The Function in Context: The Utility of the Matrix
A man receives a digital camera as a gift; this is his first camera and he has no experience taking photographs. With interest, he takes the camera with him everywhere he goes and tries to snap at least one picture each day. He finds that the photos he takes of his family and other groups of people are particularly artful. As his interest grows he starts to take more outdoor photography but soon realizes that the pictures he takes of birds and other wildlife are lacking something, but he doesn’t know what, or why.
The man goes to a camera store and speaks to the salesperson there, telling them that he must need another camera, one that is capable of taking wildlife photography as good as his indoor group shots. He shows the salesperson pictures he’s taken inside and pictures he’s taken outside so that they can see the difference.
The salesperson nods with understanding and tells the maSwitching lenses flexibly leads to more workable n that he doesn’t need a new camera, he just needs a new lens. A telephoto lens more suitable for outdoor photography. One with a more robust zoom, and different focal length. They tell him the lens he’s been using came with the camera and is easily removable.
The salesperson shows the man how to remove the lens, and helps him attach several new lenses, each with their own strengths and weaknesses based on the different situations he might encounter and want to take photos of. Until this moment the man had no idea that he was looking through one static lens, much less that it could be removed and switched out for a near infinite array of situations. An entire world has been opened up to him, and from then on as he travels and goes to different places he considers what he is most likely to encounter and packs lenses most suitable for the job. He begins taking pictures of the same subjects using different lenses, noting how each lens brings out something unique.
The ACT Matrix is both a camera lens in this metaphor, as well as the salesperson, pointing toward function fit for context. In matrix work, we set up a new viewpoint that allows us to see the lenses we have been experiencing our life through, lets us name these lenses, and analyze their function, and finally decide which lens is most workable for the current context.
In the beginning of matrix work for example, clients may be viewing their life through the lens of depression, OCD, an eating disorder, etc., and who and what are important to them may be heavily influenced (at least on the surface) by these lenses. By utilizing the matrix again and again, analyzing function along the way, clients start understanding that who and what they thought were most important to them have actually been governed by narrow and inflexible points of view. And that their behavior has been influenced accordingly. Flexibly switching lenses allows them to come into contact with previously unrecognized content in the context of their lives, and widens their behavioral repertoire.
In the images below we can see a completed ACT Matrix filled out from the viewpoint of anxiety (under the governance of experiential avoidance), then a stepped back view of a wider ACT Matrix revealing more context.
When clients become accustomed to discerning their various lenses or viewpoints that pop up and stepping back from them (in traditional ACT terms we might call this cognitive defusion), they can more easily make workable decisions based on what truly matters to them. Eventually clients will be able to intentionally experiment with different lenses, even when not strictly necessary, to gain a variety of perspectives on any given situation. In other words, they may consider how another person’s matrix might look in relation to an experience or situation. Or how several different people’s matrices might look, and the similarities and differences between them. This perspective shifting lends itself to increased compassion and pro-social engagement.