How can clinicians use the six ACT processes without turning the model into a checklist or searching for the correct intervention box?

Todd brings the core processes together into the Deeply Functional Map, a flexible framework for tracking movement between constriction and expansion as it happens in the room. The map helps clinicians organize what they are observing while continuing to let function, context, and workability guide the next move.

You’ll explore:

• How fusion, avoidance, attentional rigidity, and attachment to self story interact
• How awareness, openness, perspective, values, and action can emerge together
• Ways to use the map during sessions, case formulation, documentation, and supervision
• Why reinforcing small shifts in flexibility may matter more than completing a particular exercise

Clinician takeaway:

You will leave with a practical framework for reading process in real time and selecting interventions according to the behavior in front of you rather than a predetermined sequence.

Learn More Functional Contextualism Here⁠⁠

⁠⁠Experience ACT Here⁠⁠

⁠Learn more about Todd Here⁠

A quick look with Todd at why it’s not pain itself that keeps clients stuck, but the struggle against it—and how openness creates freedom.

Learn More Functional Contextualism Here⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠Learn more about Todd Here⁠

Defusion is sometimes reduced to a clever phrase or exercise designed to make thoughts less uncomfortable. Its deeper purpose is to change how language functions so that thoughts can become information or possibilities rather than instructions that automatically organize behavior.

Todd examines how fusion appears through rigid rules, identity labels, repetitive reasoning, and efforts to prove or disprove what the mind is saying. The episode then turns toward process focused ways of interrupting these patterns without becoming trapped in the content of the thought.

You’ll explore:

• How language hooks behavior through relational framing
• Why defusion is not positive thinking, distraction, or cognitive debate
• Practical moves such as naming the voice, “I am having the thought,” and metaphor based pivots
• How to tell whether an intervention has changed the function of a thought rather than merely its wording

Clinician takeaway:

You will gain a functional way to identify fusion, evoke greater distance from language, and reinforce flexible responding without requiring clients to replace difficult thoughts with better ones.

Learn More Functional Contextualism Here⁠⁠

⁠⁠Experience ACT Here⁠⁠

⁠Learn more about Todd Here⁠

Learn the crucial difference between values and goals—and why mixing them up keeps clients stuck. Values are directions; goals are destinations. ACT helps keep that distinction clear and meaningful.

In this episode, Todd breaks down why confusing values with goals can stall therapeutic progress. He clarifies how values guide flexible, purposeful living—while goals mark outcomes. Great for new clinicians and anyone teaching ACT-based motivation.

ACT, Values Clarification, Goal Setting, Behavioral Flexibility, Psychological Flexibility, Process-Based Therapy

Learn More Functional Contextualism Here⁠⁠

⁠Learn more about Todd Here⁠

Why identity is not who we are, but where we look from.

Clients often become organized around identity statements such as “I am broken,” “I am anxious,” or “I am not enough.” The difficulty is not simply that these thoughts are painful. It is that they can become the position from which every new experience is interpreted.

Todd explores self as context as flexible perspective taking rather than a philosophical idea to explain. When clients learn to notice thoughts, feelings, roles, and self stories as experiences they have, those experiences no longer need to define the full range of who they can be or what they can do.

You’ll explore:

• How relational framing contributes to rigid identity narratives
• The difference between changing a self story and changing one’s relationship to it
• How the Chessboard, Naming the Voice, and other experiential moves can evoke perspective taking
• What clinicians can notice and reinforce when a client shifts from defending an identity toward observing experience

Clinician takeaway:

You will leave with a practical understanding of self as context as a behavior to evoke and strengthen, creating more room for cognitive, emotional, and behavioral flexibility.

Learn More Functional Contextualism Here⁠⁠

Join the international community here!

⁠Learn more about Todd Here⁠

What’s Showing Up in the Room?
Feeling lost mid-session? TEAMS helps you track internal experience—Thoughts, Emotions, Associations, Memories, Sensations—so you can shift from story to process and regain clinical direction fast.

Another quick, minimal production time, off the cuff moment with Todd Schmenk.

Learn More Functional Contextualism Here⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠Learn more about Todd Here⁠

Acceptance is often treated as an insight, attitude, or internal state a client must reach before change can begin. Todd reframes willingness as something clients do when they remain in contact with difficult experience while continuing to move toward what matters.

The episode brings acceptance out of abstraction and into observable clinical behavior. A client may name an emotion, remain present during a painful memory, soften a defensive posture, or take a valued step while anxiety is still present. These small movements create opportunities for clinicians to evoke, model, and reinforce greater openness.

You’ll explore:

• How to recognize small moments of willingness in the therapy room
• Why discomfort is not a barrier to flexibility, but the context in which flexibility is practiced
• How reinforcement helps openness become more available over time
• How experiential exercises and metaphors can support contact without becoming techniques for symptom control

Clinician takeaway:

You will gain a practical lens for shaping acceptance as behavior: helping clients come into contact with what they have been avoiding, remain with it, and choose what they do next.

Learn More Functional Contextualism Here⁠⁠

Join the international Association Here

⁠Learn more about Todd Here⁠

In this short but impactful check in, Todd unpacks one of ACT’s most relatable metaphors: the ball in the pool.

What if your client’s suffering isn’t about what they’re feeling—but about their effort to push those feelings away?

Using the metaphor of trying to hold a beach ball underwater, Todd illustrates the emotional cost of experiential avoidance—and how it keeps clients stuck in a cycle of struggle. When we teach clients to stop pushing and start opening, we free up the energy to engage with life again.

You’ll learn:

• How experiential avoidance functions as a trap

• Why control strategies drain clients over time

• What willingness can look like in practice

“Life isn’t about never having a beach ball. It’s about whether you can keep swimming even when one is next to you.”

Perfect for ACT clinicians, interns, and supervisors who want a fast refresher on a metaphor that lands every time.

⁠⁠ACBS⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠IBH⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠Learn More Functional Contextualism Here⁠⁠⁠

Values are often discussed as things clients need to identify before meaningful action can begin. Functionally, values are better understood as chosen qualities of action that help organize behavior when discomfort makes direction difficult to see.

Todd explores how values can serve as anchors without becoming another demand, achievement, or item on a treatment checklist. The focus moves from discovering the perfect answer to noticing what a person wants their behavior to stand for in this moment and this relationship.

You’ll explore:

• The difference between values as ongoing directions and goals as achievable outcomes
• How values can orient behavior without requiring discomfort to disappear first
• Ways to translate abstract value words into observable qualities of action
• How clinicians can notice and reinforce small moments of values consistent movement

Clinician takeaway:

You will leave with a more functional approach to values work that helps clients choose direction, evaluate workability, and move meaningfully even when fear, pain, or uncertainty remains present.

For further learning, articles, training, and connection with the contextual behavioral community, visit https://riact.org.

Ever feel stuck in session when your client’s tried everything and nothing’s helped? That’s not the end. That’s the beginning—if you know how to use it.

In this very quick check in, Todd unpacks the ACT concept of creative hopelessness, where clients let go of unworkable control strategies and begin to open up to change.

This isn’t despair. It’s clarity.
It’s the moment a client says, “This isn’t working”—and finally becomes ready to try something different.

Listen in to learn:

• What creative hopelessness really is (and isn’t)

• Why it’s a compassionate, process-based move—not a shutdown

• How to use it as a springboard for ACT work

“Creative hopelessness isn’t giving up. It’s giving up the struggle that’s never worked.”

⁠ACBS⁠⁠, ⁠⁠IBH⁠⁠

⁠⁠Learn More Functional Contextualism Here⁠⁠