Core Yearnings & The Matrix
Yearnings
Steve Hayes, the principle founder of Acceptance & Commitment Therapy, talks of fundamental core yearnings that underlie nearly all human behavior in his latest book A Liberated Mind as well as his online course ACT Immersion. I highly encourage all who are reading this page to check out this book, and to take his course if possible as you will be witness to a master at the height of his craft demonstrating his life’s work. Steve Hayes is truly one of the greatest living minds of our time.
The six core yearnings correspond to the six traditional points of the Hexagon Model of psychological flexibility:
Yearning for Belonging
Yearning for Coherence
Yearning for Orientation
Yearning for Feeling
Yearning for Self Directed Meaning
Yearning for Competence
In behavioral terms these yearnings are types of motivating operations which drive us. These yearnings are what lead us to our greatest achievements in life, as well as what get us stuck in the depths of suffering. While I do not utilize the hexagon model of psychological flexibility to conceptualize my work anymore, as I believe the matrix stands on its own, I do see the core yearnings as fitting into the matrix model quite well.
Coherence
The yearning for coherence means that we have a fundamental desire for things to make sense. That goes for everything from our sense of the world around us, ourselves, and the experiences that we have. We must trust that at any moment we will continue to be held to the ground by gravity, that the sun will come up and down, that when we blink and open our eyes again the world will still be there in just about the same way it was.
This yearning leads to us imposing order upon the world and our experience. We utilize various frameworks for this. Every religion, every rule-book, every set of morals, ethics, or codes, are ways of imposing this order. When this sense of coherence is shattered, say by a traumatic experience, (“How could this have happened?”), or when it is unworkably narrowed due to inflexible rule-following (“Those who believe this are right, and everyone else is wrong!”) , we suffer.
The ACT Matrix is one of these frameworks of making sense of our experience and the world. It’s one of many such frameworks, but I believe that the inherent flexibility of the matrix, combined with its emphasis on a functional contextual point of view make it one of the most suitable frameworks for satisfying the yearning for coherence.
Anyone who has worked with clients directly can tell you what a difference simple awareness of behavior makes. When we turn our lens of observation back on ourselves and our own actions, and especially as we begin to analyze the function of our behavior, our behavior begins to change. It becomes more focused, intentional, deliberate, and ideally toward values-guided purposes. The matrix is a framework that supports this effort.
When we can have a thought, notice it, and say “Oh, there’s that thought again! That one goes here,” and place it in the lower left-hand quadrant of the matrix; then make a choice based not on an automatic response, but on what is most meaningful for us in this moment, that’s us making sense of our own actions and the world around us.
When we can be aware of and respond compassionately to our own being, even those thoughts which are viciously cruel, even those images in our mind which are needlessly terrifying, that’s coherence.
By sorting out our experience into the matrix again and again, we establish a sense of coherence about how we function as a living organism, as a human being, and as a unique individual.
Orientation
We and essentially all organisms yearn for orientation. To be able to know the space around it, where it is physically/spatially, and for us where were are in terms of the present moment, the past, and the future. Clients come to us “dis-oriented”, they are not where they are “supposed to be”. They have a sense that their life is not quite right, yet they don’t know how to get back, they have no map, no signposts. We as therapists become “dis-oriented”, we are with a client in the room and then suddenly our mind is out of the room, our mind is somewhere earlier in the day, or somewhere later, or somewhere tomorrow. The mind needs to figure it out! And right now is as good a time as any to get oriented, even at the expense of the here and now.
The matrix is a spatial diagram for a reason. It’s not just four questions in a list. The spatial nature of the diagram allows for that literal sorting of experience.
This goes here. That goes there.
The spatial nature of the matrix allows us to become oriented to what is happening. Stepping back from the matrix in order to actually fill it out, orients us to what has just happened. Sorting live into the matrix orients us to where we are here and now.
The ACT Matrix by design satisfies yearnings for coherence and orientation.
Feeling
The yearning to feel and entirely come into contact with our experience clashes with the fundamental desire to be safe. Therefore we begin to reduce the number and content of what we are willing to feel. Unchecked, we swirl down the drain of our lives, until we are feeling nothing at all. As therapists, we see people every day with the inability to come into contact with and explore their experience.
Through matrix work, we help clients come more fully into contact with their experience, to feel what it is happening on the inside and outside, and to change their relationship with the content of their experience.
Competency
We yearn to be competent, to be good at what we are doing. From birth we reach out and try again and again to succeed at even the most simple goals. When this yearning is narrowed we favor perfection over any hint of failure.
Clients come to us stuck, unable to make a move, even those moves which are obvious, for fear of failing. They are frozen by this yearning.
Through matrix work, clients begin to experiment and overcome avoidance of failure in an effort to reach out to new areas outside their comfort zone. This experimentation is aided by careful analysis of behavior, and by getting good at coming into contact with their experience.
Belonging
The yearning to belong is one of the most powerful motivators, it is essential given our evolutionary history. We are not the biggest, strongest, most ferocious animals on the planet, and in order to survive and thrive, we must belong to a group.
Through this intense desire to belong, we fall into traps of self-hatred, believing we are never good enough to actually belong anywhere.
In matrix work we target this yearning, through analyzing the function of behavior, and shaping prosocial behavior.
Self-Directed Meaning
We yearn for a sense of freedom, and agency over our own lives; the knowing that we are in control of our actions, and able to make choices at will.
When stuck in an unworkable loop we lose sight of this sense of control that we do have. We are not in contact with our experience, and thus have difficulty making workable choices.
Matrix work reestablishes this sense of control so that there is a “Me-here-now” able to choose and live with the consequences.
The Yearnings + The Matrix
The act of using the matrix itself feeds into the yearnings for coherence, and orientation, meaning that two out of the six core yearnings are covered right off the bat when using the matrix. This may be the reason that the initial set-up of the matrix is almost universally eye-opening for clients. Sorting out life in this way for the first time adds a dose of coherence and orientation that often times is sorely missing.