Learning ACT, Living ACT: The Paradox of Derived Relational Responding in Clinical Training

Todd Schmenk, LMHC | Rhode Island ACT (RIACT.org)

Abstract

Teaching Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) presents a paradox. The same relational processes that underlie human suffering, namely, derived relational responding, also govern how clinicians learn, integrate, and embody ACT itself.  While new practitioners often struggle to “do ACT correctly,” genuine fluency arises not through rule-following but through immersion, reflection, and recursive relational learning. 

This paper explores how ACT training reshapes the learner’s system over time and why supervision must focus less on technique and more on cultivating a functional stance where learning, living, and doing ACT become indistinguishable.

The Learning Paradox

ACT invites both clients and clinicians to relate differently to their internal experiences, yet this very invitation runs counter to how most professional training operates. Traditional instruction depends on rule-governed behavior that “follow the steps,” “apply the protocol,” or  “do it right.” ACT, rooted in Functional Contextualism and Relational Frame Theory, challenges that paradigm by emphasizing flexibility, function, and context sensitivity.

When new clinicians encounter ACT, their minds naturally derive rules such as “I have to do defusion whenever a client fuses,” or “Every session must touch on values.” These are not errors but predictable consequences of the relational learning system itself. 

Derived relational responding allows us to connect concepts, generalize across contexts, and build meaning, but it also generates unhelpful rules when left unexamined. So, the same mechanism that enables transformation in therapy also makes ACT hard to “learn” in a traditional sense.

ACT isn’t learned through memorization. It’s acquired through participation. Once it enters the relational system, it starts to reorganize perception, language, and behavior. The more one tries to do it “right,” the more one risks losing the functional heart of the work.

From Learning to Living: How ACT Becomes Systemic

ACT changes the clinician as much as the client. Once learned, its concepts don’t stay confined to the therapy room. They reshape how we relate to our thoughts, our emotions, and even our professional identities. This is because learning ACT means engaging with a self-referential system, one that repeats itself indefinitely and alters how we make sense of experience.

Every time a clinician practices mindfulness, reflects on workability, or explores values with a client, they strengthen neural and relational pathways that make those patterns more accessible in other contexts. Over time, ACT becomes not a set of tools but a worldview, a stance that guides interaction and decision making far beyond session content.

Learning ACT is therefore not additive but transformative. It changes how one learns, not just what one knows.

Priming the Network: The Power of Repeated Contact

A critical message for supervisees and supervisors alike is this: by taking the time to read articles, listen to podcasts, attend training sessions, experiment in session, write your notes, and sit in supervision, you are priming the base. Every exposure, every reflection, every attempt, successful or awkward, adds relational material to your network.

The derived learning happens naturally, sometimes quickly when prior experience or familiarity creates fertile ground, and sometimes slowly when the territory is entirely new. Either way, the process is unfolding beneath awareness. Just as we don’t consciously control which memories link together, we don’t consciously direct the relational pathways that lead to fluency.

This is why supervision and practice environments must encourage steady contact over time. Frequency and variety of contextual exposure matter more than any single breakthrough. The more one engages, reading, writing, reflecting, dialoguing—with purpose and intent, the richer and more flexible the network becomes.

It’s also worth noting that not all connections form through deliberate study, many arise through arbitrarily applicable relational responding (AARR), the mind’s natural tendency to relate concepts across contexts. Think of these as those “Eureka!” moments.  

A clinician reading about “creative hopelessness” might later connect it to a personal moment of surrender while running, or to a client’s struggle with control, without consciously intending to. The mind does the linking for us. That’s the beauty and the challenge of this system.

Supervision as a Context for Functional Growth

Supervision provides the relational environment where all this implicit learning can take shape. It’s not about correction but cultivation. Using the Evoke–Model–Reinforce framework, supervisors help clinicians see their learning process as an extension of the therapy process itself. When supervisees get tangled in thoughts like “I’m doing it wrong” or “I should sound more like my supervisor,” the supervisor can gently highlight that this, too, is experiential avoidance or fusion and an opportunity to practice flexibility.

In this way, supervision isn’t just talking about ACT, it’s doing ACT together. The supervisor shows curiosity, openness, and honesty, and the supervisee learns that being confused isn’t a sign of failure, it’s part of the learning process. Over time, the goal shifts from trying to say the “right” ACT things to learning how to respond flexibly and effectively in each situation.

The Three Stages: Learn It in One, Derive It in Two, Live It in System

As you can often here Steve Hayes profess, the process of learning ACT unfolds in three broad movements:

“Learn it in one, Derive it in Two, it falls into the system and changes what we do.”

Learn it in one — The initial exposure. A workshop, a book, a lecture. The seeds are planted.

Derive it in two — The mind begins making connections, both helpful and unhelpful. New relations form, sometimes fusing, sometimes freeing.

Live it in system — Through continued practice, reflection, engagement, and supervision, these relational networks begin to influence the clinician’s behavior and worldview. ACT is no longer something done, it’s something lived.

This final stage reflects the shift from conceptual understanding to embodied practice. The clinician doesn’t merely apply ACT, they inhabit it.

The Work of Integration

ACT supervision and training must honor the time and variability this process requires. Each clinician’s relational history determines the rate and depth of integration. For those already steeped in behavioral science, connections may form rapidly. For others with entirely different conceptual frameworks, it can feel disorienting before it becomes clear.

What matters is persistence and context. Every note written, every case conceptualized using the AIC-Flex or Functional Process Note, every discussion about workability or yearning, all of these shape the network. Over time, what was once foreign becomes fluent, and the clinician’s practice begins to mirror the very processes they aim to evoke in clients: openness, awareness, and values-guided action.

Final Note

Teaching ACT requires patience, compassion, and an understanding of relational learning itself. The very mechanism that makes ACT effective, our capacity for derived relational responding, is what makes it challenging to learn.  It’s also what makes it transformative.

When we, as supervisors and clinicians, create consistent, meaningful contact with the material, through reading, writing, reflection, and relational dialogue, the rest unfolds naturally. The system learns, connects, and reorganizes. With time, ACT ceases to be something we “do” and becomes something we are.

That is the essence of learning ACT in context: not by mastering its steps, but by allowing it to take root in the system and grow into how we live, work, and relate.