Briefly summarize the ACT matrix—it’s purpose and function.
The purpose of the ACT matrix is to engage people and the function is to increase psychological flexibility. People are easily engaged by one vertical and one horizontal line as they are asked to notice two differences: 1) the difference between sensory experiencing and mental experiencing (vertical line), and 2) noticing the difference between how it feels to move toward who (and what) is important versus how it feels to move away from an unwanted feeling like fear or pain (horizontal line). "Noticing the Difference" is an inherently non-verbal activity that almost immediately begins to help a person defuse (get unstuck) from rigid verbal rules that may be interfering with meaningful, valued living. In the presence of this increased psychological flexibility, people are better able to derive and do new behaviors consistent with valued living.
The horizontal line represents behavior, which can usefully be seen as either moving toward who or what is important to us or away from what we don't want to feel or think. The vertical line orients to the difference between five-sense experiencing and publicly observable behavior at the top, which is the immediate experience we can have of the world outside; and inner experiencing at the bottom, which is the world of the mind and emotions. Because of the complex verbal processes we humans swim in, we can get entangled and get stuck when we become unable to recognize the difference between toward and away behavior and five-senses versus mental or inner experiencing. The matrix is a deceptively simple cue that can help people rapidly get clarity about these differences and move toward valued living, which is also known as psychological flexibility.
Why work with the matrix model? Why not just work from the hexaflex?
The matrix is a fun, dynamic, and engaging cue to behavior where the hexaflex is a conceptual representation. They both serve different purposes. For talking to professionals about processes, the hexaflex is a useful tool; for getting clients less stuck and better oriented to clinical work, the matrix is fast, efficient, and effective. The matrix approach is simple at first and only complex when the need arises, if ever. It takes five minutes to sort moving away to the left and moving toward to the right of the horizontal line, and to place publicly observable behavior above and inner experience below the horizontal line. The hexaflex probably takes at least an hour to present to a fellow professional, and the language of the hexaflex is too complex for most clinical settings.
So as I answer these questions I notice that it is important to me to share how effective the matrix can be (lower right), that I am afraid I may not convey properly how useful it can be (lower left). If I bite this hook, I might get wordy (upper left), and I choose to give short answers in simple language (top right). That's all there is to it!
At what point during a session with a new client does the therapist introduce the matrix?
The creators of the matrix recommend introducing it first thing, describing it as the "psychological flexibility point of view" that will be used during the session. This helps people immediately start telling any 'stuck' stories into the more flexible matrix point of view. Clients respond well to that language and we're soon moving along. That said, there are as many ways to use the matrix as there are clinicians using it, and many introduce it later in the session.
In the history of the matrix, and particularly during the early stages, what are some examples of applications and contexts in which it’s been used? Which populations (i.e. individuals suffering from PTSD, individuals who have experienced trauma) were first exposed to the diagram? And since then, which have responded particularly well to it?
The matrix was first developed and road-tested in groups with two notoriously difficult populations: Kevin Polk and Jerold Hambright who served US army veterans and Mark Webster in the UK who worked with substance users. These very stuck clients were central to shaping the matrix as a streamlined way of engaging people and getting to the heart of how one gets stuck, and then offering a point of view to get less stuck. Soon Benjamin Schoendorff in France, Marie-France Bolduc in Quebec, and many other across the globe started using it with individual clients, including clients meeting criteria for personality disorders, and they found that it was perfectly adapted to individual work. Since then literally thousands of clients have found the matrix a useful tool to get less stuck fast. It is possibly unique in how broadly it has been road tested before being brought to the larger public with this book. Five years of testing on five continents in dozens of languages, with both clinicians and clients loving it. Simple to learn, simple to use, simple to get.
Is the matrix only for ACT practitioners, or can it be adapted to other situations and/or for use in other modalities?
Everyone has senses and everyone has mental activity. Everyone moves toward who and what's important and away from unwanted internal experiencing. Therefore, the matrix has already found its way into many settings far beyond the realm of ACT practitioners. Management consultants use it, teachers use it; sales professionals and more have found a use for noticing the two differences [ex. between mental and five-senses experiences] and deriving new behaviors to move toward who and what they find important.
Clinicians beyond ACT have also found the matrix useful. Benjamin Schoendorff and Marie-France Bolduc have found that it is most adapted to using functional analytic psychotherapy (FAP), a relationship-focussed close cousin of ACT. More broadly, it can conceivably be adapted to any form of therapy that puts moving toward who or what is important center stage. So, for example, you can use it in mental health and pain medicine as a tool to evaluate the effectiveness of medication. Instead of measuring if unwanted inner experience goes down, you measure if actions to move toward who or what is important increase, and adapt dosage accordingly. And remember, it's simple to learn and use, so its got the potential to make a difference even in medicine!
Helping clients and trainees to adopt a functional contextual viewpoint is an important goal of ACT. Can you briefly explain what that means and why it’s so important?
The functional contextual viewpoint is important because it is different than the mechanistic viewpoint that currently dominates most of Western thinking. From a functional contextual viewpoint we notice an action (behavior) within context and also notice how it works for some stated purpose. With each moment comes a new context. By noticing behavior in context and asking how it works, a person can learn what behaviors work in a variety of contexts. Behaviors that don't work become less and less likely. From a mechanistic view, we are looking for the cause of an action. Once that is found, we try to fix the cause. For example, some cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) emphasizes identifying irrational thoughts that cause depression and problematic behavior. One then works on "fixing" the irrational thoughts.
It is important to note that the functional contextual viewpoint is an expanded way of looking at the workability of behaviors. In this regard, one can try the CBT mentioned above and test it for workability under the functional contextual view. So if finding and replacing irrational thoughts worked in the greater scheme of one’s life, then one would probably keep doing just that.
The matrix diagram was originally a diagram of functional contextualism. The vertical line represented the context that the behavior (horizontal line) was occurring within. This gave students a visual metaphor for noticing a behavior and asking if it works (for some stated purpose) in this context.
What the somewhat scary phrase "functional contextual viewpoint" refers to is simply a standpoint from which you judge the "goodness of fit" of ways of looking at the world and events, and interventions through the lens of "what works in a particular situation.” It is at root a pragmatic approach that can help get unstuck from thoughts about how things should or should not be and orient toward what works. You could say a functional contextual point of view is what can get us out of our minds and into our lives. And with the matrix, clients can get it in a few minutes.
Your new book includes chapters on a variety of applications of the matrix, including in the treatment of clients with addiction, PTSD, eating disorders, chronic pain, interpersonal problems, etc. In your opinion, what makes this diagram so flexible in terms of the areas in which it can be applied?
The diagram represents the common human activities of sensing, mental activities, moving toward wanted experiencing, and moving away from unwanted experiencing. Therefore, every human can use the diagram to "notice" being human and to discover behaviors that work. It is this simplicity that makes it so flexible. Extensive road testing has allowed to present a comprehensive functional contextual viewpoint with these two lines on a piece of paper. That makes it highly adaptable as each person, population, or clinician can then flesh out with the particulars of each person, situation or population. And it isn’t just adaptable to clinical populations. As we illustrate in the book, the matrix has already jumped out of the clinical box to spread to schools, communities, prisons, and so on.
In Annick Seys’ chapter about using the matrix in business settings, she talks about why the matrix is particularly useful in the workplace setting. What are some of those reasons?
Number one is the matrix does not assume that people are sick or troubled. It is an unthreatening model of normal human functioning. So when setting up the matrix point of view in a group, everyone can soon recognize something of their own experience in the diagram, and start sorting their own experience through the point of view. Next, it is scalable. Temporally, through it you can look at an event, a life, a given period of time, or an area of life, say work. Then you can also scale it from the individual to the group to the team, project, or organization, and start sorting at whatever level is most appropriate. So both flexibility and creativity are cued by the matrix. Finally, in organizations, effective, no-nonsense approaches are valued, and the matrix is thus ideally suited.
In one of the final chapters of the book you (Polk) discuss Ostrom’s eight core design principles for understanding group behavior. Groups are a context where psychological flexibility is limited by fears that are inherent to being a member of a group, and you discuss the difference between high group flexibility and low flexibility in light of this. Can you briefly describe what this means and how the matrix can be applied in group settings to increase the level of flexibility?
The term most often used for "low group flexibility" is low psychological safety. Most of us have been in a group where we were afraid to speak up because we feared retribution. Once psychological safety begins to decrease, communication decreases, stress increases, and creativity suffers. And once low psychological safety has taken root, a vicious cycle takes hold. People don't speak up because they are afraid, and the less they talk, the more they imagine what's wrong, leading to more fear and less psychological safety.
We use the matrix to break this cycle by engaging people in the simple "noticing the difference" tasks and equally imple language of the matrix. Individuals quickly notice that it's safe to notice the stuff of the matrix in regards to the self. Then we do a second matrix exercise regarding the group's shared purpose and the kind of stuff (like fear, anger, and ego) that can show up and get in the way of the shared purpose. Rather than talk about the group in the room, we talk in hypotheticals about any and all groups. Since we have all been members of difficult groups, the talk is easy. Once this is done, the low psychological safety is on the matrix for all to see, and now it can be talked about. The increased psychological safety and flexibility is almost palpable.
From this beginning it's then relatively easy to talk about Ostrom's eight. The first [of Ostrom’s eight principles] is shared purpose, and we already covered that during the second (workgroup) matrix exercise.
In your opinion, what is the most crucial place for the matrix to be adopted or utilized?
Number one would be the school setting. It appears that psychological flexibility promotes learning in many ways. Second, workplaces would be a great place for the increased creativity that comes with the matrix. That said, we do not know of any place where the matrix could not make a significant difference to help individuals, organizations and communities more effectively move toward valued living and ends.
What is the future of the matrix diagram?
Currently we are focusing on showing the matrix in schools and workplaces. We are also seeing an increased interest in advanced matrixing called Verbal Aikido where people practice "flexing" words and phrases. Due to its simplicity, the matrix has been spread a bit like a virus (though it's never "gone viral”). We're excited to watch as more and more clinicians and people in a broad range of fields catch and spread that virus!