Three Different Matrix Schools of Thought

How Kevin, Benji, and I put our mark on the matrix.

In my quest to learn and teach more about the ACT Matrix, I have found it helpful to divide matrix content into separate “schools of thought”, marked by the person who principally promotes each different way of doing things. These separate schools of thought aren’t something that actually exist, but are a way that I’ve devised to help newcomers to the matrix make sense of the (sometimes conflicting) information out there.

By my count, there are three main schools of thought in the ACT Matrix world:

The Polkian School

Show people the matrix, and let them be.

Named after one of the developers of the matrix, Kevin Polk, the Polkian school of thought has the most information & content produced out of all the schools. If you type “ACT Matrix” into Youtube, you’ll most likely come up with videos by Kevin. Over the past 15 or so years, Kevin has produced all manner of content related to the matrix. He even ran a website called The ACT Matrix Academy which was a repository of trainings. Currently, Kevin works with a few colleagues and runs a certification program for people seeking to become a Certified ACT Matrix Facilitator. Kevin and his colleagues have recently relabeled the horizontal line to Relief & Satisfaction.

The Polkian School of thought is marked by a gentle “hands-off” approach to using the matrix as a clinical tool. Clients are invited to partake in learning about a point of view (the matrix), sort their experience into the diagram, and then guided to notice themselves engaging in Toward & Away moves (or Relief & Satisfaction Moves) throughout their daily life.

The main aim of this method is to show people how to set up the matrix for themselves and then let them go live their life. Follow up sessions are spent guiding clients back to this point of view again and again. Content from clients is redirected back into the diagram with the question, “Yes. . and where would you put that on the matrix?”

Homework assignments the Polkian way involves asking clients to notice what shows up in terms of Toward & Away (Relief & Satisfaction), and that’s it. There is no overt behavior shaping other than to increase noticing, no urging to do anything differently, or to engage in particular kinds of actions—values-guided or otherwise.

This style of working is easy to learn but difficult to master (and personally, I can’t do it).

Interestingly, this school of thought uses the term Verbal Aikido (which you will see again later in this post) much differently than presented in the book The Essential Guide to The ACT Matrix. The Polkian version of Verbal Akido refers to the gentle redirect toward the ACT Matrix which is often on a large white board over the shoulder of the clinician. The client says something and the therapist acknowledges it and directs the client to sort it onto the diagram.

The Benjiian School

Six steps to psychological flexibility.

Named after Benji Schoendorff, a long-time matrix practitioner (and fanatic), the Benjiian method is marked by the structured nature of the process which Benji has gotten down to a science.

There are Six Steps to psychological flexibility in this method, which are laid out in The Essential Guide to the ACT Matrix. These six steps can be used as a protocol either over the course of six sessions, or divided/combined to cover more or fewer sessions.

Several additional metaphors are introduced in the Benjiian method. These metaphors include labeling inner experience that gets in the way as “fish hooks” that we sometimes bite; thinking of our inner experiences as information on a dashboard/instrument panel, and being self-compassionate in the way that a mother cat cares for her kittens.

The Benjiian way also sometimes includes “card sorting” or the use of a deck of cards with prompts and other cues to help with ACT concepts.

But the major difference between the Benjiian school and the Polkian school is Benji’s version of Verbal Aikido. Here verbal aikido refers to a systematic process of seven steps that helps a person process their thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Clients are guided to notice their sensory experience, identify “hooks” that are showing up and how they feel in the body, actions they engage in while hooked, toward moves they could be seen doing, and who & what are important, and where in the body this importance manifests.

Once this method of Verbal Aikido is introduced, it is central to the therapeutic process.

The Essential Guide to the ACT Matrix was co-written by Benji, Kevin, Fabian Olaz, and Mark Webster, and it is very much an amalgamation of the two schools of thought.

The Jacobian School

That’s me!

My school of thought can be found in the content of my main website.

The main feature of my method is the intake session protocol—which I find to be highly effective for clients—and the emphasis on case conceptualization entirely through the lens of the matrix. My site and these writings are a part of the overarching goal to demonstrate that the matrix can be used to work with and conceptualize any & every human behavior.

Another notable difference between my style of matrixing and others is that I was the first to relabel the horizontal axis. I changed it to Survival & Vital rather than Toward & Away, and my rationale can be found here. For me, this change represents not just a substitute set of words to represent the same concept, but rather new terminology that captures something that the traditional ACT Matrix didn’t, namely a strong-tie in to evolutionary principles.

In the Jacobian style of matrixing, clients are guided through two levels of functional analysis of their behavior, first using Toward & Away, then using Survival-Vital. Then new behaviors on the survival side and vital side are systematically explored (Variation), analyzed for workability (Selection), and behaviors that work are kept while behaviors that didn’t are thrown out (Retention). This process is continually repeated across different levels and dimensions of a client’s life until they feel they are living the life they want.

Which school works best?

As with anything, you are going to want to hold this all lightly. All three of us swear by our own methods. Benji collects meticulous progress data with the clients he works with that proves to him that what he is doing is working. Kevin has been in the business decades and has demonstrable skill.

And I. . . well sometimes I’m the best therapist in the world, and other times I’m the worst. Depends on who’s sitting across from me. My advice is that if you’re interested in the matrix, try out the different styles and see which one feels most natural to you.

I am currently working on a on-demand course on my method. It’ll be similar to the ACT Immersion, ACT in Practice style of learning. Modules with many video segments and additional materials to work through.

In this course I will show real client sessions of me using the matrix—both successful sessions and not-so-successful ones. Sessions that don’t obviously feel fake (don’t you just hate that!) I think it’s important to know that I mess up, and to see how I try my best to recover. More importantly, I’ll show how to use the matrix to conceptualize cases and target specific areas for intervention.

I’m still putting the course together, but you’ll be the first to know when it’s done.

Respectfully Submitted,

Jacob Martinez // Through the ACT Matrix