Book Excerpt: How the Matrix Helps Reframe Experience

Plus a sneak peek at something special

The following excerpt is from The Essential Guide to The ACT Matrix, by Kevin Polk, Benjamin Schoendorff, Mark Webster and Fabian Olaz:

Inviting clients to notice hooks and what they do next brings in deictic framing—the ability to take perspective on one’s own experience. The ability to notice hooks in turn opens up the possibility of broader tracking. For example, prior to being framed in this way, a hook might have hitherto functioned as a rule: “I do this (away) behavior because I have this thought or emotion, or because that’s the kind of person I am.” Clients might also engage in narrow avoidant tracking, such as noticing that away moves serve to reduce their immediate discomfort. Noticing hooks can help set the stage for tracking more broadly, including tracking congruence with their desired behavior and then with their values. Such tracking can help clients discriminate between behavior under the control of inflexible rules and values-based action stemming from broader appetitive functions. All of this can arise from simply asking clients to notice whether what they do after they notice getting hooked is what they would have done had they not gotten hooked.

This passage refers to content showing up in the lower left-hand quadrant, called “Hooks” by a lot of matrix practitioners.

At the second or third session with clients I switch Toward & Away out for Survival & Vital. By doing this we begin framing “away moves” as actions done to help us survive the moment. And inner experience that fits into the lower left quadrant are signals that heighten our survival responses, and therefore are connected to our evolutionary history.

Making this shift in conceptualization allows for increased compassion toward our own thoughts, feelings, and other experiences, and as a result reduces their aversive control over us.

The Survival Moves we do externally can also be viewed more compassionately now, “Of course it makes sense that I responded that way given my history. . .”

From here Survival Moves can be viewed from a functional contextual point of view. “Is this actually working for me? What else could I do that would be consistent with my values in this moment?”

And we can do all this while staying on the left-hand side of the matrix.

Respectfully Submitted,

Jacob Martinez // Through the ACT Matrix

P.S.

I’m working on something really cool, and the official announcement will go out Monday morning. But here’s a sneak peek for the most curious of you.