The ACT Matrix vs. The Choice Point
Catch up with this recorded webinar
Last week I met with a few lovely people to discuss the history of the ACT Matrix and the Choice Point
So many clinicians confuse the two models, or indeed don’t know what the difference is and wonder why one exists when the other does things perfectly well.
Be warned, this video is 2-hours long of me gasping for air as I discuss the Matrix and Choice Point. By the end of it my mouth was so parched I could hardly talk the rest of the day. Please forgive my heavy sighs throughout, poor breath control on my part.
A couple of weeks before the recording of this discussion I got an email asking me about the differences between the two tools. Here’s how I responded if you don’t have time to watch the video:
Hi Jacob,
I attended your seminar on Great Intakes with ACT through eCare continuing education on 1/14/21. I really enjoyed your presentation and how you simplified the components as well as included your spiel for the rest of us. Thank you!
I was curious if you had ever used the Choice Point from Russ Harris? Sounds like you mostly use the Matrix, so I was wondering why you prefer it over the Choice Point? I would love to hear any other insights you might have on one vs the other?
My response:
Thank you for reaching out, it's funny you ask that because the differences between the ACT Matrix and the Choice Point are something that I discuss quite often, and have written about. I'm even doing a little zoom meeting about just that in a few weeks.
The short version is that the ACT Matrix predates the Choice Point by a couple of years. Russ and a few of his Co-Authors of the Weight Escape where the Choice Point was originally presented, were looking for a model to encapsulate this style of working and they looked hard at the ACT Matrix as a possibility but really wanted the language to be "Toward your values or Away from your values". In the traditional ACT Matrix it's Toward what matters and away from uncomfortable inner stuff.
In the end they created the Choice Point and have had huge success with it. When Kevin Polk and his crew were inventing the matrix they tried it out using Toward Values and Away from Values but found that people had a much tougher time discriminating the difference between those two states in the moment in real life situations, and that it was much easier to discriminate between toward importance and away from discomfort.
BUT what happens with the ACT Matrix is that almost everybody who learns it, including clients, ends up using it in the Toward Values, Away from Values way, even Steven Hayes uses the matrix that way. This is unavoidable because of the oppositional relationship between the words toward and away. This is a mistake with the ACT Matrix not any user's fault. The matrix simply should never have used the words Toward and Away.
I have developed several adaptations to the ACT Matrix, most significantly, I rebrand the horizontal line as Survival Moves vs Vital Moves. In other words, there are actions we take that are geared and influenced by survival, safety, evolution, and biology, and there are actions we take that are geared and influenced by vitality, purposeful intention, fulfillment. And sometimes those actions are counter to each other, other times they aren't.
With the traditional ACT Matrix you cannot also use the Choice Point with clients because it is just too confusing. But with the Survival--Vital Matrix, you can use both if you wish to (see link below)
So much for the short version, but if you want to see more about this topic read this article from my website where I expand on it:
Submitted for your approval,
Jacob Martinez // Through the ACT Matrix