stop being a puppet they jerk around."Body+Soul listed it on their Top Self-Help Books in 2010, alongside Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra. It continues to rank highly on many self-help book lists and compilations and is considered by many therapists an essential tool for improving the lives of their patients.
== References ==