The Core ACT Matrix Metaphor

Moving from Evaluative Sorting to Functional Sorting

What's the fundamental theory behind the matrix?

The core metaphor of the ACT Matrix is the idea that human beings are astoundingly good at categorizing—or sorting—things out. We sort (or label) literally everything.

If you look around you right now you can take any object you see and you can sort it into a million different categories based on attributes like color, shape, size, etc.

How does that become problematic?

However, we can also categorize things not just based on features but on evaluations or judgments. Categories like Good & Bad, Right & Wrong, True & False.

And because our minds are so complex and our sorting ability so powerful, we not only sort out external or physical things, but also our internal experience, like thoughts, feelings, & memories.

Soon we can even sort our Self into a rigid box or category like “Bad”. Or sort the entire world, or life into a category that doesn’t offer much in the way of expansiveness.

Over time our ability to sort ends up boxing us in and our lives can become smaller and smaller.

How does the ACT Matrix help?

The ACT Matrix helps people move from sorting experience into evaluative classes, to sorting into functional classes. In other words we move from This = That, to This has a certain function given this context.

This one shift in how we relate to our experience makes a world of difference.

Consider a person experiencing an unwanted thought or feeling. For a significant portion of their life they may have had only one box to sort this experience into: “This is Bad!”

Without having to change the content of the thought or experience, we can change what box we sort the experience into (i.e. how we relate to it).

In this way we are aiming at increasing the variety of sorting categories—or widening the behavioral repertoire—such that all the old ways of sorting are still there too, nothing is deleted, but we can now determine which way of sorting is most workable for us in the present moment.

I find it helpful to boil things down to this most basic metaphor from time to time, as I often get caught up in making the matrix more complicated than it needs to be.

Respectfully Submitted,

Jacob Martinez // Through the ACT Matrix