Passengers on the Bus (ACT)
An experiential exercise based on the ACT 'passengers on the bus' metaphor: you are the driver, your difficult thoughts and feelings are passengers, and you can keep driving toward what matters without obeying them or stopping to fight them.
About this resource
Passengers on the bus is one of the best-known metaphors in acceptance and commitment therapy, introduced by Steven Hayes and colleagues. The person is the driver of a bus, heading in a direction they have chosen (their values). Along the way, passengers get on: thoughts, memories, feelings, urges. Some are unpleasant and loud, threatening the driver and demanding that the bus turn around. The driver can stop the bus to argue with them, can give in and drive where they demand, or can keep driving in the chosen direction with the passengers on board.
The metaphor illustrates several ACT processes at once. Cognitive fusion is treating the passengers' words as commands that must be obeyed. Experiential avoidance is turning the bus around to get them to quiet down, at the cost of the journey. Defusion is noticing the passengers as passengers, noisy but not in charge. Committed action is continuing to drive toward what matters even with them on board. The exercise below turns the metaphor into an active practice: naming one's own passengers, noticing the usual response, and practising driving on.
The professional version adds guidance on running the exercise experientially in session, including a role-play version where the clinician or group members voice the passengers, and on common pitfalls such as the client trying to throw the passengers off the bus.
How to use it
- Introduce the metaphor verbally first, in a conversational way, checking that the client can identify with the driver and can name a few passengers of their own.
- Establish the direction of the bus: a value or valued activity the client has been avoiding because of what the passengers say. The exercise is meaningless without a direction.
- Run the exercise in session, either as guided imagery or as a role-play in which you voice the client's passengers while they practise driving on. Keep the passengers realistic and use the client's actual words.
- Debrief the difference between fighting the passengers, obeying them, and driving with them. Most clients recognise they have spent years doing the first two.
- Assign the practice log. Ask the client to notice, in real situations, which passenger has shown up and what the driver did.
References
- Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K. D., & Wilson, K. G. (2012). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: The Process and Practice of Mindful Change (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
- Harris, R. (2019). ACT Made Simple: An Easy-to-Read Primer on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (2nd ed.). New Harbinger.
- Hayes, S. C., Luoma, J. B., Bond, F. W., Masuda, A., & Lillis, J. (2006). Acceptance and commitment therapy: Model, processes and outcomes. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 44(1), 1-25.
