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“Getting Started” Guide to Psychological Flexibility

The target of ACT is psychological flexibility.

ACT (both Training and Therapy) is based on noticing your answers to two broad questions:

1) “What type of life do you want to create for yourself?”
2) “What has been getting in the way?”

Psychological Flexibility is the ability to notice both of those questions in the moment and do behaviors that ultimately result in creating the life that you want. Noticing both at once is a bit tricky, so we use the following diagram (nicknamed The Matrix) as an aid for psychological flexibility.

Usually start with noticing the difference between sensory and mental experiencing. Then notice the difference between how it feels to move toward who’s important and how it feels to move away from unwanted mental stuff life fear.

Then add four questions:

a) Who is important to you? (lower right)
b) What shows up inside and gets in the way of moving toward who’s important? (lower left)
c) What behaviors do you do to move away from the stuff like fear, e.g, run, avoid? (upper left)
d) What behaviors could you do to move toward who’s important to you? (upper right)

If you focus on the center (where the lines cross) and notice the two differences and the four quadrants, then that’s the Psychological Flexibility Point of View.

“The life you want to be creating” involves both Toward and Away moves. The “trick” is to notice if the combination of Away and Toward moves is creating the life that you want to live.

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