Deeply Functional

What does Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) look like when it moves beyond the therapy room and into the larger world of leadership, organizations, relationships, and everyday life?

In this episode of Deeply Functional, Todd Schmenk sits down with Spencer Smith, longtime collaborator of Steven C. Hayes, co-author, and leader of the Institute for Better Health (IBH), to explore the people, ideas, and experiences behind bringing ACT and contextual behavioral science to a broader audience.

While Spencer isn't a clinician, he has spent much of his professional life helping translate behavioral science into accessible resources, educational programs, and organizations. From his involvement in building Praxis to his ongoing leadership at the Institute for Better Health, Spencer offers a unique perspective on what it takes to move powerful ideas from theory into meaningful real-world impact.

The conversation explores his experiences working alongside Steve Hayes, the challenges of building and leading organizations informed by contextual behavioral science, and what the ACT community might learn from looking beyond its traditional clinical and academic boundaries.

But perhaps more importantly, the discussion turns toward the personal side of this work. What inspires someone to dedicate so much of their life to advancing these ideas? How does spending years immersed in ACT influence one's own relationships, decisions, and understanding of what matters? And what might the future hold as these principles continue to reach beyond psychotherapy?

At its heart, this is a conversation about values, dedication, collaboration, and the contexts that make meaningful change possible.

Because ACT isn't simply something we do in therapy. Its underlying principles offer a way of understanding how we live, lead, relate, and create change in the world around us.

Learn more about Spencer and get informed in what Spencer and Steve are working on here.

Connect to the larger ACBS community here.

This is part 5 of the inflexibility reads.

When life becomes organized around avoiding pain, meeting expectations, and simply getting through the day, people can lose contact with what truly matters to them.

In this episode of Deeply Functional, Todd explores values incoherence, the fifth psychological inflexibility read, and how it can appear as passivity, ambivalence, pleasing, waiting, or an overwhelming focus on symptom reduction.

Learn how to recognize when struggle has become the client’s compass and how values work can restore a meaningful sense of direction. Pain may remain part of the journey, but it no longer has to be the commander.

In this episode, we explore how tabletop roleplaying games can function as more than an engaging therapeutic activity. An ongoing story world can create repeated opportunities for clinically relevant patterns to emerge in real time, allowing clients and clinicians to work directly with behavior that might otherwise remain conceptual, infrequent, or limited to self-report.

We discuss how characters, relationships, consequences, and fictional distance can be used intentionally within a functional intervention while preserving the freedom and playfulness that make roleplaying meaningful. We also consider how clinicians can distinguish treatment from recreation, connect moments within the game to life outside it, recognize when fantasy may be reinforcing avoidance, and understand what contextual behavioral science and the wider Geek Therapy community might learn from one another.

ABOUT THE GUEST:

Danielle Yang, BCBA, GTC

Fantasy Frameworks TherapyMy discord for practitioners with a behavior analytic background who use RPGs in practice:https://discord.gg/ZDGfcnrQSV

My training courses:https://fantasyframeworkstherapy.com/professional-training/ba-ceus

If that mention of the geek therapy community stays in, people may be interested in checking out their several community platforms here:https://geektherapy.org/

In this episode of Deeply Functional, Todd offers a practical guide for listeners who have become interested in ACT, contextual behavioral science, and process-based therapy and are wondering where to go next. Rather than focusing on a single clinical concept, this episode maps out several places to continue learning, practicing, and connecting with others in the field.

Todd highlights the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science, or ACBS, as the larger international home for ACT, RFT, functional contextualism, and contextual behavioral science, with local chapters and affiliates around the world.

He also introduces the Institute for Better Health as a major source for structured ACT and process-based therapy training, including Reimagining ACT in Rhode Island, ACT Integrated in Los Angeles, ACT Bootcamp for Trauma in Atlanta, and ACT BootCamp for Clinicians in Portland.

The episode also describes RIACT, the Relational Institute of Applied Contextual Therapies, as a growing regional home for clinical resources, Flex Labs, consultation, writing, publishing, and community connection.

The central message is simple: ACT is not something clinicians have to learn alone. Whether through ACBS, IBH, RIACT, books, research, consultation groups, or local chapters, the work deepens when clinicians find community, practice together, ask better questions, and keep returning to what is functional, contextual, and values-based.

Show Notes Resources

• Association for Contextual Behavioral Science: https://contextualscience.org

• ACBS Chapters: https://contextualscience.org/chapters

• Institute for Better Health Events: https://www.ibh.com/events/

• Reimagining ACT in Rhode Island, December 2026: https://www.ibh.com/event/reimagining-act-rhode-island-december-2026/

• RIACT: https://www.riact.org/

• RIACT Journal and Resources: https://journal.riact.org/

• Deeply Functional Podcast: https://open.spotify.com

The provided sources explore the transformation of stimulus function through the combined frameworks of Functional Contextualism and Relational Frame Theory.

They explain how human language and cognition allow stimuli to acquire new psychological meanings without requiring direct conditioning for every single experience. Furthermore, the text details how clinical practices like Acceptance and Commitment Therapy utilize these relational networks to help counselors alter harmful psychological functions.

By intentionally reshaping relational contexts, therapists can guide clients toward greater psychological flexibility and meaningful, values-driven lives.

This is a Gemini Notebook created podcast conversation based on a paper by Todd Schmenk

What happens to ACT when you have fifteen minutes with someone and may never see them again?

In this episode of Deeply Functional, Todd Schmenk talks with Kirk Strosahl and Patricia Robinson about the development of Focused Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, better known as FACT.

They explore the clinical problems that gave rise to FACT and what working in brief, integrated healthcare settings revealed about ACT itself.

The conversation moves beyond the idea that FACT is simply a shortened version of ACT. Kirk and Patti examine what remains essential when almost everything else has to go: real-time functional analysis, identifying the greatest point of leverage, and helping someone take a meaningful step before the encounter ends.

They also discuss what experienced ACT clinicians may need to unlearn, whether ACT has become more complicated than it needs to be, and what clinicians must understand before they can improvise with confidence.

This is a conversation about FACT, but it is also a deeper look at clinical fluency: how to listen for function, respond to what is happening now, and use ACT without becoming confined by its procedures.

GET THEIR NEW BOOK HERE: Brief Interventions for Radical Change - 2nd Edition

 https://behavioralconsultationandprimarycare.onlinepresskit247.com/http://Mtnviewconsultlng.com
http://PatriciaRobinsonPhD.com
http://BehavioralIntegrationandPrimaryCare.com
http://SpeaktoyourDoctor.com
http://BasicsofBehaviorChangeinPrimaryCare.com

What happens when a client remains physically present while becoming increasingly disconnected from their immediate experience?

In this episode of Deeply Functional, Todd Schmenk explores loss of present moment contact and the subtle ways clients leave the room without moving. Rumination, prediction, analysis, and overexplaining may sound thoughtful or productive. Functionally, however, they can help clients avoid direct contact with emotion, sensation, vulnerability, and uncertainty.

You’ll explore:

• How disconnection from the present moment sounds and feels in session
• Why intellectualizing and storytelling can function as protection
• How present moment awareness differs from meditation or relaxation
• A simple clinical invitation that helps clients return to their bodies and immediate experience

Clinician takeaway:

When the client drifts elsewhere, invite them back into contact with what is happening here. Change cannot occur in memory, prediction, or theory. It becomes possible through awareness, embodiment, and engagement in this moment.

For further learning, articles, training, and connection with the contextual behavioral community, visit RIACT.org.

Why can a single word, thought, or memory trigger intense emotional or physical distress, even when no direct threat is present?

This episode breaks down core principles from Relational Frame Theory (RFT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) into accessible, everyday language to explain how human language shapes psychological suffering.

Today the focus is on the Transformation of Stimulus Function.

Rather than treating painful thoughts as fixed facts, learn how clinicians leverage the power of metaphor to alter our relationship with distress, quiet rigid thought loops, and create room for meaningful action.

Key Highlights & Topics Covered

• How Language Shapes Suffering: Learn why human beings experience emotional distress purely through symbolic language, words, and mental associations—and why fighting or suppressing these thoughts often makes them stronger.
• Demystifying "Transformation of Stimulus Function": We simplify this foundational behavioral concept for, explaining how the psychological impact or meaning of a stimulus (a thought, memory, or physical feeling) can shift when placed in a new context.
• Shifting Rigid Self-Narratives: Discover how automatic self-labels like "I am broken" lock us into emotional suffering through cognitive fusion, and how shifting to an observing perspective (self-as-context) restores choice and flexibility.
• Metaphors in Clinical Practice: See how counselors use vivid relational metaphors—such as carrying a heavy backpack, navigating Chinese handcuffs, or observing passengers on a bus—to transform heavy emotional burdens into manageable, workable experiences




PLEASE NOTE: This episode is AI generated and reviewed by the team before its release.

In this episode of Deeply Functional: In Conversation, Todd Schmenk is joined by Siri Ming, Julia Fiebig, and Evelyn Gould to explore the thinking behind Frame by Frame, their approach to helping clinicians understand what is happening functionally in the therapy room.

The conversation begins with a familiar problem: ACT is often taught and practiced as a curriculum, protocol, or collection of exercises. The group considers what changes when clinicians move beyond choosing techniques and begin attending more carefully to behavior, context, learning history, and the function of what is unfolding from moment to moment.

Together, they discuss how Relational Frame Theory and functional analysis can inform clinical decisions without pulling therapists away from the human interaction in front of them. They explore the value of “zooming in” on the immediate exchange while also “zooming out” to consider developmental, relational, group, and systemic influences on behavior.

The discussion also examines psychological flexibility across different stages of life, the development of selfing through language, and the therapist’s own participation in the clinical process.

Throughout the episode, Frame by Frame offers a way of slowing the work down enough to see more clearly, conceptualize more coherently, and respond with greater flexibility.

This conversation will be especially useful for clinicians, supervisors, and trainers interested in moving beyond procedural ACT toward a more contextual, behaviorally grounded, and responsive approach to clinical practice.

Learn More About Constellations here

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Get the broader picture with the Association of Contextual Behavioral Science

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What are we really reaching for when we criticize, withdraw, demand reassurance, or shut down with out partners?

In this episode of Deeply Functional, Todd Schmenk talks with Lou Lasprugato about yearnings: the deep, recurring experiences people seek within their closest relationships.

Together, they explore how yearnings differ from needs and values, why they make us vulnerable, and how they can become hidden beneath difficult patterns of interaction.

Todd and Lou also examine how a functional assessment can help therapists look beyond the couple’s observable behavior and identify what each person is trying to move toward.

When criticism is understood as a longing for connection, or withdrawal as protection from rejection, new possibilities begin to emerge.

This conversation offers therapists a practical and compassionate way to understand conflict by asking a deeper question: What is each person yearning to experience, and what happens when that yearning feels threatened?

Lou Lasprugato Psychotherapy & Training PLLCCA and VA licensed MFTPeer-Reviewed ACT TrainerACBS FellowPast ACBS Training Committee Chair

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