Deeply Functional

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.

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⁠⁠⁠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

Language allows people to remember, predict, evaluate, and solve problems. It can also make a thought feel like a fact, a prediction feel like a certainty, or a description of the past feel like a permanent identity.

Todd introduces Relational Frame Theory as a practical clinical lens for understanding how language changes the function of experience. Rather than debating whether a thought is accurate, clinicians can begin noticing how relational networks organize attention, emotion, and action in the present moment.

You’ll explore:

• How people learn to relate events through comparison, distinction, causality, time, and perspective
• Why thoughts can influence behavior even when the events they describe are not present
• How rules, evaluations, and identity statements can narrow a client’s behavioral options
• Why changing the context around language may be more useful than trying to correct its content

Clinician takeaway:

You will gain a clearer way to recognize when language is dominating behavior and how to help clients relate to thoughts as experiences they can notice, rather than commands they must obey.

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

⁠Learn More Functional Contextualism Here⁠

⁠Experience ACT Here⁠

In this very short episode, Todd breaks down one of the most misunderstood—but vital—concepts in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: psychological flexibility.

These "quick blips" will be less than 2-3 minutes and focus on only one topic and will fill in the gaps to the biweekly release of the main episodes.

For further learning, articles, training, and connection with the contextual behavioral community, visit ⁠RIACT⁠, ⁠ACBS⁠, ⁠IBH⁠

⁠Learn More Functional Contextualism Here⁠

⁠Experience ACT Here⁠

What if the client’s stated problem is not the most important thing to address, and the most useful intervention begins with a shift in how the clinician sees behavior?

Todd introduces the central premise of the podcast: moving from the form and content of behavior toward its function in context. Using the Ball in the Pool metaphor and practical clinical examples, he shows how attempts to control thoughts, feelings, and memories can provide immediate relief while gradually narrowing a person’s life.

You’ll explore:

• The difference between what behavior looks like and what it accomplishes
• How learning history, present context, and consequences give behavior meaning
• The role of Time, Trigger, Trajectory, and Workability in functional assessment
• Why therapeutic success involves expanding flexible, values directed behavior rather than simply reducing symptoms

Clinician takeaway:

You will leave with a working understanding of function, practical questions for tracking it in session, and a clearer way to choose interventions according to what behavior is doing rather than what it is called.

For further learning, articles, training, and connection with the contextual behavioral community, visit RIACT, ACBS, IBH