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

Deeply Functional is a podcast for therapists who want to move beyond technique and learn to see more clearly.

Each short episode explores a single process, principle, or metaphor—rooted in Functional Contextualism and Relational Frame Theory, the foundation on which Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) stands.

Some episodes focus on core concepts. Others zoom in on processes, metaphors, or moment-to-moment clinical decisions.

This isn’t about chasing content or fixing minds. It’s about learning to track behavior in context, respond to what shows up, and move toward what matters—with precision, presence, and purpose.

This first episode is a prelude—a foundation-setting reflection on why this podcast exists, why now, and what it means to take a deeply functional stance in the work we do.

Let’s train the lens.
Let’s get deeply functional.

Learn More Functional Contextualism Here

Experience ACT Here